The political class passes the philosophy baccalaureate a week late. With the dissolution in the Council of Ministers of the environmental collective Les Uprisings of the Earth proposed by Gérald Darmanin and which EELV will contest before the Council of State, it must answer a question: can violence be legitimate? Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne returned her copy on Tuesday June 20: “Sainte-Soline is extreme violence with the desire to hurt or even kill politicians. The association of a just cause with violence, is it normal ?” This Wednesday, June 21, Gérald Darmanin highlighted an extract from the decree: “No cause justifies the particularly numerous and violent actions to which this group calls and provokes.”
A few days ago, Sandrine Rousseau tweeted: “The only possible way out of popular anger becomes violence.” On Tuesday, she went even further: “During the call of June 18, the resistant movement was considered terrorist. (…) A movement in defense of the land will be considered terrorist.” And the next day she deleted her tweet – not even the violence of words allows everything.
The lexical debate is obviously crucial. In a country that no longer speaks to each other, imposing its vocabulary is a battle that seems less complex than convincing of the correctness of its argument. Gérald Darmanin, as he had done by evoking “the bordélisation of the country” by the Nupes, wanted to mark the spirits and his territory by speaking of “ecoterrorism”. The environmental activists answer: no, we do not destroy, we proceed, says one of them, to “dismantling of infrastructures”.
Good and bad violence?
There was a time when “civil disobedience” was claimed as a means of building common rule. “I pulled out the GMOs and I think I was right,” observes Yannick Jadot. The environmental candidate for the last presidential election adds: “What made Emmanuel Macron move during the yellow vests crisis? Violence.”
The Uprisings of the Earth movement took root in the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where the same radical environmental activists claimed legitimate violence. And which appeared “triumphant” with the renunciation of Emmanuel Macron to continue the airport project, despite a local referendum where the yes to the construction had won.
The gearing is such today that complacency vis-à-vis violence or violence itself are gaining ground in movements which consider that yesterday’s methods are no longer sufficient. How far ? One thing would be the worst of all, because frightening: to ask the State to distinguish between good and bad violence.