To the burning question of knowing what wokism is, to the delicate question: “are the ‘woke’ a scarecrow made by the extreme right?”, to the torments raised in the editorial offices between journalists who, lost or even fearful , wonder whether or not to use the term “woke”, whether this is playing into the hands of the extreme right or whether “radical progressivism” should be preferred to the refusal of the “woke” to do so. confession of their wokism, faced with this nebula which sees the flowering of explanatory or laudatory essays, denunciatory or aggressive pamphlets, false-ass interviews and counterproductive paranoia, the investigative book by Nora Bussigny, The New Inquisitorscomes to provide a clear, serious and serene answer.
Until today, journalists who infiltrated radical groups favored the extreme right at the bottom of the front, Islamists or even jihadists, drug cartels or even the extreme left antifa-black-bloc-anarchist. No one had yet ventured into the associative, militant, academic world which was, until a few years ago, a cute, full universe where we cut our humanist teeth in anticipation of a more selfish future, while breaking three windows during the demonstrations which demanded anything and everything as long as it was against authority and the big bad Nanny State. It was the good old days of revolution or death before going away for the weekend to the second home of parents who had already been there – I’m exaggerating of course: the hard-line militants, let’s get it done, Maoist atmosphere -fire-to-the-bourgeois-capitalist, repent comrade and make your self-trial were also plethora but certainly not as generalized.
Nora Bussigny leads us in, wearing a pink wig, glitter makeup, fake piercing and inclusive language. Rest assured, dear reader, a glossary is available to decipher terms that are as incongruous as they are new. Examples ? “Coughs. Here the word tous is no longer written ‘toustes’ to be even more inclusive and no longer just the ‘binary’ contraction of masculine and feminine.” Or even “Xenogender. Who do not recognize themselves in the human race, they can identify with elves, foxes or even puddles of color”.
Violence is here on the side of Good
We go (without joking) from a 2.0 conference with victim hijab girls delirious with persecution, to registrations on digital groups that demand white paws and rigidly intersectional speeches, without forgetting training in the security of radical Pride, a dive in the University of Paris VIII Saint-Denis or regional feminist demonstrations… Nothing is spared us from the exclusionary militant logorrhea. Because this is what surprises, shocks and disgusts the most in this meticulous work: the force of the rejection of the other and the enslavement to toxic dogmas. In this universe where cowardice – from the university management which allows the proliferation of exclusively militant courses which will only lead to unemployment and resentment to the submission of town halls which accept moral degradation and fake news in the name of the illusory justice for “coughs” – no one fights “for”, but everyone “against” (terf, cis, whites, mixed race, diversity, secularism, humor, freedom , etc.). Violence here is on the side of Good.
The strength of Nora Bussigny’s investigation comes from her desire to hide nothing from us about her doubts as well as her vulnerability and her optimism. Her colorful sessions with the psychoanalyst Ruben Rabinovitch, her turmoil as a Franco-Moroccan, her fear of being reduced to nothing more than a manipulator and her real fear in the face of fascist speeches and postures, in a word her intellectual honesty ( because sensitive), make reading his book as fascinating as it is instructive. Yes, Wokistan exists and its influence is dangerous for democracy and for the mental health of its supporters. But because it is a totalitarianism, its children can only devour each other.
I could only remember the excellent novel by Michaël Prazan, Memories of the Shore of the Deadwhen what remains of the decimated Japanese Red Army fraction meets in the mountains of Nagano to train for armed revolution, training which will end in a game of massacre through bloody self-criticism of which only fragments remain corpses: “Because he is a soldier. Because he disputes nothing. No orders. No murder. The limit between true and false no longer exists. The boundary between good and evil has disappeared. A perfect robot.”
* Abnousse Shalmani is a writer and journalist committed against the obsession with identity