The words of Emmanuel Macron have once again hit the mark. On Wednesday, the President of the Republic compared, in the Council of Ministers, the violence, "whatever the cause", to a "process of decivilization", according to a participant in the meeting, confirming information from the Parisian. This expression was conceptualized by the German sociologist Norbert Elias in the 1930s. But it is also the title of a book by Renaud Camus, theorist of the "great replacement", published in 2011. The term therefore caused a lot of reaction in the political class, left and right.
Guest of the morning of CNews this Thursday morning, Marine Le Pen was pleased that Emmanuel Macron came "once again [them] give reason". "I've been talking about savagery for years and getting blamed for all the wrongs for doing this. Decivilization is barbarism,” she asserted. The president of the National Rally (RN) group in the National Assembly regrets that the Head of State "wakes up when the situation is already very burdened".
On the right, Bruno Retailleau "shares the concern of the President of the Republic". "When there are phenomena of savagery, when the school no longer manages to transmit knowledge, when there is an enterprise of cultural deconstruction, we are witnessing a process of decivilization", tweeted the president of the group Les Républicains (LR) in the Senate, refuting that it is far-right terminology on the Télématin set this Thursday. Senator LR recently used this term to describe the violence against elected officials after the resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brevin.
"The hazy concept of decivilization launched by E. Macron is the title of a book by far-right writer Renaud Camus, who has wanted to impose this word in public debate since 2011", also recalled the deputy for La France insoumise (LFI) Alexis Corbière on Twitter. "To consider this to be pure coincidence is either a farce or distressing," he added. MEP LFI Manon Aubry also regretted that the president made "his own the smoky "decivilization" of the racist Renaud Camus", casting "a harsh light on our country".
On the side of environmentalists, the national secretary of Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV), Marine Tondelier, denounced a "permanent one-upmanship" by the Head of State. "It's dangerous for our country," she told BFMTV. The leader of the EELV deputies, Cyrielle Chatelain, finally lambasted on Twitter a "new example" of Emmanuel Macron's "guilty complacency towards the far right".
