Where did we go wrong? You will excuse me, dear reader, for this familiarity, but this question has been bothering me for a long time. By “we,” I mean the elite. Okay, I come from an immigrant background, from my exiled parents I have no assets, no inheritance, no family. The slightest gust would send me straight under the Pont-Neuf, but I have never been a supporter of virtuous miserabilism, nor of wrapping myself in the cloak of immunity of the camp of Good. “I am poor, therefore I am worthy of love, of speech, of expertise, of the left”, that’s not my thing. But I have the honor of writing every week in L’Express, of being published by houses as prestigious as they are historic, of appearing every evening in the spotlight of a news channel under the leadership of a great journalist. All in complete freedom. I am therefore part of the elite, and that commits me ethically. So, in these times of shipwreck and hysteria, in these times when we are seriously calculating whether anti-Semitism and militant Islamism are more serious – or not – than the incompetent national-populist right, the question of individual responsibility must arise: where did I screw up?
Ariane Mnouchkine published an article in Release on Saturday June 15, 2024. Authoritarian, certainly, dictatorial, perhaps, but it’s someone, Ariane Mnouchkine. It is a history of French theater and a history of French cultural policy. As soon as the lights go out in its Théâtre du Soleil, the magic happens, and I know, every time, why art and beauty will save the world. Brief. Ariane Mnouchkine writes in her column: “I think we are, in part, responsible, we, people of the left, we, people of culture. We abandoned the people, we did not want to listen to the fears, the anxieties. When the people said what they saw, they were told that they were wrong, that they did not see what they saw. It was only a misleading feeling, they were told. Then, as they insisted. we told them they were imbeciles, and then, when they insisted, we called them bastards.”
To my great astonishment, his column was not widely relayed, it was not debated. In the Sunday evening political show on France 5, an extract is broadcast verbatim, and, strangely, no one – a group of elites so disconnected and proud of their lunar analyzes of academics, historians, journalists and pollsters that I had a stomach ache all night – did not react, and we moved on. Hell is definitely other people. On the other hand, they raved about the speeches of athletes and influencers, first and foremost Kylian Mbappé, who finely declares himself “against all extremes”. And the historian clarifies: as the aviators, who were the influencers of the 1930s, took a stand for the Popular Front and against the fascist leagues, the influencers are doing the same today. Phew! Only here: for RN voters or abstainers, Mbappé is above all a millionaire.
And the redneck comments: “We’ve never tried it!”
The gap is abysmal. And all of this is sad. Sad, because it wouldn’t have taken much for these ruptures – to see this great sportsman that Mbappé as nothing more than a millionaire, to reduce the world to morbid antagonisms which say nothing about human reality – be avoided and that the intelligent and painful questioning of Ariane Mnouchkine be debated with serenity to avoid the same errors. To listen and hear. To avoid falling into the trap of separatist populism. Desolate like Chapatte’s drawing in the Chained duck of June 19, 2024 which shows a good big French beefcake, beret screwed on the skull, shopping bag on his feet from which red wine and baguette protrude, in front of a village setting with bell tower and war memorial, a weapon in his hand. hand pointed at his own head on which is written “National Rally”.
And the redneck comments: “We’ve never tried it!” ; all under the title “Chiche?”. The “chiche” should be addressed to us, who have done so little to address the issues that have been filling the sails of the RN for years. Hard to take off the blinders, hard to look, without holding their noses, at the reality of a majority of French people?
Abnousse Shalmani, committed against the obsession with identity, is a writer and journalist
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