It’s a word launched hastily, a bad lexical choice, a culpable silence or acquaintances with the ideological enemy “which say (too) much”… On the left, these last months have been marked by excommunications in series – of those which are worth to certain icons of progressivism to be suddenly decked out with the stamp of “réac”.
In 2023, the ax no longer falls only on the most divisive of the family, or those whose ideological change could reasonably raise questions (which in no way legitimizes the attacks which some, such as Alain Finkielkraut, Sylviane Agacinski or Eric Naulleau make the ‘object). From now on, the wheel of indignation can stop on the most consensual of pop stars, the most popular of politicians or the most feminist of feminists.
Latest: François Ruffin, who until now had been the ideal son-in-law of the left, to the point of being approached to take over from Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the presidential election of 2027. Invited by Franceinfo, June 1, the MP LFI was asked about the lessons to be learned from the electoral failure of the Spanish left-wing party Podemos, which passed a law allowing people to change gender at 16 without parental consent. Response from the person concerned: “We must rebuild bridges [entre les Français], repair the fractures and not deepen them further. In this context, we should not do everything that comes to mind, everything that we want, everything that is perhaps even good in itself.
Confirmation bias
A few hours later, the Twitter account Le coin des LGBT+ creaks against a “François Ruffin [qui] does not want a law making it easier to change his gender designation because it takes ‘appeasement’ for his party to come to power”. For its part, the magazine Stubborn publish a titled article “For François Ruffin, gender self-determination comes after…everything else”, castigating resemblances with the arguments of “the reactionary right”, to the point of daring to refer to a Marine Le Pen “who, in her program for the presidential election of 2022, advocated a ‘moratorium for three years’ on the subjects of society”. Just that.
Even some rebellious have cracked a development. Thus the deputy Sophia Chikirou, for whom Ruffin’s remarks are “clumsy at best, at worst a political fault”, or even his colleague Antoine Léaument, regretting “a personal opinion which does not commit the movement”, before refer to the LFI program, which plans to “allow free and free change of civil status”.
The clarifications of the interested party, posted on June 2 on Twitter, did not change anything. “As soon as I left the Franceinfo set, I said to my collaborators: ‘My answer on the genre, it’s not going well. I should have recalled the obvious’”, he agrees. Too late ? Superfluous. Because, in these trials for ideological fault, the deliberations take place after the judgment. In other words, the question is not “Is François Ruffin reactionary?”, but “Why is François Ruffin reactionary?”
In 2020, Picard was in favor of the return of borders “on capital, goods and people”, believing that it was necessary “to set limits on the all-out movement of people”. Under the pen of Marie Peltier, historian specializing in conspiracy and accustomed to threads moralizers on Twitter, this position becomes a “declaration of love at borders”. In the same spirit, its commitment to health personnel (particularly in psychiatry) and disabled people would betray, under the effect of a sophistic porridge, a “capacitist”, “condescending” and “validist” thought (which shows discrimination against people with disabilities, considering so-called “able-bodied” individuals as the social norm).
Suspicious relationships
When the “questionable positions” are skimmed, place to the enumeration of “suspicious relations” – the coup de grace. In April, journalist and environmental activist Hugo Clément was accused of having participated in the “great debate on values”, organized by the very right-wing magazine Current values, according to the logic of “we do not speak with the enemy”. In the case of François Ruffin, an issue of the review of integral and Christian ecology is purged Limit, who had dedicated his front page to him, in 2022, alongside the conservative philosopher François-Xavier Bellamy, under the title “Bellamy-Ruffin unplug progress”.
Worse than this guilty association (yet in the form of a contradictory debate), the invitation of the feminist Marguerite Stern, regularly accused of transphobia, to discuss the trans issue in response to the deputy’s mea culpa did not go unnoticed . Just like Eric Naulleau’s tweet: “François Ruffin is getting closer to a dignified, responsible and social left. Hope is reborn!” “CQFD”, ironically some internet users. Here is the pariah co-responsible for the ideas of those who defend him.
This same logic of the shortcut also targeted the singer Angèle, progressive icon, suspected in May of transphobia. Guest of Papotin meetings (a program broadcast on France 2 in which a personality answers questions from journalists with autistic disorders), the young woman had declared that she was “pansexual”, specifying that she could “fall in love with a boy, a girl, a non-binary person, of a transgender person”. His mistake? Having distinguished (therefore “discriminated”) trans people from men, women and non-binary people.
Naively, one would have thought the interpreter of your queen – a song that has become one of the most famous lesbian anthems – unassailable on the ideological ground. It was bad to sound out the time. “I can’t take cis feminists anymore [genres] who always come running [pour] defend their favorite cis women”, laments a user on Twitter. “The cis are too comfortable”, judges another. Translation: Angèle’s “awkwardness” would be symptomatic of a flaw specific to cisgender people (whose sex assigned at birth is identical to their current gender), essentially guilty of carrying a sclerotic vision of “sexes”, in addition to endorse an outmoded, and therefore discriminatory, feminism.
Coherence, this new conservatism
Could the trans question be the decisive factor in these accusatory salvos? Not if we judge by all the ideological trials of recent years, including the universalist feminist and figure of the Republican left Caroline Fourest has also paid the price. She is now described as “reactionary”, especially since the publication of her book offended generation (Grasset), in which she deplores the fact that young people, who in May 1968 dreamed of a world where it would be “forbidden to forbid”, today favor censorship and the culture of offense. Faulty, in short, for not having departed from his line. Like François Ruffin, who has never hidden his social priorities.
And like the comedian Blanche Gardin, yet support of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022. True to his convictions, the comedian recently attacked the company of Jeff Bezos, “who does not pay his taxes in France [et] emits 55.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year […] only with his data center”, to justify his refusal to participate in the program LOL: who laughs comes out! – a kind of reality TV broadcast on Amazon Prime featuring ten French comedians and humorists, supposed to contain their laughter for six hours to try to win 50,000 euros on behalf of the association of their choice. “I would be embarrassed at the corners […] to be paid 200,000 euros for a day’s work even if I lose at your game, when the charity of my choice would win 50,000 euros, that is to say 4 times less, and again, only if I win,” she said.
Global warming, social justice and criticism of the Gafam (themes dear to the left) have however not made the weight in the face of the “problematic” positions of the comedian: his support for his companion, the American comedian Louis CK , accused during the #MeToo wave of sexual exhibition; his sketches mocking the excesses of the time; his series broadcast on Canal + mimicking naturopathy, sorority and “toxic masculinity”. On social networks, it is an anthology. “Blanche Gardin is the feminist who went out with a sexual aggressor and defended him”, comments one. “The honors to this reactionary bitch of Blanche Gardin, it will be without me”, advances another.
Ideological coherence would therefore have become synonymous with conservatism in that it implies maintaining (therefore “preserving”) a line of thought over the long term and therefore “ranking” priorities according to it (which, here again, does not mean opposition to everything else). Two notions that the new generation left abhors.
However, figures like Clémentine Autain and Fabien Roussel have welcomed Blanche Gardin’s position. Coherent but cavalier, if we refer to the triptych “condemning – pointing out suspicious positions – expurgating dubious relations”. Next.