Nicolas Chaudin is the author of L'Île des enfants perdus (Acte Sud, 2019).
A group requests that the Colbert statue be removed from the colonnade of the Palais Bourbon. Another is that of that of General Faidherbe, not far from the citadel of Lille. Elsewhere, people tag, hammer, without debate or reflection, at the risk for the Martiniquans, for example, of vandalizing the effigy of the same man who had freed them from their chains, Victor Schoelcher. This iconoclastic fever re-flowers regularly, like the chestnut tree. The same vigilantes demanded the same heads - bronze, marble - in August 2017, after the supremacist attack in Charlottesville.
Read also: "Destruction of statues: what history teaches us about this desire for purity"
Emmanuel Macron however affirmed it last Sunday, the Republic "will not unbolt statues" . He is right. But will he convince the debunkers without further explanation? Will he lead them, with a single formula, to understand that the memory of peoples is not like a broom closet? Don't mess it up
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