Is France's identity threatened by the US? America's 'cancel culture' cause for concern, say European leaders
They have been two close allies through the annals of history but now, one of them is fearful of the fact that the "out-of-control leftism and cancel culture" widely witnessed in the other is threatening its identity.
People, including politicians, intellectuals and academics, in France, where extremist and leftist tendencies have not been uncommon, have raised concerns saying that leftism and cancel culture in the US is putting the European nation’s identity in peril, according to a report by The New York Times on Tuesday, February 9.
According to them, the American ideas on issues like race, gender and post-colonialism — especially those coming out from the country’s universities – are posing a serious threat to both France’s society and heritage.
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The intellectuals who are saying that France is being threatened by America’s leftism were encouraged by none other than French President Emmanuel Macron last year who appeared to back them. In a speech given in October on ‘Fight Against Separatism’, Macron issued a warning against leaving “the intellectual debate to others” while saying that “certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States”.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, Macron’s education minister, also said around the same time that there is a “battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities”.
The debate has come to the fore this week after Alexander Neef, the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet, the oldest national ballet company in the world and also one of the most prestigious, recently released a 66-page report on diversity at the company. Neef has pledged to diversify staff at the Ballet and the move came after five Black members of the ballet company circulated a letter among its 1,800 employees last summer demanding greater diversity.
Neef, however, did not find it easy. Far-right leader Marine le Pen and French newspaper Le Monde targeted him alleging that Neef “soaked up American culture for 10 years” during his stint with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. Besides, a book written by social scientists Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel has also claimed that race is a “bulldozer” that decimates other subjects.
The NYT report cited them saying that they did not believe race should not be studied as an academic subject in France since the country’s secular government doesn’t recognize it.
The tension has left leaders and thinkers in France worried since the country witnessed protests over police violence last summer, similar to those in the US that erupted following the murders of George Floyd and other Black individuals.
The protests also sparked more tensions in the universities as students started putting pressure on institutions to stop inviting renowned speakers. The field of art was also not left untouched as activists slammed a play held at Sorbonne University, Paris, where White actors were made to sport masks and dark make-up.
American universities slammed for Islamic terrorism
Some intellectuals in France have also held the American universities responsible for justifying acts of terrorism carried out by Islamic outfits. Blanquer lashed out at the educational institutions in the wake of three Islamic terror attacks carried out last fall. He also backed an open letter penned by 100 prominent scholars that blasted social theories “transferred from North American campuses”.
Gilles Kepel, one of the letter’s signatories, argued that America's influence led to “a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of political Islam in the name of a leftist ideology that considers it the religion of the underprivileged”.
President Macron also announced in his October speech plans for bringing in tougher laws to deal with what he called “Islamist separatism” and defend the country’s secular values.