Alain Jakubowicz, former president of Licra, warns against the influence of Donald Trump and the “Trumpization of minds”. He calls for firmly defending the rule of law in the face of populist excesses and proposes building, as quickly as possible, a dike against the re-elected president.
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The Point: According to you, we are in a phase of astonishment in the face of Donald Trump’s first steps in the White House. You evoke a form of fascination among politicians in the face of its excesses, its brutality. You talk about “Trumpization” of minds.
Alain Jakubowicz: There is an almost unreal side to the spectacle of Trump in power. How can we not be stunned when we see the world champion of fake news, who until recently appeared in court, being solemnly enthroned in the Washington Capitol, which he himself had stormed just four years ago , as “the Honorable Donald John Trump, 45e et 47e President of the United States”? Astonishment is natural, but fascination is much less so. When I hear politicians and journalists calling for the emergence of a French Donald Trump, I admit my great concern…
You were one of the civil party lawyers during the trial of Klaus Barbie, in Lyon, in 1987. In what way, in your opinion, do Trump’s first actions in power reveal a contempt for the rule of law, which Is it American law or international law? Would you say he is acting like Hitler in the pre-war years, or like Putin today?
Donald Trump is the return of the Wild West and the replacement of the rule of law with the law of the strongest. We have the impression of experiencing the series live Yellowstonestarring Kevin Costner as a Montana rancher who enforces his own laws on his land in defiance of federal laws. The Capitol affair and the pardon granted to the attackers are a bit the same thing. There is a little throwback to the Wild West, a remake of the conquest of the West with rifles.
ALSO READ In Washington DC, the Trump revolution and the denial of DemocratsThe difference between Trump and the hero of Yellowstoneis that the latter wanted to protect his ranch and his land, which his ancestors had taken from the Indians. He had no intention of annexing those of his neighbors. With Donald Trump, but also Vladimir Putin in a more KGB style, it is the return of exacerbated nationalism and uninhibited imperialism.
The return of the great conquerors, in the “I take, I use” mode. Putin invaded Ukraine to annex it, and now Trump in turn wants to annex Greenland, recover the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico, and is suspicious of Canada… All this portends ill winds.
ALSO READ Greenland, Panama, Canada… Donald Trump’s dreams of conquestWe have the impression that the world has been entrusted to madmen. This apparently irrational side causes a form of shock in the public, who rub their eyes as if the proposed spectacle was only a bad dream. However, we will have to wake up very quickly.
How do you explain the reactions, which can be described as timid, of Europeans to the Trump tsunami?
-Europeans, or at least their leaders, are paralyzed. You use the word tsunami. Against a tsunami, there is nothing to do except wait for it to calm down, hoping to escape alive. The reaction, or rather the absence of reaction, from Europe is a sign of its impotence. Not to mention that there is a great risk of seeing little Trumps and little Putins taking power within Europe itself.
What counter-model to oppose?
We have the model: it is the rule of law. The problem is that we lost the instructions.
What message do you want to send to our leaders?
Which rulers? The President of the Republic no longer has the means to exercise the powers conferred on him by our Constitution. The government is only interested in the first motion of censure that comes along. As for our political staff, they themselves are victims of ambient Trumpization.
I am not only talking about our own sovereignists and nationalists, who pledge allegiance to the one who openly threatens Europe and therefore France, but also about those who claim to fight him. The way the boss and elected officials of La France insoumise behave and express themselves is exactly the same as that of Donald Trump: a form of uninhibited populism where invective, threats and warlike postures flood the media, helped by the algorithms of platforms of all kinds.
We must be wary of this abandonment of our values. We could very quickly slide towards something that could well resemble the 1930s, with the return of this wave of anti-Semitism that we thought had been stemmed, and this violence established as a mode of operation.
How can we escape this trap of a form of bewitchment of the figure of Trump?
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
By being strong on our foundations, those of the rule of law, which must be defended with firmness and determination. Rather than dwelling on “never again,” let’s remember how the Nazis took power to establish a regime of fear and the law of the strongest, that of the jungle. We are not there yet, of course, but it is better to point out some of the obvious facts before it is too late.
The battle is likely to be tough, but we have no right to lose it if we want to save our old Europe, threatened from all sides.
