by Alain Badiou, Le Monde (translated by Democracy & Class Struggle)
The extent of the vote for Marianne Le Pen is surprising and
overwhelming; we look for explanations–The political class comes out
with a handy sociology: the France of the lower classes, the misled
provincials, the workers, the under-educated, frightened by
globalization, the decline in purchasing power, the disintegration of
their districts, and foreign strangers present at their doors, wants to
retreat into nationalism and xenophobia.
Besides, these are already those French “stragglers” who were accused of
having voted “No” in the referendum on the draft European Constitution–
One opposes them to the educated, urban modern middle classes who are
the social salt of our well-tempered democracy.
Let’s say that this France “from below” {Joe Publique Francais?–GP} is
in these circumstances the donkey in the fable, the scabby and mangy
“populist” from which comes all the Le Pen evil. That said, this
political-media resentment against “populism” is strange. Could
democratic power, of which we are so proud, be allergic to one’s worries
about the people? Democratic power being the opinion of these very
people, and also more.
When asked “are policy makers concerned about what people like you
think?” the entirely negative response “not at all” increased from 15%
of the total in 1978 to 42% in 2010! As for the total positive responses
(“Very much” or “somewhat”), it declined from 35% to 17% (for this and
other interesting statistical indications, refer to the special issue of
La Pensée, “Le peuple, la crise, et la politique” by Guy Michelat and
Michel Simon). That the relationship between the people and the state is
not a trustworthy one is the least we can say.
Must we conclude that our state doesn’t have the people it deserves, and
that the somber Le Pen vote certifies this democratic insufficiency? To
strengthen democracy would require the government to elect another
people, as Brecht ironically proposed…
My thesis is rather that two other culprits should be highlighted: the
successive leaders of state power, both the left and right, and a
significant body of intellectuals.
Ultimately, it is not the poor of our provinces who have decided to limit
as much as possible the basic right of workers in this country, whatever
their nationality of origin, living here with their wives and children.
It is a socialist minister, and then all those of the right who have
rushed into the breach. This is not an undereducated rustic who
proclaimed in 1983 that the Renault strikers – in fact mostly Algerian
or Moroccan – were “immigrant workers (…) agitated by religious and
political groups which are based on criteria that have little to do with
the French social realities “.
It was a socialist prime minister, of course, to the delight of his
“enemies” of the right. Who of us had the good sense to say that Le Pen
actually speaks to real problems? An Alsatian militant of the Front
Nationale? No, it’s prime minister Francois Mitterrand. This is not the
stunted population of the rural interior that created the detention
centers that imprison, without any real right, those who are also
deprived of the opportunity to acquire legal papers of their presence
here.
This is not the frustrated immigrants in the outskirts of our cities
who made the order, heard across the world, to issue French entry visas
at the rate of a trickle, all while boosting eviction/deportation quotas
that must at all costs be carried out by the police. The succession of
restrictive laws that attack freedom and equality of millions of people
who live and work here under a pretext of otherness, this is not the
work of “populism” unleashed.
At the helm of these legal crimes, we find the state, plain and
simple–All successive governments, since Francois Mitterrand, and then
relentlessly thereafter. In this area, and these are just two examples,
the Socialist Lionel Jospin made known the moment he came to power there
was no question of abolishing the xenophobic laws of Charles Pasqua;
the socialist Francois Hollande indicated that the regularization of the
undocumented would not be decided under his presidency moreso than
under that of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Continuity in this direction is clear. It is this stubborn encouragement
of the state that shapes the ugly racialist opinion and reaction, and
not vice versa.
I also don’t believe it to be unknown that Nicolas Sarkozy and his gang
were constantly on the forefront of cultural racism, raising high the
banner of “superiority” of our dear Western civilization and voting in
an endless succession of discriminatory laws whose wickedness appalls
us.
But finally, we fail to find a left that rises up in opposition with the
strength demanded by such determined reactionaries. The left even often
stated that it “understood” this demand for “security”, and voted
without emotion for such flagrantly paranoid decisions as those aimed at
expelling from public space any particular woman because she covers her
hair or her body.
The left’s candidates announce everywhere they are leading a ruthless
fight, not so much against the corruption of the capitalists and the
dictatorially ascetic budgets as against undocumented workers and
recidivist juveniles, especially if they are blacks or Arabs. In this
area, both the right and left have trampled every principle. It was and
is, for those who are deprived of papers, not a State of law, but the
state of exception, the state of non-law. They are the ones who are
insecure, and not wealthy nationals. If we were, which God forbid, be
resigned to deport people, it would be better that we choose our rulers
rather than the very respectable Moroccan or Malian workers.
And behind all this, for a long time, for over twenty years, who do we
find? Who are the glorious inventors of the “Islamic menace”, which
according to them is in the process of disintegrating Western society
and our beautiful France? Who but the intellectuals engaged in their
infamous task of fiery editorials, twisted books, and rigged
“sociological surveys”? Is this a group of retired provincials and
workers in de-industrialized towns who patiently erected the whole
affair of the “clash of civilizations”, the defense of “republican
pact”, the threats to our beautiful “secularism”, the “feminism”
outraged by the daily lives of Arab women?
Isn’t it unfortunate that only the leaders of the far right (who only
pull the chestnuts from the fire) are interrogated– without ever
exposing more often the overwhelming responsibility of those on the
so-called “left”, and more often the teachers of “philosophy ” rather
than the supermarket cashiers– why not those who passionately argued
that the Arabs and blacks, especially young people, are corrupting our
educational system, perverting our suburbs, offending our freedoms and
insulting our women? Or that there were “too many” in our football
teams? Exactly as one use to speak of Jews and “{insert racial slur
here}‘s”– that because of them eternal France was threatened with death.
There have been, of course, the emergence of fascist splinter groups
labeling themselves as Islamic. But there are just as well fascist
movements labeling themselves in defense of the West and Christ the
King. This fact does not prevent any Islamophobic intellectual from
incessantly praising our superior “Western” identity and to arrive at
lodging our admirable “Christian roots” in the worship of secularism–And
Marine Le Pen (one of the most fierce practitioners of this religion)
has finally revealed the kind of political kindling that spreads its
flames.
In truth, it is the intellectuals who invented the anti-working-class
{antipopular} violence, particularly directed against the inner city
youth, which is the real secret of Islamophobia. And it is governments,
unable to build a civil society of peace and justice, who delivered the
foreigners, and the first Arab workers and their families, as fodder for
disoriented and fearful electorate. As always, the idea–no matter how
criminal–precedes power, which in turn shapes the opinion that it needs.
The intellectual–no matter how appalling–precedes the minister, who
constructs her followers.
Books–no matter how disposable–arrive before propaganda, which misleads
instead of instructs. And thirty years of patient effort in writing,
invective and clueless electoral competition find their dismal reward in
tired minds as in the voting herd.
Shame on these successive governments, who all competed on related
themes of security and the “immigrant problem”, so as to cloud the fact
that they primarily served the interests of the economic oligarchy!
Shame on the neo-racialist and crudely nationalist intellectuals, who
patiently covered over the void left inside the people by the temporary
eclipse of the communist hypothesis with a layer of nonsense about the
Islamic menace and the ruin of our “values” !
