Woke American Ideas are a Threat, French leaders say

[lfromnj]

SLAY MACRON
My KING .
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html

The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

I am so justified in supporting Macron over LePen in 2017.

[Former President tack50]

I agree with Macron there. France is not the US and it should never be; nor should it ever import its ideas on race and what not that are fundamentally incompatible with French societal expectations.

Something like laicite would be unthinkable in the US but it is what France stands for for example

[Omega21]

Very well said.

Americans should be free to enjoy their critical race theories and dumbed-down identity politics, but it's not something we can afford to import.

[Estrella]

I'm not saying that "woke American ideas" would be a solution, but France somehow manages to be even worse at handling its societal divisions than America. The US has the American dream - something which is and has always been completely disconnected from reality, but at least it gives people hope. What does France have? Laïcité for thee but not for me, an extremely centralist state and an elitist political and cultural class that refuses to acknowledge that discrimination exists. No wonder that France has a massive radicalization problem. If you create a class of people that are consistently discriminated against and yelled at every day from all sides about how they don't belong there and how it's impossible for them to ever integrate, well of course they're gonna get angry and some of them will turn into extremists.

It's an excellent example of magical thinking, really. It's as if waving a wand and punishing people for speaking Occitan (as it was in the past) or wearing a hijab (as it is now) will suddenly turn a deeply fractured country into France une et indivisible.

Honestly, after seeing a magazine publish an article where some old white guy fantasized about selling a black politician into slavery, I've been convinced that American SJWism can't be worse than whatever is happening in France now.

[Estrella]

As for "France shouldn't import identity politics":

What is the draconian yet inconsistent enforcement of laïcité, if not identity politics? Was "défense de cracher et de parler breton" not identity politics because it was done by the majority? Is appealing to people on the basis of their identity bad only when you're appealing to a minority?

Similarly, there's a certain brand of self-proclaimed traditional leftists who bemoan the "identity politics of today's left" and in the same breath suggest appealing to white working class people that allegedly feel like they're losing their identity. What politics is that?

[Samof94]

A famous actor who is gay got all the other women to walk out of an awards show in February 2020 because Roman Polanski got an award.

[Bootes Void]

keep the toxic identity politics to the states and their wokeism and the critical race theory to the states and leave the rest of the world alone. This stuff breaks countries apart

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm not saying that "woke American ideas" would be a solution, but France somehow manages to be even worse at handling its societal divisions than America. The US has the American dream - something which is and has always been completely disconnected from reality, but at least it gives people hope. What does France have? Laïcité for thee but not for me, an extremely centralist state and an elitist political and cultural class that refuses to acknowledge that discrimination exists. No wonder that France has a massive radicalization problem. If you create a class of people that are consistently discriminated against and yelled at every day from all sides about how they don't belong there and how it's impossible for them to ever integrate, well of course they're gonna get angry and some of them will turn into extremists.

It's an excellent example of magical thinking, really. It's as if waving a wand and punishing people for speaking Occitan (as it was in the past) or wearing a hijab (as it is now) will suddenly turn a deeply fractured country into France une et indivisible.

Honestly, after seeing a magazine publish an article where some old white guy fantasized about selling a black politician into slavery, I've been convinced that American SJWism can't be worse than whatever is happening in France now.

It's instructive to note that British Muslims largely hail from places that are far more "conservative" than the ancestral homes of French Muslims (Pakistan as opposed to the Maghreb), and yet Muslims are thoroughly integrated into British society while they remain perpetually on the margins of French society. French might argue that this is because these outsiders are unworthy of their superior culture or that they have some kind of special respect for human dignity, but all of the rest of us can see this for what it is. Credulous foreigners will accept anything if you dress it up as anti-Americanism, as you can see in the moronic statement immediately above this one, as if France is not already "broken apart".

A comment posted on the LRB blog a few months ago is indicative of the French form of racism:

Also as it happens, after moving from the UK to the US and living there for many years (where I taught feminist theory among other things), I moved to France and am now a French citizen. I can certainly testify to the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of many French academics (whatever their politics), and also to the conviction that 'becoming French' requires rejecting your former culture - that French culture is a precious gift bestowed on the deserving but benighted immigrant. Anecdotally, I recall having an argument some time ago with one of the people who signed the Manifesto of 100, who was convinced that living in France meant recognizing that French culture and values were superior and superseded everything else. (This was in the context of a government proposal to offer Arabic classes in the schools, which he vehemently opposed.) But when I said that I didn't see why I should reject Shakespeare and Purcell, or for that matter the Beatles and Martin Amis, he was quite taken aback - he knew perfectly well that he was arguing with a white 'Anglo-Saxon', but his entire position presupposed that the newly French person was Arab, African, or from some other place with no 'culture' to speak of. A purely colonial attitude, as Raul Zweiregen points out. He literally had no answer to my objection, since he knew perfectly well that he couldn't say 'Oh, but I didn't mean you' without exposing himself as a hypocrite.

https://blog.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/november/the-fish-rots-from-the-head

It is not enough that France has already colonized these places; the minds of their people must remain colonized forever.

