OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
France Is Becoming More Like America. It’s
Terrible.
June 2,
2021
By Cole
Stangler
Mr.
Stangler is a journalist based in France who writes extensively about the
country’s politics and culture.
PARIS —
It’s become a familiar refrain in French political life. From President
Emmanuel Macron and his cabinet to the far-right opposition, from print
columnists to talking heads, “Americanization” is increasingly held responsible
for a whole set of social ills ailing the nation.
For some of
these critics, it’s the reason so many young people — adopting the view of
Black Lives Matter activists — believe police violence is a problem. For
others, it explains why the quality of academic research is in decline, as
fanciful ideas concocted on American college campuses like intersectionality
and post-colonialism supposedly flourish. To others still, it’s why people
can’t speak their mind anymore, suffocated by the threats of “cancel culture.”
Perhaps the
most common gripe is that ideas and practices imported from the United States
are making the French obsessed with ethnic, religious and sexual difference at
the expense of their shared identity as citizens of the universal Republic.
They’re not
wrong: French politics are, in fact, becoming Americanized. But the problem is
not left-wing theories or censorious scolds. It is instead the rise of an
insular, nationalistic, right-wing discourse driven by a belligerent style of
press coverage. Distinctively French in content, the form this discourse takes
— grievance-wallowing hosts conjuring embittered conversations about national
decline, immigration and religion — follows America’s lead. As in the United
States, the result is a degraded political landscape that empowers the far
right, dragging mainstream politicians into its orbit.
Instead of
devoting time to the day’s top news stories, hosts tend to prefer dissecting
micro-scandals that are more or less indecipherable to audiences outside the
country, with chyrons capturing guests’ provocations seconds after they’re
uttered. As on Fox News, the themes covered often reflect conservative
anxieties about a changing nation: the size of the foreign-born population, the
supposed excesses of political correctness, the place of Islam and a wounded
sense of national pride.
And as with
the Fox network, CNews often sets the country’s agenda. Many of the news items
obsessively covered by the channel have evolved into full-blown national
debates. Among them are the bullying of a teenager on social media after she
called Islam a “religion of hate” on Instagram; a push from the Green Party
mayor of Lyon to serve meat-free meals at school cafeterias; support from the
country’s oldest student union for meetings reserved for women and nonwhite
people; and the acceptance by the president’s party, En Marche, of a candidate
who wears the Islamic veil onto its list for the regional elections later this
month. (The party eventually withdrew the nomination under pressure.)
Such
concerns, however animating for those perennially anxious about France’s
secular identity, would not ordinarily dominate a country’s attention. But
they’ve been elevated into national issues because leading politicians have
chosen to play along — and not just those from the right-wing opposition.
High-ranking members of En Marche have joined these skirmishes and, in some
cases, actively opened new fronts in the culture wars themselves.
Earlier
this year, Frédérique Vidal, the minister of higher education, complained of
the supposed scourge of “Islamo-leftism,” a term once limited to the extreme
right that refers to an imaginary political alliance between conservative
Muslims and anticapitalists. Ms. Vidal even called for an investigation into
the problem to examine how certain professors allegedly blur the lines between
research and activism — a move rightfully condemned by the state’s top research
institute as an attack on academic freedom.
Not to be
outdone by his colleague, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the education minister,
recently oversaw a formal ban in schools of one aspect of what’s known as
“inclusive writing” — the use of both feminine and masculine word endings,
separated by a middle dot, when they refer to groups of people. Though the move
is unlikely to have much effect, because the practice wasn’t widely taught, it
was nevertheless welcomed in some circles as a defense of the French language
against creeping political correctness.
Although
they claim to be protecting academic freedom, Ms. Vidal and Mr. Blanquer would
be right at home in today’s Republican Party, where blasting teachers for
peddling radical theories, corrupting the youth and damaging the national
interest is standard fare.
What’s in
it for Mr. Macron? As many have noted, the president’s advisers believe these
battles bring political benefits. Most important, they’re meant to woo
right-wing voters ahead of a potential rematch against Marine Le Pen, head of
the far-right National Rally, in next year’s presidential election. But they’re
also designed to inflict damage on the left, whose badly divided parties,
struggling to talk about the problems of racial and religious discrimination
within France’s secular and colorblind legal framework, regularly disagree on
these very same topics.
