Rafaël Amselem is a research fellow for the liberal think-tank GenerationLibre.
Would cancel culture no longer have borders? Her reputation confused her with the left. But just yesterday, Mélenchon was his target. The rebellious leader and the new muse of pro-Palestinian struggles, Rima Hassan, saw the doors of the University of Lille close on them. At the heart of the discord, a logo, that of Free Palestine, the association initiating the invitation: we see the entire Israeli and Palestinian territory covered in the sole colors of the Palestinian flag. A symbol understood as the expression of an ambiguity, one more, as to the position of the rebels on the conflict in the Middle East.
Of course, we cannot deny the ambiguity. That of Rima Hassan who, among other things, describes the attacks of October 7 as terrorist, but procrastinates about the legitimacy of Hamas in the pro-Palestinian struggles (“
it is not for me to say that from the Paris offices
” she recently said on Sonie Devillers' microphone about Hamas); who complains about the negationism at work to cancel the existence of a Palestinian identity, while citing the decried work - to say the least - of Shlomo Sand who ardently works to deny the historically anchored existence of an Israeli identity; which recalls the illegitimacy of anti-Semitism in pro-Palestinian struggles while relaying the words of the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, denying the anti-Semitic nature of October 7.
This is without taking into account its historical position, recently revised it is true in return for an elective place (to each their own values after all), thanks to a binational State. Analyst Elie Beressi recalls its irremediably harmful nature. The binational state in fact consists of placing Jews in a minority position within a geographical space which, as it stands at least, is fundamentally hostile to them. The binational state is the hygienic way of expressing its desire, under the veneer of the struggle for rights, to eliminate all Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.
We fight our adversaries all the better if we don't give them the opportunity to pose as victims of the "system". But still, we fight our adversaries all the better if we can document their excesses.
Rafael Amselem
As for Mélenchon, it is with weariness that we must recall, for the umpteenth time - we sigh from repeating ourselves - how he understands the far-right ideology of Zemmour as the
“reproduction of cultural scenarios” from “tradition closely linked to Judaism”
; how he denationalized Yaël Braun-Pivet
“who camps in Tel Aviv”
by opposing him to the real France, in the same way as we said yesterday, recalls Gaston Crémieux,
“Pierre-Mendès-Jerusalem”
or “
Jerusalem Desire »
; with what ease he resurrected the myth of the deicidal Jew, speaking of the
“compatriots of Jesus”
who put him on the cross; the ease with which he works to qualify the Crif as a far-right organization which applauds Zemmour, the same Crif which
“forces” people
to follow its positions internationally and uses anti-Semitism as a
“paralyzing ray”
, with whom we must stop all
“genuflection
” in the face of his
“arrogant”
and
“communitarian”
ukases .
From the arrogant Jew to the Jew who influences power, and even the Jew who commits suicide, everything goes. We could still talk about Corbyn, of David Guiraud who used the anti-Semitic rhetoric of celestial dragons, of Danielle Obono unable to say whether the declaration of Houria Bouteldja, affirming that "
the Jews are the shields, the riflemen of French imperialist policy and of his Islamophobic policies
,” was anti-Semitic. But these facts are known to everyone, and to persist in not seeing the problem of anti-Semitism at LFI now amounts to frank complacency.
However, these facts cannot motivate the campaign launched by certain Renaissance executives for the banning of the aforementioned conference. And we are surprised: do we still need to recall the elementary principles which underpin freedom of expression? Who guide both the autonomy of the human person and the liveliness of public and intellectual debate? Certainly, racism can reasonably be considered as a limit to freedom of expression; it places its victims in a position of discomfort or even threat; it inflicts on them at least psychological damage. But the excesses of freedom cannot be presumed, except by touching on the foundations of political freedom itself. Because the alternative is the following, and it is indeed the only one: all innocent or all monitored. The past declarations of each party cannot therefore legitimize police measures a priori, unless we accept the indefinite extension of authority on the basis of suspicion, by nature indeterminate and arbitrary. Should Gérald Darmanin be prohibited from speaking because of the words he used to describe Napoleon's policy on the Jews (
"some of them practiced usury and gave rise to unrest and complaints"
)?
Not only is this type of ban illegitimate, it is also ineffective. Let's take a bet: will we find even ten people convinced of the ambiguity of our two parties after the announcement of the ban on their conference? Will this measure have any effect other than increasing the reach of their platform? Yes, censorship measures act like loudspeakers. They never silence their target and are nothing other than giant (and free) advertising posters. How many hours have television channels devoted to this conference in recent days?
Above all, censorship makes it possible to construct a victim narrative. We fight our adversaries all the better if we don't give them the opportunity to pose as victims of the "system". But still, we fight our adversaries all the better if we can document their excesses. Let them speak, freely, and we will be able to use their words all the better against them. Besides, this is what we all do with regard to rebels.
And, let's say it frankly, there is no point in screaming against left-wing cancel culture if we also practice it on the right.