National identity, to remember the themes of class y los otros She was lost during the Christmas holidays, the intervention of Emmanuel Todd. We come away before it falls into a forgotten or not programmed.
"What Sarkozy is proposing is the hatred of others" THE WORLD 12/26/2009 2:42 p.m. • Updated 12/28/2009 11:57
Demographer and historian Emmanuel Todd, 58, is a research engineer at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED).
inspired by the theme of social divisions, taken by Jacques Chirac during his 1995 presidential campaign, he has long observed the disconnect between elite and popular classes. He delivers his first analysis of the debate over national identity. Without concealing his anger. "If you're in power and you do not get anywhere economically, the search for scapegoats at all costs becomes second nature," said he.
What do you think the debate on national identity ?
I limited myself away as much as possible, because this debate is, in my eyes, really perverse. The government, at the approach of an election, has, indeed requires, a theme of the nation against Islam. I'm disgusted as a citizen. As a historian, I observe how the theme of national identity was activated from above, as a project rather cynical.
What is your analysis of the stakes of this debate?
The National Front has begun to bite into the working world in 1986 at a time when elites refused to look the problems posed by the integration of immigrant populations.
We then felt an anxiety that came from the bottom of society, which allowed the National Front to exist until 2007. As I noted in my book, The Destiny of Immigrants (Threshold), in 1994 the map voted FN was statistically determined by the presence of immigrants of North African origin, which crystallized anxiety due to problems specific anthropological real, related to differences in system of morals or status of women. Since then, tensions have eased. All opinion polls show: the thematic Immigration, Islam is in free fall and have been largely behind the economic concerns.
The reality is that France is now succeeding in its integration process. The people of Muslim origin in France are generally the most secularized and increasingly integrated Europe, with a high rate of intermarriage. For me, the sign of appeasement that is precisely the collapse of the National Front.
It is generally believed that politics led by Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been losing votes in the National Front ... The
sarkozystes think they have recovered the electorate of the National Front because they have conducted this policy of provocation, because Nicolas Sarkozy has set fire to the suburbs, and the appeals of the foot to the FN have been paid. But it is a misinterpretation. Thrust right in 2007, following riots in suburbs in 2005, was not a confrontation over immigration, but more of a resentment against young people expressed an aging population. Let us not forget that Sarkozy is elected the old.
How would you describe this right?
I dare say a line of government. This is not the right, not just the right ... Extreme right, ultra-right? It's something else. I have no words. I think increasingly that Sarkozyism is a social pathology reports and analysis of Durkheim - in terms of anomie, disintegration of religious suicide - as much as a Marxist analysis - in terms of classes, with concepts capital-emergence of socialism or oligarchic.
The head of state assured that he tried not to be "deaf to the cries of the people." What do you think?
For me it is a pure lie. In its platform in the world, Sarkozy revels in the word "people", he speaks of the people, the people. But what he proposes to the French because he can not solve the country's economic problems is to hate each other.
The company is lost, but I do not think people have great doubts about their belonging to France. I'm pretty optimistic when it really goes to the bottom of things and over time, the egalitarian temper of the French that they did not care issues of color and ethnic origin or religious!
Why, in these circumstances, the government continues there to take over a theme from the extreme right?
We are in the register of habit. Sarkozy's behavior is extremely brutal and vocabulary vis-à-vis Some kids from the suburbs, he had used during the presidential campaign while he expressed his opposition to the entry of Turkey into the European Union in a coded language to activate the anti-Muslim sentiment. He thinks it could work again.
I even wonder if the strategy of confrontation with Muslim countries - like Afghanistan or Iran - is not so much a part of the game inside. Perhaps the relationship between the Hauts-de-Seine and Seine-Saint-Denis, is already for him to foreign policy? It begs the question ...
If you are in power and you do not get anywhere economically, the search for scapegoats at all costs becomes second nature. As a conditioned reflex. But when one is faced with a power that enables the tension between the categories of French citizens, one is still forced to think of looking for scapegoats as it was practiced before the war.
What are the points of comparison with this period?
One minister himself - is the return of the repressed, the unconscious - refer to Nazism. (Christian Estrosi, November 26, said: "If, on the eve of World War II, at a time when the economic crisis invaded all the German people had begun to question what truly creates German identity, the heir of the Enlightenment, the home of Goethe and romanticism, then perhaps we would have avoided the excruciating and painful wreck of civilization European. ") In addition to demonstrating an ignorance of history quite extraordinary. For the reality of German history of the inter-war period is that it was not a debate on national identity. The difference was that the Nazis were really anti-Semitic. They believed and they have shown. France is not at all in this scheme.
should not to confusion, but we are still forced to make comparisons with the extreme right before the war. There are all sorts of behaviors that are new but which refer to the past. The state is making this point in the service of capital, it is fascism. The anti-intellectualism, hatred of the education system, the number of teachers hunt is also in the history of fascism. Just as the ability to say everything and its opposite, this feature of Sarkozyism.
The comparison with fascism, is not it excessive?
This is not to say that the same thing. There are big differences. But is being entering a new political and social system, which corresponds to a drift to the right system, some features reminiscent of the rise to power of the extreme right in Europe.
Yet Nicolas Sarkozy, who has appointed to key positions in several representatives of the daughters of immigrants ... The ability of
Sarkozyism is working on two poles: on one hand the hatred, resentment, on the other staging acts in favor of the Muslim faith or the appointment of Rachida Dati and Rama Yade government. The reality is that in all cases the ethnic theme is used to distract les thématiques de classe.
Propos recueillis par
Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon Sylvia Zappi et
Article paru dans l'édition du 12/27/1909 et turbulences