Whether or
not the strategy pays off in 2022, the culture wars are fueling support for the
far right today. Polls ahead of this month’s regional elections, where 17
regional presidencies are up for grabs, show the National Rally with a solid
shot of capturing majority control of a region for the first time ever — while
Ms. Le Pen is within striking distance of Mr. Macron in the presidential
election. That makes sense when the news cycle revolves around issues like the
Islamic veil, the left’s supposed sense of moral superiority and a vastly
exaggerated uptick in violence against police officers. When National Rally leaders
claim their party’s longstanding grievances and preoccupations are being
legitimized by the government, it’s hard to disagree.
It’s also
striking to see the depths to which political discourse has sunk in a country
that prides itself on its capacity for highbrow public debate and the spotlight
it reserves for intellectuals. In the middle of a pandemic and after the
country’s worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, the French news
cycle isn’t led by discussion over truly universal issues like wealth
inequality, the health system or climate change. Instead it’s focused on
navel-gazing debates about identity, fueled by television personalities.
Cole
Stangler (@ColeStangler) is a journalist based in Paris who writes about labor,
politics and culture.
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Will American Ideas Tear France Apart? Some of
Its Leaders Think So
Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social
theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a
threat to French identity and the French republic.
Norimitsu
Onishi
By
Norimitsu Onishi
Published
Feb. 9, 2021
Updated
April 7, 2021
PARIS — The
threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national
unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.
The threat?
“Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’
said President Emmanuel Macron.
French
politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that
progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism —
are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual
matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.
Emboldened
by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what
they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses
and its attendant cancel culture.
Pitted
against them is a younger, more diverse guard that considers these theories as
tools to understanding the willful blind spots of an increasingly diverse nation
that still recoils at the mention of race, has yet to come to terms with its
colonial past and often waves away the concerns of minorities as identity
politics.
Disputes
that would have otherwise attracted little attention are now blown up in the
news and social media. The new director of the Paris Opera, who said on Monday
he wants to diversify its staff and ban blackface, has been attacked by the
far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, but also in Le Monde because, though German,
he had worked in Toronto and had “soaked up American culture for 10 years.”
The
publication this month of a book critical of racial studies by two veteran
social scientists, Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel, fueled criticism from
younger scholars — and has received extensive news coverage. Mr. Noiriel has
said that race had become a “bulldozer’’ crushing other subjects, adding, in an
email, that its academic research in France was questionable because race is
not recognized by the government and merely “subjective data.’’
The fierce
French debate over a handful of academic disciplines on U.S. campuses may
surprise those who have witnessed the gradual decline of American influence in
many corners of the world. In some ways, it is a proxy fight over some of the
most combustible issues in French society, including national identity and the
sharing of power. In a nation where intellectuals still hold sway, the stakes
are high.
With its
echoes of the American culture wars, the battle began inside French
universities but is being played out increasingly in the media. Politicians
have been weighing in more and more, especially following a turbulent year
during which a series of events called into question tenets of French society.
Mass
protests in France against police violence, inspired by the killing of George
Floyd, challenged the official dismissal of race and systemic racism. A #MeToo
generation of feminists confronted both male power and older feminists. A
widespread crackdown following a series of Islamist attacks raised questions
about France’s model of secularism and the integration of immigrants from its
former colonies.
Some saw
the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some
center-right lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into
“ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on
Twitter.
Mr. Macron
— who had shown little interest in these matters in the past but has been
courting the right ahead of elections next year — jumped in last June, when he
blamed universities for encouraging the “ethnicization of the social question’’
— amounting to “breaking the republic in two.’’
“I was pleasantly
astonished,’’ said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who last month helped create
an organization against “decolonialism and identity politics.’’ Made up of
established figures, many retired, the group has issued warnings about
American-inspired social theories in major publications like Le Point and Le
Figaro.
For Ms.
Heinich, last year’s developments came on top of activism that brought foreign
disputes over cultural appropriation and blackface to French universities. At
the Sorbonne, activists prevented the staging of a play by Aeschylus to protest
the wearing of masks and dark makeup by white actors; elsewhere, some
well-known speakers were disinvited following student pressure.
“It was a
series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all
fell under what is called cancel culture,’’ Ms. Heinich said.
To others,
the lashing out at perceived American influence revealed something else: a
French establishment incapable of confronting a world in flux, especially at a
time when the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has deepened
the sense of ineluctable decline of a once-great power.
“It’s the
sign of a small, frightened republic, declining, provincializing, but which in
the past and to this day believes in its universal mission and which thus seeks
those responsible for its decline,’’ said François Cusset, an expert on
American civilization at Paris Nanterre University.
