Comment. Vigilance against distrust

"Seven minutes were enough to plunge the Paris police headquarters into one of the most painful dramas in its history and France in stupor and misunderstanding. "Stupor. Misunderstanding. Two words just pronounced Tuesday by Emmanuel Macron during the tribute to the four police officers murdered on October 3rd.

Misunderstanding because the tragedy took place "even where the state is tracking down terrorists and criminals ". Stupor because by happening precisely in a place where he was literally deemed "inconceivable", he demonstrates that no one, nowhere, is safe.

We knew that the collapse of the Islamic State did not mean the end of the terrorist threat. We knew that isolated elements, "lone wolves" potentially more difficult to detect, would take over. Many have taken action since the attacks of 2015. But the mode of operation of the prefecture changes everything. By attacking men and women he worked with on a daily basis and in walls where he had been working for fifteen years rather than anonymous cross-streets or public places, it was a "colleague" who killed on October 3rd. A relative.

This dimension dramatically revives the specter of the inner enemy. The most dreaded, the most frightening of all the figures of hatred. Because it is synonymous with betrayal. That she undermines all confidence. The threat is not new but it asserts itself. It is embodied in this new attack, different from the others and of which we have probably not yet fully taken the measure. It demands to adapt our answers. What did the President of the Republic in his speech on Tuesday, calling for building "a society of vigilance."

Vigilance and not defiance

François Hollande had also used the term "vigilance" in his tribute speech to the victims of the attack of 14 July 2016 in Nice, but to announce the reformation of a National Guard, which he wanted strong of 85 000 reservists. Convinced that "the institutions alone, the administration alone and all the services of the state can not overcome the Islamist hydra", it is all the French that Emmanuel Macron would like to mobilize today. "The vigilance, the attentive listening of the other, the reasonable awakening of the other, is simply knowing how to identify at school, at work, in places of worship, near home, the relaxation , the deviations, these small gestures that signal a departure from the laws and values ​​of the Republic, " he says.

Simply ? His proposal is very new in a country accustomed to the state, strong, ensures without weakness or sharing its functions called "regalian" (army, police, justice ...). For this fight, which is "in no way a fight against a religion but against its deviation and that which leads to terrorism", would indeed become the affair of all, it would be necessary that these famous "republican values" are always fully known and shared.

In a tired, fragmented, deeply changing country, is the compass still clear for all? No doubt it would be necessary to start by fixing the course. And leave the society of mistrust that has insidiously imposed on the French in recent years. Without this, it is not vigilance but generalized suspicion and stigmatization that are likely to assert themselves. Until "make everyone lose reason". Which is precisely what the inner enemy is looking for.

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