Good for them. It is enlightening to me that I read foreign news sources more often than American ones to get a view of what is actually happening in my own country. Yes, they are still left wing rags, but they retain an independence that American media has lost.
Six months ago, if asked what they understood by “woke”, most French people would have assumed it had something to do with Chinese cooking. And yet today in Paris, the notion of “le wokisme” is suddenly all the rage.
The government warns of a new cultural totalitarianism creeping in from the “Anglosphere”. The education minister has set up a Laboratory of the Republic, dubbed an “anti-woke think tank”, to co-ordinate the fightback.
And everywhere the precursors of what might be to come are being reported in the media: a new gender-neutral pronoun, a threatened statue of a dead statesman or a meeting on campus only for black students.
For the French, these signifiers of what critics in the UK and US have termed “woke” are all very new and unfamiliar.
For good or bad, France has so far resisted what is seen here as a left-wing cultural movement dedicated to the promotion of minorities that originated in American universities and now exerts considerable influence in the public sphere in the English-speaking world.
[…]
“Personally I find it liberating to teach here. I don’t have to mind my every word, like I did with American students. Here, there is still a presumption that universities are a place to learn, and the staff is not there to cushion the subject matter.”
[…]
That is indeed precisely what the anti-woke movement in France believes: that via universities, pressure groups and social media, the US is exporting a cultural virus into France that poses an existential threat to French society.
For the writer Brice Couturier, a member of the Laboratory for the Republic think tank, “wokeism puts people into tribes in order to control them. It says you belong in my tribe, and the leaders of my tribe will tell you how to behave. This is foreign to French mentality”.
“France has fought many civil wars in the past, and I fear we could come close to civil war again if this goes too far. Just as [former US President] Trump was a reaction to wokeism in the US, here we have crazies like [far-right presidential candidate] Eric Zemmour. People are taking sides.”
Also NOT covered in the US: massive anti-Vaxx demonstration in Austria Saturday night. Reportedly 100’s of thousands marched in Vienna….
You need better sources, Owen.
The government warns of a new cultural totalitarianism creeping in from the “Anglosphere”.
A totalitarian g’vment worried about totalitarianism. You can’t make this stuff up.
“Just as [former US President] Trump was a reaction to wokeism in the US, here we have crazies like [far-right presidential candidate] Eric Zemmour. People are taking sides.”
But of course, enlightened think tanker monsieur Couturier isn’t taking sides at all, is he?
It would help to keep in mind that the “far right” in France is basically our Murkowkski,Kinzinger, and Lizzy Cheney rolled into one. The academia nuts quoted in the the above linked story are perfectly happy because they already tow the French leftist line.
Need proof? Go read the European newsie, say, from the last month or so. They, along with help from the Nude Yawk Times, have been Trumpilizing prez candidate Zemmour. Heck, it’s right in the linked article.
I suppose you could say Zemmour IS far right…. In France. Because, you know, he is against open borders, Feminazis, and transgenderizing grade school kids.
Heaven forbid.
France unwoke? Au contraire, mon frere….
Eric Zemmour, who has two prior hate speech convictions, is being tried on charges of “public insult” and “incitement to hatred or violence” against a group of people due to their ethnic, national, racial or religious origin.
The head of the managing board of Canal +, CNews’ parent company, Jean-Christophe Thiery, is also on trial in the case, as the person legally in charge of the television show. The French media watchdog, the Superior Audiovisual Council, imposed a 200,000-euro fine in March on CNews for broadcasting comments inciting hatred.
France did not like the last goose-stepping socialist thugs that stepped into their country….why would they want our goose-stepping socialists?