France has
long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental
rights and core values like equality and liberty, rejecting diversity and
multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society
at war with itself.
But far
from being American, many of the leading thinkers behind theories on gender,
race, post-colonialism and queer theory came from France — as well as the rest
of Europe, South America, Africa and India, said Anne Garréta, a French writer
who teaches literature at universities in France and at Duke.
Join
Michael Barbaro and “The Daily” team as they celebrate the students and
teachers finishing a year like no other with a special live event. Catch up with
students from Odessa High School, which was the subject of a Times audio
documentary series. We will even get loud with a performance by the drum line
of Odessa’s award-winning marching band, and a special celebrity commencement
speech.
“It’s an
entire global world of ideas that circulates,’’ she said. “It just happens that
campuses that are the most cosmopolitan and most globalized at this point in
history are the American ones.’’
The French
state does not compile racial statistics, which is illegal, describing it as
part of its commitment to universalism and treating all citizens equally under
the law. To many scholars on race, however, the reluctance is part of a long
history of denying racism in France and the country’s slave-trading and
colonial past.
“What’s
more French than the racial question in a country that was built around those
questions?’’ said Mame-Fatou Niang, who divides her time between France and the
United States, where she teaches French studies at Carnegie Mellon University.
Ms. Niang
has led a campaign to remove a fresco at France’s National Assembly, which
shows two Black figures with fat red lips and bulging eyes. Her public views on
race have made her a frequent target on social media, including of one of the
lawmakers who pressed for an investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at
universities.
Pap Ndiaye,
a historian who led efforts to establish Black studies in France, said it was
no coincidence that the current wave of anti-American rhetoric began growing
just as the first protests against racism and police violence took place last
June.
“There was
the idea that we’re talking too much about racial questions in France,’’ he
said. “That’s enough.’’
Three
Islamist attacks last fall served as a reminder that terrorism remains a threat
in France. They also focused attention on another hot-button field of research:
Islamophobia, which examines how hostility toward Islam in France, rooted in
its colonial experience in the Muslim world, continues to shape the lives of
French Muslims.
Abdellali
Hajjat, an expert on Islamophobia, said that it became increasingly difficult
to focus on his subject after 2015, when devastating terror attacks hit Paris.
Government funding for research dried up. Researchers on the subject were
accused of being apologists for Islamists and even terrorists.
Finding the
atmosphere oppressive, Mr. Hajjat left two years ago to teach at the Free
University of Brussels, in Belgium, where he said he found greater academic
freedom.
“On the
question of Islamophobia, it’s only in France where there is such violent talk
in rejecting the term,’’ he said.
Mr.
Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused universities, under
American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by providing the
intellectual justification behind their acts.
A group of
100 prominent scholars wrote an open letter supporting the minister and
decrying theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.
A
signatory, Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam, said that American influence had
led to “a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of
political Islam in the name of a leftist ideology that considers it the
religion of the underprivileged.’’
Along with
Islamophobia, it was through the “totally artificial importation’’ in France of
the “American-style Black question” that some were trying to draw a false
picture of a France guilty of “systemic racism’’ and “white privilege,’’ said
Pierre-André Taguieff, a historian and a leading critic of the American
influence.
Mr. Taguieff
said in an email that researchers of race, Islamophobia and post-colonialism
were motivated by a “hatred of the West, as a white civilization.’’
“The common
agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three
words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize,’’ Mr. Taguieff said. “Straight
white male — that’s the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate.”
Behind the
attacks on American universities — led by aging white male intellectuals — lie
the tensions in a society where power appears to be up for grabs, said Éric
Fassin, a sociologist who was one of the first scholars to focus on race and
racism in France, about 15 years ago.
Back then,
scholars on race tended to be white men like himself, he said. He said he has
often been called a traitor and faced threats, most recently from a right-wing
extremist who was given a four-month suspended prison sentence for threatening
to decapitate him.
But the
emergence of young intellectuals — some Black or Muslim — has fueled the
assault on what Mr. Fassin calls the “American boogeyman.’’
“That’s
what has turned things upside down,’’ he said. “They’re not just the objects we
speak of, but they’re also the subjects who are talking.’’
Norimitsu
Onishi is a foreign correspondent on the International Desk, covering France
out of the Paris bureau. He previously served as bureau chief for The Times in
Johannesburg, Jakarta, Tokyo and Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
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