By: P.T., STA
While those speaking out against radical Islamism are threatened and even murdered, an activist promoting systemic anti-police propaganda on the opposing end of the political spectrum has been awarded. According to a renowned essayist, there’s an ongoing ideological and generational war against the country.
For a good while, tensions have been escalating in France, generating a heated public debate over freedom of speech issues. The powder keg exploded after the American Time magazine announced that it chose Assa Traore, a far-left, openly anti-police activists, as one of the Guardians of the Year.
A culture war is taking place in the country, French political expert Arnaud Benedetti, a professor at Sorbonne, told the conservative weekly Valeurs actuelles.
According to Benedetti, Time’s choice to select Assa Traore – the sister of Adama Traore, who died in 2016 and is often referred to as the French George Floyd – as “Guardian of the Year” goes a long way to illustrate the French state’s struggle to protect the values of the Republic in the face of rising communitarianism. It is a very interesting coincidence, Benedetti said, that Time magazine began to promote Assa Traore during the same week when Samuel Paty – the teacher brutally beheaded in October by an 18-year-old Chechen terrorist – was abandoned by many of his colleagues, who showed no support to him. This was the week when the case of Mila – a female student repeatedly threatened with death for criticising Islam – received wide media coverage because the military school she moved to after a string of harassments could not guarantee her safety.
In Benedetti’s view, Time magazine, a major mouthpiece of English-speaking lefties, has declared a real culture war against France, claiming that the country is discriminatory. However, it is not anti-racists pitted against racists, but racists against universalists, those who believe in universality or the universal nature of things.
According to an article by Valeurs actuelles, the new front line runs in the background of globalisation. According to Benedetti, globalisation brings communitarianism because it results in the emergence of communities of a different origin. According to the article, the Republic’s fault is not that it accepted globalisation, but that it naively gave up its own ideas and opted for integration, thereby renouncing its own culture. However, Benedetti believes the main source of the problem lies in the fact that state decision-makers fear that they will be accused of stigmatisation.
French essayist Paul Melun also shares this view. In his writing published by the daily Le Figaro, he said the US media is disseminating the idea that France is xenophobic. The US press uses Assa Traore as some kind of Trojan horse to undermine French universalism, spreading the idea that racism exists at state-level in France. The paper writes that the pro-globalisation US elite in power aims to weaken France, and Assa Traore is just a means to an end, a vehicle of spreading progressive ideology. Paul Melun opines that US Democrats will use every conceivable means in the coming years to destroy the universal French culture.
World-renowned French essayist and publicist Eric Zemmour also spoke about Time magazine’s recognition of Assa Traore. He said the so-called ‘woke’ American left is made up of the worst kind of imperialists who want to force their ideology on France.
In the popular Face a l’Info show, Zemmour stressed that supporters of globalisation believe there are no peoples or nations, only interchangeable individuals. They are waging an ideological war supported by a young generation of American editors. Thus, according to the publicist, it is not only an ideological, but also a generational war.