As the war in Ukraine rages on and Vladimir Putin’s regime appears increasingly isolated, the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven attacks the defenders of the Russian president in France, in particular Eric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Mélenchon who have , according to him, the “palm of the first lying in front of the enemy”.
L’Express: After having assured for a long time that Putin was not going to attack Ukraine, Eric Zemmour now explains that “the culprit is Putin, the person responsible is NATO”. What do you think of this position, popular with both the far right and the far left?
Raphael Enthoven: Zemmour reasons like an Islamist who would say “Samuel Paty’s killer is guilty, but the professor is responsible for having shown these caricatures!”, or like a rapist’s lawyer who would say “my client is guilty of having sexually assaulted this young girl, but she herself is responsible for her undress!”, or like a leftist who would say “the attackers of police officers are guilty, but the government is responsible for their anger”, or even like a demagogue who would say “the attackers journalists are guilty, but journalists are responsible for the beatings they receive”.
If Zemmour’s position on Putin is popular on the extreme right as well as the extreme left, it is not for ideological reasons, but it is because his reasoning gives way to cowardice – which is found in all edges – weighting contours. Zemmour promotes a way of thinking that allows the deflated to experience themselves as a being of balance. It’s the “yes, but” of funk. It is the spirit of synthesis of knocking knees. It is the height of sight that comes spontaneously to those who lie down. The problem is that to sleep more at ease, the coward needs to put everything on the same level: for example, the untraceable entry of Ukraine into NATO and the aggression of a sovereign state by a nuclear dictatorship thirty times larger, in the name of its “security”.
Zemmour, from this point of view, is at the forefront of submission: after asserting that Russia “would not invade Ukraine”, the leader of the French Munich residents declared that the “respect due to Putin” dissuaded him from taking action. In other words: the project – hatched for years – to resuscitate an empire with a number of vassal states whose freedom stops at the interests of the Kremlin would be soluble in an increase in politeness. It would be funny, if the man was not a serious candidate for the supreme office.
Zemmour, who describes Putin as an “authoritarian democrat”, called on Emmanuel Macron to send Nicolas Sarkozy and Hubert Védrine as “emissaries” to Moscow and Kiev to “obtain peace as quickly as possible”…
The oxymoron of “authoritarian democrat” deserves to be stopped there. It is enough, according to Zemmour, that Putin was “elected” to be a democrat. That is. Hitler too, therefore. If it is only the way in which you conquered power – and not the way in which you exercise it – that determines your quality as a “democrat”, then many “democrats” have distinguished themselves by their ability to crush revolts, to organize corruption or, in Putin’s case, by the invasion of Georgia, crimes against humanity, the annexation of Crimea, interference in foreign elections, the invasion of Ukraine and the systematic assassination or imprisonment of its opponents…
And then it is because he is “not Russian”, he says, that Eric Zemmour, while “dreaming of a French Poutine”, assures that he is not himself tempted by this kind of crimes. Which means two things: the first is that he refrains from judging anyone whose culture or history he does not share. The second is that by imputing an attitude to a tradition – if I were Russian, I would be a brute, but I am French, so don’t worry – he suggests that no principle transcends in his eyes belonging to a nation and that it alone must dictate our behavior: Zemmourism is an absolute relativism.
As for the Sarkozy-Védrine binomial – whose invocation is only a way, for Eric Zemmour, to put himself at the level of the elders and to regain control over a subject which is costing him the second round -, it would not have lacked charm at the beginning of this century. Imagine: Atlanticism and wait-and-see attitude in the same mess… Today, it’s such an incongruous idea that it doesn’t deserve to be commented on.
“Mélenchon disputes with Zemmour the palm of the first lying in front of the enemy”
Leading in the polls on the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon refuses sanctions against the Russian regime, pleads for a “neutralization” of Ukraine and wants France to leave NATO to be “non-aligned”. Does his anti-Americanism – coupled with Germanophobia – explain all the geopolitical positions of rebellious France?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who successively presented Russia as a “partner”, Putin as the hero of his people and the future winner of Daesh, the United States and NATO as the “true aggressors” and Crimea as a “loss for NATO” – “so much the better” -, disputes with Zemmour the palm of the first lying in front of the enemy. And just like Zemmour, after predicting that Russia would not enter Ukraine, Mélenchon now claims that, if we had listened to him, none of this would have happened…
When Mélenchon proposes the “neutralisation” or the “demilitarisation” of a country which is not his own, he is spectacularly perpetuating the tradition of the German, English, French and Italian signatories of the Munich agreements of 1938 which sealed, without the consult, the fate of the Czechoslovaks for the benefit of the Reich. When he proposes “not to line up”, he puts on Gaullist accents to confuse independence with dodging, and he lowers his pants to escape the blows.
