From the American Democrats, who have just been inflicted with an electoral blow (which was nevertheless foreshadowed by the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016, the same causes rarely producing different effects), to the heart of the French left, we find the the same doubts and the same questions. How can we become audible again to popular categories who seem more sensitive to the control of immigration and insecurity than to the protection of their purchasing power and the pharaonic public spending (notably social) that the progressives promise them? How can we combat conservative and reactionary populism which continues to gain ground thanks to its ability to turn the contempt and moral lessons of the elites against them?
In truth, those who claim to be progressive have fallen into a trap from which it is increasingly difficult for them to extricate themselves. Because the more they give in to the temptation to censor populism, for lack of knowing how to combat their ideas and convince them of their ineffectiveness, the more the latter are judged credible when they denounce political correctness, and pass off their most odious ideas for the most odious form. virtuous (because the most sulphurous) of freedom of expression.
Observing the French public debate is enough to depress the most optimistic: the media and political opponents of the National Rally now seem to be divided between those (often on the right) who, for fear of being accused of being disconnected from the daily realities experienced by our fellow citizens, go so far as to validate all their opinions, including those which are fantasy or a lazy and purely emotional vision of reality. And on the other, we find those who, no longer knowing how to fight effectively against conservative, reactionary and populist ideas, decide to secede from reality, to completely absolve themselves from any obligation to speak to all our fellow citizens, and only speak to those whose privileged living conditions and education still allow them to subscribe to progressive precepts.
Camp of good or evil, gauchos or fascists
Between these two poles, the void gradually appears. Because those who try to inhabit this space are ordered to choose their side: good or evil, ideal or real, gauchos or fascists. It is astonishing to see how one by one, all the major media figures, but also the biggest media, are gradually bending to this inevitable mechanism which impoverishes public debate and leads us collectively into an impasse. How can Donald Trump have become the embodiment of freedom of thought and expression by saying “immigrants eat cats and dogs”, comparing Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage”, or by saying that immigrants are poisoning the blood of his country? How is it possible that in the largest democracy in the world, which has immense journalists and reporters, not a single traditional media outlet manages to overcome the tens of thousands of fake news spread by Trump and his disciples?
In France, we must admit that our populists are playing it safe. Perhaps they know that our institutions and our media still have enough strength, and our fellow citizens still have enough reason, to sanction them if they deviate too much from what is probable and acceptable with regard to our common values. And precisely because all is not yet lost here, it is terrifying to note the way in which some – a minority, but an active and noisy minority – are working to methodically undermine the pillars of our democracy that are freedom of expression, pluralism, or attention to proven facts against the proliferation of false news. Freedom of expression is sometimes presented as the freedom to say anything and everything, including things that are false or incite hatred, sometimes as a framework restricted to what does not offend any community or religion. She is neither one nor the other.
Two-faced pluralism
For some, pluralism is the ability of everyone to express all opinions, including when they compete with proven facts, and for others it is limited to accepting only the fifty shades of gray of the same thought. By receiving Jordan Bardella on the show What an era! for the release of his book, France Télévisions was only playing its role as a public media, financed by all French people, guarantor of pluralism. It is surprising to see that those who applauded the abrupt dismissal of a journalist (Editor’s note: Jean-François Achilli, companion of Chloé Morin) who was content to discuss with the same Bardella a possible book project (a project that the journalist in question himself ended up refusing) today find nothing wrong with the fact that we now welcome the leader of the RN everywhere with open arms.
It is obviously easier to appear intransigent in the face of a man on the ground, lynched by his own leadership, than with the perhaps future Prime Minister of France. It would be good for France Télé and Radio France to agree on their definition of pluralism ahead of the upcoming merger of public media. And what about the facts, when newspapers can make claims that can destroy careers or even lives, yet never feel the duty or need to correct them when they turn out to be false?
Mistake is the royal road to success, reminds us The Economist this week, citing Ulysses by James Joyce: “Mistakes are the portals of discovery”. Yes, but on condition of realizing that we have made mistakes and being able to learn from them for the future. Now, this is what is sublime about some of the new media prosecutors who seek to replace our laws with their idea of morality: they will never realize that they are wrong, and even if they were , they will not draw any conclusions from it. And one day we will wonder why the populists won.
*Chloé Morin is a political scientist and essayist. This year she published When he turns twenty: To those who turn out the Lights at Fayard.