“When we decide to lose a man, we charge him with all the crimes.” This line that comes from the mouth of the Danton – the impure Danton – powerfully portrayed by Gérard Depardieu in the eponymous film by Andrzej Wajda resonates in a striking way these days. “The Feminist Terror” – the claimed title of a recent feminist opus – has for some time now, under the hashtags “MeToo” and “Balancetonporc”, promulgated and undertaken to implement its Law of Suspects. “Victims, we believe you!” : under this slogan which ruins the elementary principles of law on which, for the interest of all, a civilized society must be intractable – firstly the presumption of innocence, replaced by militant adherence to the “liberated speech”, that is to say accusatory – we see the unsettled delights of public stonings unleashed. This with the daily more zealous support of the media, public service written and audiovisual press in particular functioning as a parajudicial space.
For the first time since the #MeToo movement launched its global offensive, a leading political leader – the President of the Republic, publicly disavowing his Minister of Culture (or decorum?) – firmly said: stop. Knowing that for this he would be vilified. He did this on the spectacular case of a man who, from a certain broadcast of a public execution, relayed a few days later by another of a “debate” in the style of a revolutionary tribunal, everything conspired to make him indefensible. . Think about it! He had been caught making “obscene” remarks, and he was “sexualizing”, we were hypocritically offended, childish purity… Irrefutable proof, such was the message, of the truth of the accusations against him.
Emmanuel Macron spoke as president of all French people, whom the law must all, without exception, protect.
He did so as a citizen who could not admit, towards anyone, the savagery of public humiliations inflicted by packs having declared this or that “monster” guilty: the pillory, an infamous punishment which once followed – and not preceded – a conviction is not an acceptable option. The ugly enjoyment of the executioners, all the more unbridled when the target is a “powerful person”, dishonors them – dishonors us all; it cannot therefore have the right to citizenship.
He finally did it, a bit provocatively, as a man sensitive to words: spitting on Depardieu for words which it seems “put France to shame”? Emmanuel Macron responded by evoking the words of our literature, highly praised by the actor.
Muddy confusion
From this courageous intervention, and beneficial for all – when a society endorses such modalities of “justice”, finds nothing to complain about the obscenity of lynchings, who can say that they are safe? The stoners of today will, let us know, the stoners of tomorrow, history has taught us – a muddy confusion has taken hold of people’s minds.
Even more so after the absurd controversy which followed the publication of a support column signed by artists, initiated by a young man who was in turn immediately pilloried, but this time for his political “bad company”, as well as in because of… his guilty (fascist, necessarily fascist) love of bullfighting – lynching, all things considered, is less abominable…
Brandished loudly by several media outlets under the delicate noses of the suddenly panicked signatories, the scarecrow of the boy’s supposed “zemmourism” caused many of them to flee at full speed, shameful self-criticism to boot. Frightened stampede, pathetic dupe of a mephitic smokescreen.
Naughty show
Let’s recap the different elements of the sequence.
In order: Depardieu, indicted for rape, covered in a thick mud of serial accusations (copied and pasted from each other, what’s the point of tiring, the press relays within the hour the rubbish dumped in the vast sewer of social networks), pronounced “horrors”. He is therefore a “predator”.
Then, questioned on the subject, the President of the Republic responds without hesitation, perhaps remembering the column of the 114 sopranos of the bar published the day after the 2020 César ceremony and the Polanski “scandal”. No to defend an artistic exceptionality which has no reason to exist: an artist is a litigant like any other. But to challenge any “feminist” exceptionalism in matters of justice.
A few days later, a column was published signed by fifty-six renowned artists – certainly not without faults, but which speaks out against the media lynching of Gérard Depardieu orchestrated with the satisfied spinelessness of souls who believe themselves to be pure but are only cruel . Immediately, reprisals of all kinds, some signatories are in turn the target of sexual accusations – including, and here it turns into a farce, the actress Victoria Abril (who without delay retaliated judicially, causing the thoughtless informer to retreat ). But also the “infrequent” author of the text, abandoned in the open countryside to the lynching promised to him.
An ugly spectacle certainly, infinitely more obscene than the vulgarities spouted by the actor, all in all very innocent, and devoid of any hatred of women (the MeToo-feminists were much less moved by the cascades of hateful sexual filth which poured out on Mila the blasphemer: “Die, you whore […] I’m going to come and slit your throat with my own hands, you’re going to eat your insides and those of your mother, you dirty female dog […]. The rest to match, and worse).
Gérard Depardieu is therefore designated for public retribution.
The president does not intend to tolerate this. Let us understand that, beyond the great actor, it is for any of us that he thus acts as a shield against the disastrous return of vigilante ferocities.
Lynch each other
Everyone then shouts at everyone, now also against the president. All of them, shamelessly, François Hollande, Ségolène Royal (who had, it is true, found virtues in the “speed” of Chinese justice), or Aurélie Filippetti.
The latter in The world with forceful spin mixes “the far-right networks to the aid of Depardieu”, the latter’s taste for a few autocrats (Ségolène Royal or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who ran for supreme responsibilities, are not doing much better on this chapter), and the praise of the wonderful #MeToo-feminist Revolution which, quite naturally, causes “fear”. The former socialist Minister of Culture, intending to demonstrate that to question the unquestionable dogmas would be far-right – to disqualify by means of this pitiful joker, so as not to debate –, thus played the card of villainous links between the “Bolloré galaxy”, and a president recently (and on another subject) stigmatized as being “at the same time right-wing and far-right”, in the irresponsible words not of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but of… .Bernard Cazeneuve.
Aurélie Fillipetti in January 2017, a few months before #MeToo, supported Roman Polanski during the controversy over the presidency of the César ceremony; in March 2020, she fervently praised Adèle Haenel’s exit at the 2020 César against the author of I accuse, and the belchings of Virginie Despentes. Where is the honor?
“Furious madness” (poorly) disguised as a virtue: all of the recent events surrounding the Depardieu affair, crudely diverted into a moral-political affair, have this time crudely exposed societal regression and the unfathomable stupidity coupled with cowardice generated by the #MeToo revolution. Lynch each other: is this a program of progress and emancipation?
*Sabine Prokhoris is a philosopher and psychoanalyst. She notably published The #MeToo mirage. Reflections from the French case (Le Cherche midi).
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