Just as a false height of view allows Zemmour to exonerate Russia, Mélenchon raises his point only to get out of an impasse. He gives an air of wisdom to the art of fleeing the fray. In a word, more than his visceral anti-Americanism and a Germanophobia which, for him, borders on racism, Mélenchon’s speeches fall within what must be called the “resigning position”, which combines art to submit with the desire to find freedom there.
Valérie Pécresse declared, at the Agricultural Show: “We must show responsibility and a spirit of proposal. I asked for sanctions for the oligarchs, the stopping of Russian channels and the delivery of arms to the Ukraine, on all these points I was heard and I am satisfied.”
That’s wonderful! Like Chantecler, Edmond Rostand’s rooster, who is convinced that his song makes the sun rise, Valérie Pécresse claims that if Europe cuts off the funds of the oligarchs, if Putin’s propaganda organs disappear from the audiovisual landscape of an entire continent and if all countries in the world, even neutral countries, deliver arms to Ukraine, it is because Ukraine itself has finally been “heard”.
It looks like a child who, lying on his back, notices that his foot is bigger than the Moon. Or a journalist – I saw that – who says “you are live on BFMTV” to the politician who is surrounded by a chain of microphones and who is live on all the channels at the same time. Or the CGT in May 1968, which, overwhelmed by a student revolt, pretended to have organized it… There is something overwhelming, because there is something desperate, in such childishness. Taking yourself for the cause of a cosmic phenomenon because you shouted the same thing as everyone else is the most harmless (and most touching) version of conspiracy.
“How to attack Islamist propaganda, while allowing Putinian propaganda?”
Do you join Raphaël Glucksmann, who estimated in L’Express that there is a war in Ukraine, but that Putin is also revealing an internal conflict in our democratic society? According to him, “Putin has become the ideological godfather of all those who reject the principles and institutions of liberal democracy”…
Yes he is right. And he shows exemplary constancy and courage on this issue, as on others. But if we follow this logic, if Putin is the revealer of all those who, in France, hate democracy and if Putin is unanimous against him, this is not such bad news. In a world weaned from Manichaeism, where freedom turns on itself to the point of shooting itself many times in the head, Putin embodies the opportune resurrection of an absolute evil, of a nightmarish enemy, of a bogeyman whose he universal detestation unites wills and reconciles people who previously tore each other apart. For a simple reason: it is much more difficult to maintain freedom (when nothing threatens it) than to defend freedom (when it is threatened by a nuclear dictatorship).
Some speak of a return to the Cold War. What is beyond doubt is that by crystallizing so much fear and so much hatred, Putin single-handedly rebipolarizes the world, and offers our democracies exhausted by peace the boon of an authentic fight at lead. This explains, in my opinion, the astonishing European solidarity. All Europe lacked was a raison d’etre to unite.
Ursula von der Leyen announced the banning of RT and Sputnik in the European Union. Faced with Putin’s propaganda, is censorship really the best method?
One must know what one wants. How, in France, to dissolve the CCIF [NDLR : le Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France], Baraka City or Identity Generation, while letting RT or Sputnik run rampant? How to attack Islamist or far-right propaganda, while allowing Putinist propaganda? RT and Sputnik are state organs whose raison d’être is to misinform the people who watch them. Their presence is not a matter of pluralism, but of suicide.
That said, it is a fundamental debate: should everything be allowed in the name of freedom? Is freedom only to tolerate everything, or is freedom a principle whose defense paradoxically authorizes the censorship of its enemies? How to avoid that, in the name of freedom, democracy does not welcome within it a fifth column committed to undermining its foundations? And above all: do all opinions deserve to participate equally in the debate? Should we tolerate RT in the world of information as we would tolerate a flat-earth enthusiast in a discussion between astronomers? Is pluralism to consent to alternative facts, or to exclude nonsense?