In Saône-et-Loire, Jean-Michel Blanquer and his “Secular Republic” workshop to first “fight against the extreme left” – Libération

The former Minister of Education brought together in Autun, for the first summer university of his think tank organized from August 29 to 31, personalities from all sides who campaign like him for a radical secularism, especially against the veil… and targeting LFI in priority.

Didier (1) looks helpless. He grabs the microphone to tell his story. One day, a young woman came to see this shopping center manager to negotiate the rental of a business. Of Moroccan origin, Muslim but “not veiled and lightly made up”, She wants to open a kebab shop, which doesn’t please Didier, who ends up, good natured, accepting the deal. Some time later, he comes across his new protégée wearing, oh surprise, a hijab. Our man feels duped because the lease is already signed and he wouldn’t have accepted the transaction if he had known. “Today lawyers tell me: “You can’t do anything, you can’t ban the veil”», he laments, handing back the microphone.

Friday morning, August 30, under the molded ceiling of the hall of honor of the town hall of Autun, in Saône-et-Loire, the workshop “République laïque” has been rolling for a few minutes on the subject that seems to preoccupy the audience: how to ban the veil in companies, gymnasiums and for the most motivated, in public spaces in general? The air is stiff: the talk is being held under the aegis of the Laboratoire de la République, the think tank of Jean-Michel Blanquer – he does not like this anglicism – which organized, from August 29 to 31, for the first time in its three years of existence, summer universities in the Burgundy sub-prefecture, decreed for the occasion “beating heart of the Republic for three