[Coldstream]

I'm not saying that "woke American ideas" would be a solution, but France somehow manages to be even worse at handling its societal divisions than America. The US has the American dream - something which is and has always been completely disconnected from reality, but at least it gives people hope. What does France have? Laïcité for thee but not for me, an extremely centralist state and an elitist political and cultural class that refuses to acknowledge that discrimination exists. No wonder that France has a massive radicalization problem. If you create a class of people that are consistently discriminated against and yelled at every day from all sides about how they don't belong there and how it's impossible for them to ever integrate, well of course they're gonna get angry and some of them will turn into extremists.

It's an excellent example of magical thinking, really. It's as if waving a wand and punishing people for speaking Occitan (as it was in the past) or wearing a hijab (as it is now) will suddenly turn a deeply fractured country into France une et indivisible.

Honestly, after seeing a magazine publish an article where some old white guy fantasized about selling a black politician into slavery, I've been convinced that American SJWism can't be worse than whatever is happening in France now.

It's instructive to note that British Muslims largely hail from places that are far more "conservative" than the ancestral homes of French Muslims (Pakistan as opposed to the Maghreb), and yet Muslims are thoroughly integrated into British society while they remain perpetually on the margins of French society. French might argue that this is because these outsiders are unworthy of their superior culture or that they have some kind of special respect for human dignity, but all of the rest of us can see this for what it is. Credulous foreigners will accept anything if you dress it up as anti-Americanism, as you can see in the moronic statement immediately above this one, as if France is not already "broken apart".

A comment posted on the LRB blog a few months ago is indicative of the French form of racism:

Also as it happens, after moving from the UK to the US and living there for many years (where I taught feminist theory among other things), I moved to France and am now a French citizen. I can certainly testify to the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of many French academics (whatever their politics), and also to the conviction that 'becoming French' requires rejecting your former culture - that French culture is a precious gift bestowed on the deserving but benighted immigrant. Anecdotally, I recall having an argument some time ago with one of the people who signed the Manifesto of 100, who was convinced that living in France meant recognizing that French culture and values were superior and superseded everything else. (This was in the context of a government proposal to offer Arabic classes in the schools, which he vehemently opposed.) But when I said that I didn't see why I should reject Shakespeare and Purcell, or for that matter the Beatles and Martin Amis, he was quite taken aback - he knew perfectly well that he was arguing with a white 'Anglo-Saxon', but his entire position presupposed that the newly French person was Arab, African, or from some other place with no 'culture' to speak of. A purely colonial attitude, as Raul Zweiregen points out. He literally had no answer to my objection, since he knew perfectly well that he couldn't say 'Oh, but I didn't mean you' without exposing himself as a hypocrite.

https://blog.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/november/the-fish-rots-from-the-head

It is not enough that France has already colonized these places; the minds of their people must remain colonized forever.

I remember someone once said to me the difference between the British and French empires is that the British wanted to colonise land whilst the French wanted to colonise minds. The French wanted to erase all the cultures of the lands they colonised and make the people French, whilst the British didn’t really care what people did as long as they paid their taxes - that’s obviously a simplification, but it serves to explain the differences that immigrants in both countries experience.

Though to be fair Britain has had its fair share of Islamic extremists.

[parochial boy]

Context for said quote being, of course, the much maligned security and "secession" laws, but also a rather interesting bill guaranteeing academic liberties as long as "consistent with republican values". Well, hmm....

Anyway, it's an odd one, as anyone with more than a passing knowledge of France's media environment will be well aware of how a sort of decomplexed, radical right wing nationalism that would make even Fox News or the Daily Mail have second thoughts has become very mainstream. It goes beyond the usual outposts like Le Figaro, Sud Radio and Valeurs Actuelles to the whole cable news environment and even traditionally milquetoast outlets like Le Point or left wing ones like Marianne. To the point that being an "intellectual" in contemporary France essentially means making tedious remarks about "secessionism" and "Islam" and whatever. Whereas "woke-ism", as a phenomenon, is marginal, basically only Médiapart are really like that in a consistent way.

Anyway, I was kind of surprised to see Gérard Noiriel being presented as some anti-woke reactionary in the article, considering a large part of his work is precisely about things like racism and integration. So anyway, I haven't read the book obviously, but did watch their interview on France Inter, and it seems that mostly the complaint is that people aren't talking about class any more and that contemporary controversies aren't put in to any sort of historical and sociological context, but are instead treated as something new. Basically "the media shoud talk to sciologists and historians like us more often". They even go as far as saying that their own analyses are intersectional, just not advertised as such.

Cut a long story short, the NYT article seems to have misunderstood, or be misrepresenting things somewhat. On the one hand, you have a Macron playing up the ethnic resentment in order to shore up a right wing electorate, and on the other you have a couple of old social scientists who kind of just wish that people would talk about Marx more.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

As an American I am in full agreement with the idea that disregarding differing social norms between America and France is basically begging for eventual disaster if allowed to continue unchecked.

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

I like Macron more than any other Western leader.

Good on France.

[Alben Barkley]

A famous actor who is gay got all the other women to walk out of an awards show in February 2020 because Roman Polanski got an award.

Good.

I'm generally anti-"woke," but Roman Polanski is a disgusting child rapist and the fact that countries like France embrace him while claiming the moral high ground over the US is the height of hypocrisy.

[Omega21]

A famous actor who is gay got all the other women to walk out of an awards show in February 2020 because Roman Polanski got an award.

Good.

I'm generally anti-"woke," but Roman Polanski is a disgusting child rapist and the fact that countries like France embrace him while claiming the moral high ground over the US is the height of hypocrisy.

In France, public opinion polls have consistently shown that 65-75 per cent of the population believes Mr Polanski should be extradited to the US, while many members of the ruling UMP party have also criticised the government’s actions.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100716202849/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ad75dca-ae06-11de-87e7-00144feabdc0.html

So, no, France certainly does not "embrace" him.

I am in no way saying I support not extraditing him, I'm just pointing out the bad arguments you are making against a country when 70% of them want justice.

Also, it's quite important to mention that France explicitly bans the extradition of its citizens, along with dozens of other countries. So yea, it wouldn't be even remotely legal.

[Alben Barkley]

A famous actor who is gay got all the other women to walk out of an awards show in February 2020 because Roman Polanski got an award.

Good.

I'm generally anti-"woke," but Roman Polanski is a disgusting child rapist and the fact that countries like France embrace him while claiming the moral high ground over the US is the height of hypocrisy.

In France, public opinion polls have consistently shown that 65-75 per cent of the population believes Mr Polanski should be extradited to the US, while many members of the ruling UMP party have also criticised the government’s actions.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100716202849/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ad75dca-ae06-11de-87e7-00144feabdc0.html

So, no, France certainly does not "embrace" him.

I am in no way saying I support not extraditing him, I'm just pointing out the bad arguments you are making against a country when 70% of them want justice.

Also, it's quite important to mention that France explicitly bans the extradition of its citizens, along with dozens of other countries. So yea, it wouldn't be even remotely legal.

Well it's good to know that according to that more than a decade old poll, Polanski isn't beloved by the French populace at large. But I was specifically referring to the French government when I said that, which absolutely has embraced him. See this:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-polanski-france/french-minister-doubts-u-s-fairness-to-roman-polanski-idUSTRE59035C20091001

And this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130209194337/http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1926508,00.html

They also keep giving him prestigious roles in awards shows and such:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38700222

And, of course, allow him to film there.

None of that is necessary; even if they refuse to extradite him, they could make him a pariah rather than a celebrated and prestigious member of French society.

It is very clear that Polanski is getting special treatment because he is considered a great artist, something that probably would not apply to an ordinary citizen; some way to extradite or try him probably would have been found otherwise.

I mean the article outright says so:

"The French view Polanski as an artist and celebrity and feel he deserves a different kind of treatment than ordinary people, which just isn't an option in the U.S.," says Ted Stanger, an author and longtime resident of France who has written extensively on the differing public views and attitudes across the Atlantic. "The French in particular, and Europeans in general, don't understand why it isn't possible for American officials to intervene and say, 'Hey, it's been over 30 years and things look a little different now. Let's just forget this thing."

In any case, my point was that it's dumb to cite protesting Polanski as an act of egregious "wokeness" when few people deserve to be protested more.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

SLAY MACRON
My KING .
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html

The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

I am so justified in supporting Macron over LePen in 2017.

#populist Macron

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

[cp]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

So true. Same applies to 'cancelling', btw.

[Cassius]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

So true. Same applies to 'cancelling', btw.

Not to forget the dreaded ‘cultural Marxism’.

Mind you, people on left and centre have been chucking terms like fascist and Nazi around like snuff at a wake for so long it’s hardly surprising the right fires back with it’s own demonology.

[Samof94]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

France has had its own Northern Ireland in Corsica. Brittany is kind of their Wales but with even worse linguistic discrimination.

[vitoNova]

America now exporting Wokeness abroad instead of bombs?

This is glorious news!!!

[CumbrianLefty]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

France has had its own Northern Ireland in Corsica. Brittany is kind of their Wales but with even worse linguistic discrimination.

And their Scotland is the Occitan areas on this comparison, presumably.

[Red Velvet]

I agree with France, identity politics can be good but in practice they end up doing more bad.

[All Along The Watchtower]

 

[Red Velvet]

It's okay, Europeans have their own equally stupid but probably more dangerous forms of identity politics.


Is anyone else a bit tired of how the word "woke" is being used now? What the hell does it even mean? Like "identity politics", it's another scare word or term that means whatever you want it to mean.

Not really. Wokeness = ID politics and the latter has been long used by left-wing thinkers to criticize a strategy that segregates different segments of society in order to make them fight between each other instead of the ones who really are on the top and hold almost all the power.

It’s often a distraction strategy to strengthen the savage capitalist logic of our days and individualist fights (“the cause of MY group is more important than YOUR fight”). Which is terrible in practice, but identity causes can be good when used for collective purposes instead of self-virtue validation. And when they come from a real activist street base.