Posted on 02/09/2021 7:24:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If you’d asked me to identify which major European country was seeing powerful intellectual and political forces attacking woke racial ideology and the American campuses pushing it, I would have guessed Poland or Russia. Nope, It’s a country American conservatives generally mock and resent: France. The very same France that conservatives regularly deride as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” picking up a line from The Simpsons that was popularized by Jonah Goldberg (who has since gone full NeverTrump).
But Norimitsu Ohnishi of The New York Times reports:
The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.
The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.
French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister. (snip)
Mr. Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused universities, under American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by providing the intellectual justification behind their acts.
A group of 100 prominent scholars wrote an open letter supporting the minister and decrying theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.
If you have access to material behind the Times’ paywall, by all means, read and savor the unexpected alliance that France’s movers and shakers are implicitly forging with American conservatives. The article does include critics of the move, but leaves the definite impression that the ideas that we loathe are facing greater pushback in France than anywhere else in the advanced economies.
Why on earth would a country that in the past has been held out as an example of progressive social policies turn against wokism?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The French are pretty arrogant about their culture, so this isn’t really that much of a surprise.
The funny thing is that all of this “Woke” thought is the product of French post-modernists who started influencing American universities in the 1960s.
Sorry but France has already committed cultural suicide. They are beyond redemption. Their rants are the whines of dying, tortured, tormented men.
The French are... well... the French. And I view their arrogance about maintaining French culture as a strength. Why shouldn’t they be proud of, and want to maintain their culture? (unlike the Swedes, who are pathetic.)
France is looking at all the Woke Addicts here and is appalled.
The woke cancel culture is pretty much against any culture except communist culture, if you can call it that.
Macron is pro-E.U. — but he is also a patriot. And he reflects a lot of liberal to moderately liberal French people and elites.
RE: Macron is pro-E.U. — but he is also a patriot.
His teacher ( and now wife ) taught him well.
France is one of those countries very similar to the US. Once you leave the metropolitan cities like Lyon or Paris...general feelings are more conservative in nature.
The problem with Le Pen and her National Rally party....they can’t construct a theme which draws the urban folks or the heavily-influenced socialists.
actually, this is a clever move by pragmatic French leaders and thinkers - successfully push back against noxious, anti-western ideology by labeling it “an American import”. HA! Brilliant and true in a sense. However they skip over the part of it being imported to the USA from Europe (and France) first.
RE: unlike the Swedes, who are pathetic.
Weren’t the Vikings notorious raiders and slave traders? That’s what the Swedes want to forget.
> Why shouldn’t they be proud of, and want to maintain their culture? <
It’s an odd thing. Suppose a Native American tribe sets up reasonable rules to protect its heritage and culture. Everyone would be fine with that. But should a European country do the same, all hell breaks loose.
Sorry, but those ideas were theirs in the first place. People ranging from Jean Genet to Michel Foucault, as well as scads of lesser known French “intellectuals,” were actually the ones who instilled that ideology into gullible American culture. Not vice-versa.
RE: Once you leave the metropolitan cities like Lyon or Paris...general feelings are more conservative in nature.
Marseille is almost 1/5th Muslim. If we define “conservative” by this demographic, no thanks.
“Why on earth would a country that in the past has been held out as an example of progressive social policies turn against wokism?”
There is a higher percentage of ethnically non-French muslims in France, then there are of African-Americans in the United States.
They have a real problem to manage.
> Weren’t the Vikings notorious raiders and slave traders? That’s what the Swedes want to forget. <
My wild guess is that the Swedes still feel some shame over how they behaved in WW II. Sweden was neutral, but they played a huge part in keeping the Nazi war machine going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_iron-ore_mining_during_World_War_II
That’s because genuine racism — namely anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism characterizes the party’s heritage. Not to mention rabid secularism. Marine Le Pen’s highly charismatic and attractive niece, Marion Marechal Le Pen, has dropped the name “Le Pen” and simply goes by Marion Marechal — in an effort to distance herself from her Holocaust-denying grandfather.
She is becoming a rival of sorts to her aunt. She is also more pro-Catholic than Marine and appeals to a wide swath of people normally alienated from French politics. Steve Bannon speaks especially highly of her.
...I view their arrogance about maintaining French culture as a strength.
Rendre la France grande à nouveau
RE: People ranging from Jean Genet to Michel Foucault, as well as scads of lesser known French “intellectuals,” were actually the ones who instilled that ideology into gullible American culture.
The Chinese students who imported the idea of Communism to China mostly studied in France. Zhou En Lai studied in France. So did Deng Xiao Ping.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diligent_Work-Frugal_Study_Movement
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