"Remember well, brothers," Bakunin wrote in essence in 1869, "that
educated youth must be neither the master, nor the protector, nor thebenefactor, nor the dictator of the people, but only the midwife of
their spontaneous emancipation, the unifier and organizer of the efforts
and of all popular forces[note]." ---- This is nothing new; Bakunin had
already warned his contemporaries about the dangers contained in the
avant-garde excesses of intellectuals who consider themselves entrusted
with a mission to "the people," whose tastes and social practices they,
in essence, stigmatize without tenderness. That is to say, their codes
and language tics. ---- As a friend said, "how can such stupid people
still claim to control our consciences without us laughing like our
fathers mocked the priests in cassocks?" His bad wit had endeared him to
me. He certainly wasn't lacking in insight, the fellow. Spreading the
good word among the people allows one to adopt the posture of a master
educator and build political careers.
The people have become a fiction, or at best, a hypothesis. Abolishing
them, Macron's flamboyant dream, is also the dream of neocolonialists
living in a fiction that never existed but inspired generations driven
by the desire to return to their roots-a sort of primitive community of
which they would be the guarantors. Where the village community is
spoken of as a lost paradise while the last of the few traces of this
fiction is being destroyed. The Clochemerle of village life, subjected
to the fantasies of current fictions, remains to be written.
And the enthusiasm provoked by these excesses of certainty within his
fan club serves as a seduction. The bag full of moralizing on all
subjects is devoid of simple humanity. The more militant they are, the
less their humanity is evident in their injunctions. It's a waltz of
defamatory labels. The die is cast. The ridicule is not silenced, and
that's fortunate for them.
The sacred nature of their commitment gives the neo-colonists' stance an
emotional dimension that is rather childish, or so false in its juvenile
behavior that it contrasts with the desire to do "like the
grown-ups"-it's striking. And it smacks of bad theater, somewhere
between unintentional parody and a sense of self-importance.
Macron said, the people don't exist. The crowd to which he reduces them,
the better to betray, without a guilty conscience, anyone who stands in
the way of his project-the deconstruction of the social system. And
Macron, like Brutus leading the Roman senators into a coup d'état,
Macron will betray François Hollande[note]and, bolstered by the
disconcerting naivety of the rallies from the left, he will betray his
voters and ultimately hand the keys to power to the National Rally,
because everything else in the political arena will be nothing but
ruins. The effects of resentment fill the void created by the loss of
hope in all its forms (technical and social progress, a more just
society, in short, that of the "happy days" of 1945, has sunk into
disillusionment with no hope of turning back). It fuels an increasingly
vigorous nihilistic temptation. Mission accomplished! The people, this
reactionary fiction, must blend into the habitus of a petty bourgeoisie
of the soul and disappear from the political landscape with the utmost
discretion.
The noise made by the "yellow vests"-which irked them and reinforced
their feeling of being obliged to yield nothing to these people who
smell of sweat, beer, and feast on grilled sausages-this revolt thus
highlighted a class alliance, an ideological alliance of sorts, between
the Macronian regime and its accomplice, the urban petty bourgeoisie, in
the development of a narrative that dismisses the social aspect out of hand.
It cannot be emphasized enough how repellent this state of mind is and
how it facilitates the National Rally's march to power. When we share a
common feeling of humiliation, the reflex is to give in to the
temptation of evil, simply to say "we exist." The PCF was once powerful
in the region, and the foundations of its popularity were based on an
identical principle. Class contempt, whether Macronian or pale green,
with its festive creative tendencies, provokes an identical ferment of
resentment. It inspires the same expressions of rejection as those
provoked by the old-fashioned bourgeoisie. By constantly treating our
neighbors like wandering souls waiting for the right word, we end up
convincing them that they are "inferior." A superiority complex devoid
of nobility and ultimately of unspeakable vulgarity. Definitely.
Jean-Luc Debry, August 2025
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8521
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten