“We call for the adoption of a political strategy built around the concept of militant democracy”

2023-08-08 07:00:04

And the suburbs are set ablaze. Again, the warmongering rhetoric unfolded. A lethal shot has been reduced to a strictly individual behavior, where its structural causes would have to be analysed. The political responsibility would be to deal with them. Let us dare to draw a parallel with the 2005 riots which followed the death of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré.

These two young people had first been described as delinquents, and the riots presented as an “ethnic-religious” movement. The investigation established that they were innocent; frightened, they tried to escape yet another identity check. The riots expressed anger at political and social practices, at odds with the Republican promises of equality and fraternity.

Let’s go back to Nahel, 17, killed on June 27 by police shooting at point-blank range. The version of the police, focused on self-defense, was contradicted by the images. As soon as justice reacted, two police unions threatened to sedition, going so far as to declare ” in war “. The executive found nothing to complain about. A pot of support for the policeman, yet indicted for intentional homicide, exceeded one million euros.

How to get out of this situation, avoiding the double trap of a security escalation and an outbreak of violence of such gravity? Let us first recall that learning about the Republic remains a sensitive experience. Because the policeman is the embodiment of the State, the abuse of police force and the humiliations experienced by part of the youth destroy the feeling of belonging to the national community.

Amalgam between immigration, assistantship and insecurity

Then, these events do not participate in any fatality. THE rapport 2022 of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) relating to the fight against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia sheds light on the mechanics of accumulation and explosion that make our news. This report analyzes the consequences of the 2022 election campaigns, the fabrication of xenophobic discourse, and, particularly, the entry into the National Assembly of a group claiming national preference. How can this be explained when the underlying trends attest to a steady increase in tolerance vis-à-vis difference, the “other”?

This rejection of the “other” as a paradigm has had its strategists, its promoters and its relays. It took place to the detriment of the quality of the debates, by resorting more and more to the misuse of statistics, the repetition of prejudices and pure and simple lies. The CNCDH thus emphasizes that“we are seeing the emergence of a counter-model of democracy, ignoring political ethics, adversarial debate and the documented validation of its content”.

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