French current affairs has, over all these last years, been punctuated by the presence of the Front National.
And from there, a portion of the French population rejects these populations by trying to designate them as the scapegoats for its own difficulties. And that is the problem we are dealing with today, with the rise of a political force that carries that discourse — an increasingly influential political force, and this is a peculiarity of French political life — which exists within the political debate. These situations of social exclusion are not specific to French society, but it is in politics, within the institutions of public life, that this debate over exclusion is carried by a force that has, from a certain point of view, succeeded in polarizing the whole of political debate around its existence. We see that French current affairs has been marked, over all these last years, by the presence of the Front National. It is punctuated by its electoral weight and by the way it conducts itself with respect to its excesses or with respect to its existence. Up to now, one is forced to observe that society has not been able, despite all the attempts that have been put in place in one way or another, to limit the rise and presence of the Front National. It is today durably installed in French political life; it carries a discourse claimed as authentically racist.
There were stages in the rise of this discourse, but now it is authenticated as racist and assumed as such. And it is the point of reference, whether one likes it or not; it is the point of reference today, and that is indeed the difficulty in which we find ourselves.
So, to try to be brief and to conclude, here is how I feel about this situation.
I believe there are three things: for an entire period, the struggle against the rise of this intolerance, this racism, and this xenophobia was carried on by the forces of civil-society associations, through a generous mobilization aimed at denouncing the racist, xenophobic, intolerant character of all these discourses. That said, in this country there was a major antiracist mobilization, with a very significant civic mobilization; but that movement too shows its limits, insofar as this current does not have the capacities to attack the cause of the rise of these situations. And it even happens that a part of public opinion turns against these currents, accusing them of being responsible for the rise of racism.
The peculiarity in France is that we now have a portion of intellectuals who explain the rise of racism by the existence of an antiracist movement, holding it responsible for a certain guilt-tripping of French society over the problems of delinquency or drugs, saying roughly: you talked too much about these things, you dramatized them too much. The result is that you instilled guilt in a part of society, you prevented it from thinking things through over the long term.
So, the antiracist movement finds itself attacked, whereas I personally believe that it is not responsible for this situation. It had created a terrain that was positive, but it is not the one that can combat the real causes of this situation. The causes being, in my view, first of all economic causes. And we are in this difficult situation today. So, I do not believe that one can combat these phenomena simply through a discourse of vigilance or through a philosophical discourse against these ideas.
I think that, unless there are policies radically different from everything that has been done up to now and that attacks the essential root of these problems — that is to say, exclusion from work — the risk exists for democracy in the years to come. French society is a good example of this, but I believe that other societies too are liable to be subjected to this type of situation in the years to come. This means, then, that there is no solution that can be set in motion if we do not have a radically different reflection on the sharing of wealth, on redistribution in our societies. •