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It is through the confusion of the meaning of words that the disorder of minds is established. It is through self-censorship that dictatorships begin. It is through the fear of enemies that the worst defeats are announced. It is through the denial of threats that the greatest catastrophes materialise.
This is where we are today in the West.
While in many other parts of the world dictatorships impose their iron laws on terrified peoples, in the West (where, after two millennia of battles, a democracy had gradually taken hold, albeit with many weaknesses, shortcomings, and accounts to settle with its past), we are witnessing the creeping progress of everything that could herald the advent of a new kind of totalitarianism:
Journalists can no longer testify to the truth without being threatened with death, which leads some of their colleagues to self-censorship.
Politicians can denounce secularism with impunity, under the guise of praising it, by saying that it crushes those it actually liberates.
Comedians can come on television and calmly explain that anti-Semitism is not a form of racism because it is only a problem between whites.
Academics can legally expel authors from their courses (and orchestras no longer play composers) because they are not the right gender or skin colour, and because the values of their time do not conform to those of today.
Magnificent and essential causes (the fight against racism, against violence against women, against the exclusion of the handicapped, against anti-Semitism, against the rejection of Islam, against the destruction of nature) can thus be deviated from when some of those who defend them turn them into an instrument of hatred of others and not of integration of all into a common society.
In many democracies, which have recently chosen more or less consciously to be multicultural societies, communities cohabit, each one tolerating more and more poorly the most extreme identities of the others; the worst is in the process of appearing: groups that have been oppressed for too long are no longer satisfied with demanding equality with their former masters, but demand all the powers. They will no longer simply want to be able to live their identity within the framework of a common law, but they will impose on all others to live under their laws. And, as during the French Revolution, which went from the Constituent Assembly to the Terror, the weak will no longer just ask to be part of the citizens, but will demand the heads of yesterday’s privileged. We know how this ended: the weak were always the ultimate victims.
Thus we see the proliferation, in a contradictory way, of the scandals mentioned above. And if this continues, we will see an unprecedentedly violent competition between antagonistic proselytisms. Life in society will no longer be possible. By feeding this infernal fire with scandals and controversies, the media and social networks are digging their own graves.
The countries that have already chosen this path (the United States, Canada, like Great Britain) are condemned, if they do not react, to the dictatorship of one of these minorities, or to the revenge of yesterday’s masters, or to civil war.
France, which has already come this far, and which has built a magic square through these tragedies (formed by equality, fraternity, liberty and secularism), should be able to avoid passing from the dictatorship of Catholicism to that of Islam, from the tyranny of men to that of women, from the Caesarism of the bourgeois to that of the forgotten, from the totalitarianism of industry to that of nature. It has everything to succeed in a harmonious and delicate compromise. Its failure would mean the end of all democratic hope. To avoid this, we must keep a firm grip on the helm and ensure that secularism, equality, freedom and fraternity are respected without wavering. We must not fear our enemies. Know how to recognise our mistakes. To open our arms to those (women, children, immigrants, exploited and invisible workers, abused nature) who only want to have a fair place in a society that was built by robbing them. We are still a long way from that.