“Before his complete disappearance under the blows of the extreme right, a jurist must speak to defend the rule of law”

2023-12-20 07:30:07

There is a time when you have to say things. When Donald Trump is campaigning in the United States, claiming everywhere that “migrants are poisoning the blood of [son] pays », when Javier Milei, the new president of Argentina, shows up at his meetings with a chainsaw to show that he wants to cut public services, when the far right wins the legislative elections in the Netherlands, when it governs in Slovakia and in Italy, allied with the right, when it is in the parliamentary majority in Sweden, when the National Rally is considered a government party in France, a lawyer cannot sit quietly at his desk.

He has to say things. Not those which would be invented for the pleasure of criticism but those which are clearly exposed in all the public writings and speeches of the extreme right.

Discrimination based on origin or the religion it defends is contrary to Article 1 of the Constitution which establishes the principle of equality before the law. The expulsion of immigrants that it proposes is contrary to the principle of fraternity contained in article 2.

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The control of the press and the justice system that it provides is contrary to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which states that the rights set out are intended to enable citizens to ” compare “ acts of political power to these rights and, where applicable, ” claim “ their respect by the representatives. The sovereignist withdrawal that it supports is contrary to paragraph 15 of the preamble to the Constitution written in 1946 by the actors of the Resistance which states that “France consents to the limitations of sovereignty necessary for the organization and defense of peace”.

In short, the written program of the far right, which announces discrimination, expulsions, a State without counter-powers and sovereignist withdrawal, attacks at the heart everything that has made France since 1789, and its influence in the world, well beyond of its demographic weight.

Principles of the world to come

Saying these things is not enough; we must also say the principles of the world to come because the extreme right is progressing by relying on the upheavals in the world which break the benchmarks in which societies recognize themselves. However, many politicians, but also intellectuals, have an anxious posture in the present, which leads them to a nostalgia for the past, which ends up fueling the return to the old order.

However, in schools, neighborhoods, villages, workplaces, citizens imagine, act and found a new way of creating society: local exchange system, school support networks, welcoming foreigners and sharing customs. All these forces of life are there, often luminous, but waiting to be brought to light by intellectuals who dare to think about the present. When Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau or Condorcet think about their society, they do not look at the secure past of feudal ties. They invent words – social contract, citizen, republic – which will allow society to break away from its old representation and build another form of living together.

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