The authoritarian dream shared by Putin and Zemmour

The future is the result of a daily construction that is sustained by our ability to make and keep promises. And this is how, under the idea of ​​three promises, how the candidate Emmanuel Macron described that unprecedented form of political organization that is the European Union, and which was born more than 60 years ago. Macron's promises are those of Europe: the promise of democracy, the promise of the future and the promise of peace. And they also contain the key to European identity: without an idea of ​​progress, what is the use of fighting for a better world? Macron spoke of the dangerous return of “the tragic”, of how illiberal impulses provoke the reactionary and melancholic response of the authoritarian dream and its new founding fathers. One of them, Zemmour, replied that this Europe had no body, head or soul:“A Europe that uproots its own roots”, said Éric,

, "that erases its own history, that in no way identifies with the civilization from which it comes".

His powerful, dangerous words were reminiscent of Putin's attack on liberalism in his famous Sochi speech.

Vladimir perceives the failings of Western nations, and becomes a source of inspiration for illiberal reaction.

“Putin understands.

Why not us?” they ask explicitly in

.

Megan Gibson warned in

, showing how Putin makes sure his worldview has a strong foothold in liberal democracies, in our soulless, disembodied and headless societies. Putin knows that identity is constructed as a narrative, but who are his characters, the people who feed on them? Liberalism offers a delicate and fragile identity, open to the world and thrown into a nebula where we do not remember exactly where we come from or where we are going. Even the old foundational songs that tell of Ulysses's wanderings through the Mediterranean speak more about the sea and the journey, about our horizon of infinite possibilities, than about the arrival at the safe port of Ithaca. The citizen of the liberal promise, says Philipp Blom, is cosmopolitan: "He flourishes in any environment as long as his rights and freedoms are guaranteed."That is the liberal response to the autocracy of the soul, the abstractions that Putin knows "zombify us." Zemmour's words, on the other hand, are inspired by a discourse of strength, by old imperial dreams that will return our compass to what we are: safe communities that remember our birthplace, old religions that anchor us to the ground in the face of abstraction of values ​​and rights. And perhaps liberalism is cold, phlegmatic and lacks soul, but the cannons that are already thundering from the Ukrainian border may help us to show the true and crude face of the autocratic soul.in old imperial dreams that will return our compass to what we are: safe communities that remind us of our birthplace, old religions that anchor us to the ground against the abstraction of values ​​and rights. And maybe liberalism is cold, phlegmatic and lacks soul, but the cannons that are already thundering from the Ukrainian border may help us to show the true and crude face of the autocratic soul.in old imperial dreams that will return our compass to what we are: safe communities that remind us of our birthplace, old religions that anchor us to the ground against the abstraction of values ​​and rights. And perhaps liberalism is cold, phlegmatic and lacks soul, but the cannons that are already thundering from the Ukrainian border may help us to show the true and crude face of the autocratic soul.

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