Dimitri Casali is a historian and essayist. Latest work published
These statues that we are tearing down!
(Plon, 2023).
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I understand very well this desire to keep sport far from any links with religion.
Historically, the Olympic charter is formal: in all previous Olympic Games, posters of figurative styles must never mention religious symbols.
But now, the Olympic Committee has chosen a poster with existing monuments.
He should have made other choices!
By persisting in this decision, given the scale of the representations, the artist should have left a very small cross at the top of the Invalides and a small tricolor flag at the top of the Eiffel Tower to recall the colors of France.
The whole thing would have passed like a letter in the post, without controversy.
Here, what is serious is that this was done knowingly...
How better to deny French identity than by erasing two of the most powerful symbols of its history and culture.
Do we know of a single other country in the world that would so deny the values constituting its identity?
History teaches us that all societies cultivate sacred values for which their people are prepared to fight passionately, to risk everything, even death, without making compromises.
If we make our symbols, our history, our culture disappear, how will French athletes achieve victory?
The Christian roots of France are indisputable.
The cross overlooking the dome of the Invalides for nearly 350 years was completed in 1685 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
The architect of Louis from the 17th century, one of the very first great monuments in Paris.
The main facade to the south is one of the most perfect successes there is.
Its beauty lies in the proportion between the facade itself and the dome, and also in the slenderness of the dome, the lantern of which further extends the proportions.
A sober ornamentation, but highlighted by gilding, rises to the top of the building, itself surmounted by a spire and a cross which stands 105 meters from the ground.
On the official poster for the Paris Olympic Games, this cross was consciously erased and the blue, white and red colors of the French flag never appear.
That the old standard of France has become the exclusive symbol of a suspicious and reactionary patriotism is a sinister reversal.
Originally in 1791, it is a symbol of the revolutionary left, hated by the monarchist right.
Dimitri Casali
Today, in a France in the midst of an identity crisis, this determination to refuse reality is a terrible admission of denial.
France has Christian roots, it is a historical fact.
We should be proud of it even if religious practice disappears.
Because what we are comes from deep roots in Christianity!
If we begin to eradicate all traces of Christianity from our country, we are not done.
Let us remember that nearly 55,000 religious buildings were built on our soil over fifteen centuries and their bell towers dominate all our French countryside.
Our vocation to the universal?
“Catholic” means, strictly speaking, “universal” and this vocation is at the very origin of universalism, another founding value of France.
Charles de Gaulle himself said in Rome on June 27, 1959:
“Our country would not be what it is if it were not first and foremost a Catholic country. ..”
.
Our history and our Christian culture have an educational and pedagogical scope which instills values such as freedom, patriotism, a taste for effort and a sense of unity.
They transmit the belief in social advancement, the sense of merit, the taste for equality and teamwork.
Its values truly create “national bond”.
And these are the values which were transmitted thanks to Pierre de Coubertin (whom we rarely talk about…) to the International Olympic Committee.
It is thanks to this visionary that French has been, along with English, the official language of the IOC since its founding in 1894. So what are the French ashamed of?
On the poster, the non-presence of our tricolor flag and the removal of the tricolor smoke behind the Patrouille de France planes are symptomatic of this shame of what we are, to display our own colors loud and clear, while in many countries the national flag proudly flies in front of every house!
However, that the old standard of France has become the exclusive symbol of a suspicious and reactionary patriotism is a sinister reversal.
Originally in 1791, it is a symbol of the revolutionary left, hated by the monarchist right.
To erase this past, as these new purifiers demand, would be to deny what is the very essence of the French soul: a republic promoting freedom, equality, universality, without distinction of race or origin. religion.
Dimitri Casali
We can wonder if the first violence from which France suffers is not that which, through ideology, it inflicts on itself by denying its origins, its history and its soul.
The philosopher Spinoza said:
“Repentance is a second fault”
.
This example of the Olympic Games poster perfectly expresses the gravity of the evil that is gnawing at us.
For these new “ayatollahs”, every opportunity is good to try to erase entire sections of our history.
These abusive demands from radical secularists complicit in cancel culture perfectly illustrate the clean slate ideology at the center of woke thought.
The traces of Christian tradition must be erased in order to build a new world
ex nihilo
, which would allegedly be better.
Finally, this poster which makes Paris look like a giant amusement park is in every way faithful to the objectives sought for ten years by Anne Hidalgo and her team.
France is the product of a double heritage, Christian and monarchist on the one hand, republican and secular on the other.
Let us be proud of these two legacies that have shaped France today!
We are not rewriting history!
Erasing our crosses, our flag, the statues of our great people and renaming our streets or our schools is to open Pandora's box of historical revisionism.
History, once written, cannot be erased.
History is history, we must accept it!
To erase this past, as these new purifiers demand, would be to deny what is the very essence of the French soul: a republic promoting freedom, equality, universality, without distinction of race or origin. religion.
As Pierre de Coubertin said:
“The important thing is not to win but to participate”
,
“the important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight, the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well"
, or even
"we only build strength on the past"
.