Charles Consigny is a lawyer and writer, former columnist for the program “On n'est pas couché”.
What did you think of the words of Geoffroy de Lagasnerie who declared on France Inter that we should not give the right of citizenship to “(un) fair opinions”?
I heard with amazement, last Wednesday, September 30, the sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie complaining on France Inter of a supposed failure of progressive projects, and expressing the wish for a media space where only "fair opinions" could appear. Express.
Obviously very passionately left, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie expresses an articulate and protesting thought where everything is not absurd.
When he criticizes the obsession with order, the violence perpetrated by the State to maintain it, and when he basically says, if I understand him correctly, that the State no longer serves, more or less, only to secure the dominants in their position by crushing the dominated when they have the audacity to protest against the fate which is done to them (the yellow vests know something about it), we can not say that he does not evoke there a reality, which persists, which settles, in the denial of the dominant class which acts as if all is well and that there was nothing, ever, to complain about.
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It is true that France is less and less a country where social mobility is possible, where one can extract oneself from one's birth class, and almost no longer a country where one has the right to criticize the established order.
Macronism is mocking and sure of itself, it immediately puts on the shelf "old-fashioned" (or "fachos", or "crazy") those who venture to express an objection against the policy conducted, and we can not say that the press is so daring to play its role of criticism, of questioning, of preventing people from going around in circles.
Have we really ever known a more servile, flattened, crony press, which, far from playing a counter-power role, seems above all keen to please the power in place?
We can share with Lagasnerie this feeling of a France as starched, closed, where the layers are more and more hermetic and the police are more and more armed and unpleasant - security has become a real French passion which justifies all the inconveniences imposed. daily to the citizens, the climax, the absolute delirium having of course been reached during the period of confinement, where there was nothing left but a shadow, a memory, to wonder if we had ever proclaimed freedoms.
Has there really ever been a more servile, flattened, crony press?
I find you very indulgent ...
There is all the same a form of charm in the indignation of Lagasnerie, which is expressed in a cynical and soft era where politics seem to serve only to fill up the lucky ones once in office and where intellectual life is sluggish.
We regret that this young philosopher retained from his soon-to-end youth a sin which should have passed over time and which is intolerance of ideas different from his own.
Openly calling for censorship for opinions considered (scientifically, apparently, according to the person concerned) as "unjust", seriously?
Isn't the term unfair opinion far too vague?
What is an unfair opinion?
For example, is criticizing French taxation, which for a very large number of citizens of this country often borders on spoliation, an unfair opinion, because it is an opinion that can be seen as criticizing redistribution? , social justice, equality, a selfish opinion?
Is saying that capitalism, which has lifted tens of millions of people on the planet out of poverty, which enables technological progress, scientific advances, the reward of merit, perhaps not to throw in the trash for the benefit of who knows what ecological collectivism, is it an unfair, right-wing, “intolerable” opinion?
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In other words, to defend the freedom of the citizen against the growing influence of state power, and basically ask that your neighbor leave you alone, aspire to peace, to a job that is justly rewarded, to a private life. fully preserved, that is to say, not to be left-wing, is this still allowed, and should this lead to being banned from all public expression?
Do we have the right not to utter leftist ideas?
What does this tell us about freedom of expression in France?
That it has become difficult today to make a dissonant voice heard.
How can we say that “progressive fights fail” when we only hear them?
While the press has erected Adèle Haenel to the rank of heroine and spends her time celebrating films and books and exhibitions and artists who revolve around feminism, racism, diversity, the misdeeds of capitalism, themes which seem to have become compulsory in order to have the right of citizenship, and on which it is absolutely forbidden, under pain of excommunication, media crucifixion, to express the slightest nuanced opinion?
Not being on the left, is that still allowed, and should that lead to being banned from all public expression?
Lagasnerie may agree that these subjects serve as screens for those who are more difficult to deal with: unemployment, poverty, downgrading, the collapse of this country which is becoming proletarian while its elites are looking elsewhere.
He may also agree to say that the debate has become impossible in our country, coming up against on the one hand Macronian sneer and on the other a worrying radicalism, or even quite simply pure stupidity as we have. could see it with the recent decisions of the ecological mayors against the Christmas trees or the Tour de France - what priorities!
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At a time of furious sanitarism, at a time when freedom is damaged without anyone being moved, it seems on the contrary urgent to challenge, discuss, protest.
Me, I want to debate with M. de Lagasnerie!
