the far right attacks social sciences again

Published on November 26, 2024 at 2:41 p.m.

The European Parliament took the decision to postpone the round table to which the academic was invited. But the far right continues its blackmail to obtain its definitive cancellation, revealing its defense of racial inequalities.

The French and European extreme right has just launched an intolerable attack against Maboula Soumahoro, lecturer in civilization of the English-speaking world at the University of Tours, specialist in diasporic studies and the analysis of racism. On November 15, the French delegation of one of the far-right groups in the European Parliament (“European Conservatives and Reformists”) sent a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola. Relayed by Marion Maréchal on her X account, this letter demands the cancellation of a “round table to combat racism” to which Maboula Soumahoro is invited.

This gag attempt constitutes an unacceptable threat to the social sciences in general, and to the analysis of racial inequalities in particular. The European Parliament has for the moment taken the decision to postpone the round table, while the far right continues its blackmail to obtain its definitive cancellation. To give in further to this pressure from the extreme right would endorse unimaginable censorship, even though the dialogue between social sciences and society must take place precisely in institutions and places such as the European Parliament.

By accepting that the far right dictates the terms of its conversation with the social sciences, the European Parliament would also be adopting arguments that are not only inadmissible, but also perfectly ludicrous. The letter to Roberta Metsola reveals what the far right finds most unbearable: the mere mention of white domination or white privilege. A remarkable inversion of terms is at work here, since naming and criticizing racial inequalities is considered proof… of racism, in this case anti-White racism. The mere fact of naming the white condition, for example of talking about white people, is equated with racism – even though the social sciences have repeatedly repeated that they are interested in the position of individuals in social hierarchies. and not to a supposed biological identity.

The fantasy of whiteness in danger

This staging of white vulnerability, which would be the victim of “racism”, is part of a long history of racial anxieties about the endangerment of the majority group and intimately linked to the defense of white supremacy. The “historical European population”, as it is fantasized by the extreme right, would, for example, be under the constantly renewed threat of invasion or “replacement”. Yesterday the far right was raising the danger of the “Jewish peril” or even the “yellow peril”, today it explains that Europe is endangered by postcolonial migrants, particularly when they are Muslim. The theme of “anti-White racism” but also that of “hatred of France” or the West constitute other variations of this same presentation of whiteness in danger. All of these speeches put forward a main idea: we should defend and protect a white population threatened with being “grand-replaced” or quite simply murdered, according to the paranoid rantings on the « francocide » of Eric Zemmour or those of Marion Maréchal, who poses as a defender of “little white people” « intimid[és]insult[és]pop[és]viol[és] and sometimes you[és] ».

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The pressures exerted by the extreme right are based on a total inversion of the facts, in a Trumpist gesture which almost assumes that it does not care about the truth. It does not matter that no admissible scientific research, that is to say validated by peers, establishes the existence of this supposed “anti-White racism”. It does not matter that the social sciences deploy precise investigative tools and methodologies to document, study and understand the advantages enjoyed by white people in contemporary societies. It does not matter that they deploy these same investigations to understand how these people came to be designated today as white and how racial hierarchies were imposed and then perpetuated, including in less explicit forms. The icing on the cake is that the far right completes its contempt for reality by calling “conspiracy” » “theories” that identify white privilege. The virulence of this anti-scientific negationism recalls the reactionary mobilization against gender studies, which also presented gender as a “theory” and armed itself with its best blinders when it came to reading descriptions that could not be more empirical. wage inequalities or differentiated social roles.

Black women, first victims of the extreme right

In our work published in September [intitulé « la Domination blanche », paru chez Textuel, NDLR], we wrote in the introduction that “if French tensions around whiteness are not fundamentally new, they seem to continue to grow in recent years.” The personal and defamatory attack on our colleague Maboula Soumahoro and his work is yet another illustration of this tension that has become brutality, which is nothing other than a barely concealed defense of white supremacy.

In other words, it is a defense of racial inequalities, if only because it censors their criticism. Her virulence in the harassment that followed also reminds us that the far right undoubtedly finds it particularly unbearable that it is a black woman who, as a specialist, is invited to expose racism and white domination. When it comes to racist and political harassment, recent precedents confirm that black women are the preferred victims of the far right and other ordinary defenders of racial inequality, particularly when they expose white domination: in recent years, journalist Rokhaya Diallo or even Rébecca Chaillon and all the actresses of “Carte noire Nom Desire” have, among others, unfortunately experienced this.

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The way in which this defense of white supremacy has developed and expanded in recent years, through attack, defamation, censorship and/or harassment, should worry anyone concerned about the independence of the social sciences, but also of democracy and the fight for equality.

BIOS EXPRESS

Solène Brun is a sociologist, research fellow at the CNRS (IRIS). A specialist in racial issues, she notably published “Behind the Métis Myth. Survey on mixed couples and their descendants in France” (La Découverte, 2024). She co-signed, with Claire Cosquer, “White Domination” (Textuel, 2024).

Claire Cosquer is a sociologist and researcher at the University of Lausanne. His work focuses on the white condition and the dominant classes. She notably co-authored, with Solène Brun, “Sociology of race” (Armand Colin, 2022) and “White Domination” (Textuel, 2024).