We are witnessing today a “corruption” of language, you argue. But at the same time, you who worked for almost a decade on texts written by Adolf Hitler, you observe that there were already there the roots of evils which were beginning to disrupt our political life. Should we fear that the darkest hours of our history will repeat themselves?
I don’t believe in repeating history. There are certainly constants in the regimes which use the methods of language that I try to describe in my two books, but that is not why we are going to have extermination camps again tomorrow in Europe. Nazism is a historical phenomenon that cannot be reproduced because it is linked to specific conditions and a specific framework. On the other hand, fascist thought as it is, that is to say a brutal, virilist, authoritarian thought which is based not on reflection but on emotion, is making a comeback at full gallop. , with consequences that can be uncontrollable.
“Adolf Hitler’s style is capable of hypnotizing us”
What I fear here and what I try to expose in my book is the rise of speech techniques that prevent democracy from functioning. The language, the logos, which is the very basis of democratic discussion, is called into question by a certain number of negligences but also by methods which gradually destroy political language in whatever noble and meaningful way it may have had. useful for the functioning of a society.
Today, politicians and citizens use and abuse the term “fascist”, “facho” almost daily…
Yes, absolutely. The term is now completely misused, which threatens our democracy. This is for example the case when Donald Trump lists the people he says he is going to eliminate, with a term as strong as “root out” in American, in other words that he will “exterminate vermin: communists, fascists and wokists“. The meaning of the word “fascism” is however something extremely precise, but today we are witnessing the reign of confusionism, that is to say that we mix all the categories of reflection to ensure that we no longer see them. It is in this context that the term “fascist” is more and more often used as an insult. Once again, we are trying to drown out the fish.
This perversion of language affects all strata of society, from the demonstrator to the President of the Republic. In your book, you talk about how the Yellow Vest movement, which initially had a clear message, completely lost it along the way…
Yes, the message of the Yellow Vests has been lost and perverted by a few individuals who are either of an absolutely catastrophic intellectual level, or intellectuals endowed with abilities that the movement exploits, which it completely recovers for theses which drift towards confusionism . There, we have a distortion of language which means that even a movement which starts from practically union demands or greater democracy ends up totally degenerating, with in the end 40% of its supporters voting for the extreme right. It is an incredible paradox.
The distortion of language was also strongly at work during the coronavirus pandemic. When did we switch?
We could compare this to the moment when two rivers come together, one yellow and one black. What happened in France is that this Yellow Vest movement was interrupted by the arrival of Covid, which put an almost immediate end to what remained of very powerful demonstrations or movements. The people who had heard these conspiratorial speeches found themselves first blocked in their physical action, then they were given from the outside – by frankly ill-intentioned people – another possibility of expressing themselves around the world. idea that this epidemic had been triggered following an error, manipulation, or voluntarily. The second idea conveyed was that the vaccine intended to rid us of the virus – which is the case – was also a weapon intended to fight against the people.
What I say moreover in the third chapter of my book is how in this anti-vax movement there is a recovery of the extreme right to capture its anxieties, born from conspiracy theories, and to try to bring about population towards the idea that some authoritarian power could solve the problems. We see the return of anti-Semitic conspiracy fantasies dating back to the Middle Ages. These are mechanisms that prevent a democracy from functioning because they fundamentally undermine the trust we can have in anyone in front of us. It is extremely dangerous.
More generally, you see the degradation of political language. In what ways?
This degradation occurs through a series of things. We can notably cite systematic triangulation, which was practiced virulently by Nicolas Sarkozy. Triangulation consists of taking up the opponent’s arguments to try to win over their voters. And where this takes on a dramatic dimension is when a type of left takes up xenophobic ideas on the status of foreigners in France or, conversely, when the left, which has always been secular in France, which defends separation strictness of the Church and the State, began to defend religions which particularly posed problems for women. All of this is a loss of language cues because the words that are used are totally misguided, and allow almost any aberration.
Is what you are describing there the era of post-truth?
The era of post-truth is above all a way of using the aforementioned techniques, that is to say the confusion of language, the moderate or not use of conspiracy theories to finally recreate a reality of its own. taste. We can take a recent example: Robert Kennedy was appointed head of health in the United States, a gentleman who has adopted all kinds of successive positions in his life, who notably took virulent anti-vaccine positions and who, today today, presents himself as someone completely moderate. We are even in the process of painting a sort of portrait of him as a statesman! This is an example of post-truth.
Is the fall of knowledge partly responsible for what is happening to us?
In France, as throughout Europe, the cult of knowledge, particularly that of education, is part of the heritage of the populist left. It is this idea according to which knowledge allows one to progress, to make one’s reason and one’s rationality function on assured bases of knowledge. However, this has been called into question for some time: verbal or financial attacks against education are increasing in Europe. This means that the main thing would be to train people who work and that there is no need to think. However, to analyze a conspiratorial discourse, you must have historical data, you must have elements of rationality, a habit of rational and logical discourse. When we don’t have these cultural weapons, these weapons of knowledge, these scientific weapons, we fall at the mercy of any charlatan. It is very clear: a less educated nation is much more manipulable.
What should we do to get out of this?
The first thing to do is to revive the democratic debate. But for this, we need political figures who are capable of doing it. However, there is a severe shortage of people who are up to the democratic level in France and in Europe. We live in a time where demagoguery is real. Today there is an absolute necessity in the medium and long term to reactivate culture, the transmission of culture, knowledge, knowledge and rationality. This is as true in the face of the threat of political confusion as in the face of religious threats which also pose considerable problems.
