Gilles-William Goldnadel is a lawyer and essayist. Every week, he decrypts the news for FigaroVox.
I come to show once again in this column what I continue to support tirelessly: in France, the first political danger that threatens democracy, public and individual freedoms, prosperity, territorial sovereignty, impartial justice, the fight against Islamism and anti-Semitism, lives on the far left. This conviction, firmly reiterated, comes a necessary and even indispensable precaution in order to avoid seeing my thought caricatured. Of course, there is still an extreme right - outside the current parliamentary representation - which is characterised neither by its love of democracy nor by its exacerbated philo-Semitism, but this one, discredited, has a residual character since the Liberation. Nothing to do, therefore, either near or far, with the battalions of the extreme left in the street in quantitative terms, or with its media, judicial and academic power in qualitative terms.
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It turns out that the current period is characterized by a particularly powerful and uninhibited contestation of the extreme left still in majesty. It is as much the battle of ideas as the lamentation of realities, even more powerful than leftist ideology, that explain this severe and recent observation. The security and identity consequences of mass immigration and the anti-Semitic Islamism it supports, the urban abuses of antifa of the eco-violent in Saintes Soline; the intolerant follies of "wokism"; The extravagant behaviour of disrespectful parliamentarians explains why an increasingly contested far left can begin to feel around its neck the embrace of a cordon sanitaire that only yesterday it was skilled at wielding.
And it is precisely in the same period, by cosmic chance, that one would try to make us believe that the France would be threatened imminently by a perilous extreme right. I do not know, I admit, to make the exact distinction between the delicious leftist fantasy of the return of fascism and the deliberate as well as cynical diversion to be forgotten. Although the two are in no way incompatible. One thing is certain, in the current period of moral and intellectual decline of the far left, we will have witnessed judicial and media attempts to make us believe that there is a dangerous ultra-right determined and capable of bringing down the Republic.
Thus, the trial of the "Barjols" that took place last February showed that, contrary to what had been led to believe, most of them were only people as vague as they were ridiculous.
Gilles William Goldnadel
Thus, the trial of the "Barjols" which took place last February showed that, contrary to what had been led to believe, most of them were only people who were as vague as they were ridiculous. Nine out of thirteen were totally acquitted. Broken Arms is the trivial expression that I cannot refrain from consecrating. In a different but related field, which I am well placed to know as a lawyer, the retired generals who had published an op-ed to warn of the real dangers that threatened the France and presented as "factious" were finally sanctioned by a platonic call to order for simple breach of the obligation of reserve. This sentence is light years away from the putsch they had been accused of having incited by a certain progressive press.
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Closer to home, I devoted a column to this whimsical and revealing issue of Libération, which claimed that anti-Maghreb pogroms led by the ultra-right had taken place in several cities in France, the day after the France-Morocco football match. But in the last period, the fantastic diversion will have been in full swing in an accelerated way. We see this in particular with the case of the resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brévin les Pins. The unfortunate local mayor was forced to hang up his tricolor scarf after unknown persons set fire to his home. The track of the ultra-right is, although uncertain, legitimately privileged in view of the threats received and the demonstrations that have followed one another following the installation of a migrant center next to the municipal school.
If at every demonstration of the extreme left, the high predictability of finding violent Antifa there gave rise to a prior ban, there would be no more far-left demonstrations in France for a long time.
Gilles William Goldnadel
But here again the focus on this reprehensible fact will have illustrated the instrumentalization, the amalgam and the diversion. Instrumentalization is a concept and term dear to the far left. Thus, the murder of little Lola by a foreigner under OQTF and the obvious observation that the life of the little girl would have been spared if the law had been respected, had been considered an indecent exploitation of a news item by a large part of the political and media left. While a fire fortunately without victims by strangers can be exploited politically ad nauseam without being accused of instrumentalization. On the other hand, there is an amalgam between criminal arsonists and peaceful demonstrators or political parties legally protesting against the introduction of massive and forced immigration in the countryside. Finally, a diversion to make us forget all those elected officials who recently as much as with impunity have seen their homes and electoral offices ransacked or cut off from their electricity by political or trade union activists who did not come from the extreme right.
The same targeted indignation will not have been seen. The impressive media know-how of the extreme left has worked wonders to the point of giving the government bad advice. A recent and small demonstration of the ultra-right featuring a handful of fascistic helmeted militants, neither sympathetic nor friendly, has given rise to an anti-fascist psychodrama of which the extreme left keeps the mystery. The prefect, curiously impressed, thought it necessary in the wake to prohibit the traditional demonstration of the Action française in tribute to the Maid of Orleans. Quite logically, the administrative court saw this as an infringement of the freedom to demonstrate. If at every demonstration of the extreme left, the high predictability of finding violent Antifa there gave rise to a prior ban, there would be no more far-left demonstrations in France for a long time.
Rather than answer on the merits, the Minister of National Education preferred to borrow the insulting diversion. Unlike the President of the Republic, he does not speak to the "extreme right".
Gilles William Goldnadel
Thus, and finally, on May 7, the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye was interviewed on France 3. This one is in the hot seat. His reform proposal gave birth to a mouse. His attempts to apply the diverse revenues of the public sector to the private sector, which led to an educational disaster, have placed him on the defensive. Not to mention a style that is not characterized by excessive charisma or his communitarian ideas that contrast cruelly with the republican universalism of his predecessor. As part of this interview, the journalist shows him the cover of Valeurs actuelles which presents him as part of the issue dedicated to him as the "Minister of Deconstruction". This is followed by documented, argued articles, without any amenity, but without aggressive hatred.
And rather than answer on the merits, the minister preferred to borrow the insulting diversion. Unlike the President of the Republic, he does not speak to the "extreme right". Much more serious and judicially reprehensible, the minister associates the right-wing weekly with the infamous "Gringoire" who ended his sad career under Vichy and made his bed in collaboration. Pap Ndiaye does not know that the newspaper that became Valeurs actuelles had, as François d'Orcival recalled in his editorial this week, was founded by Paul Lévy before the war, was interrupted under the Occupation and reappeared in 1947. It is also to ignore that it was the very philo-Semite Raymond Bourgine who continued the company with the same values by giving it its current name.
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The minister would obviously not have reserved the same fate for L'Humanité which, in June 1940, published an issue with the approval of the "Kommandantur", welcoming the occupying troops. These PCF militants, supporting the German-Soviet pact between Stalin and Hitler, mocked "Jew Moch" and "Jew Mandel" in the same edition. When I talk about a big diversion...