French Intellectuals: “France is under threat from out-of-control leftism.”
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Progressive French President Emmanuel Macron recently warned French citizens not to import American cancel culture.
Politicians, journalists, and intellectuals in France are concerned that “out-of-control leftism and cancel culture’’ from the United States is a threat to France.
Those who argue against the “woke” social science theories insist that American ideas regarding race, gender and post-colonialism undermine French society and attack France’s heritage.
“With its echoes of the American culture wars, the battle began inside French universities but is being played out increasingly in the media. Politicians have been weighing in more and more, especially following a turbulent year during which a series of events called into question tenets of French society,” the NYTimes reported. “Some saw the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some center-right lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on Twitter.”
The Times mentioned a speech French President Emmanuel Macron delivered in October on the “Fight against Separatism”, in which he warned about “certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States.”
“Many of these topics in which France used to excel academically have been undermined and we have abandoned them,” Macron said in his speech. “And in so doing, we have left the intellectual debate to others, to those outside of the Republic by ideologizing it, sometimes yielding to other academic traditions…And when I see certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States, with their problems, which I respect and which exist, but which are just added to ours, I say to myself that it is reasonable to make this choice. And so we must, very clearly, re-invest, on a massive scale, in the field of social sciences, history, understanding of civilizations by creating posts, by stepping up dialogue, academic and scientific debate in order not to allow the knowledge, the understanding of Islam as a religion, of the civilization it underpins and its contribution to our country and our continent to become ideological and exclusively political debates.”