"Out-of-control leftism and cancel culture" from the United States is threatening the French identity, a group of prominent politicians and academics in France charged.
American leftists' woke ideology on race, gender, post-colonialism – especially those coming from U.S. universities – are undermining French society and are an attack on French heritage, the group said, according to a Feb. 9 report by the Daily Mail:
It is illegal in France to collect data based on race. The country's national identify is not focused on diversity and multiculturalism, instead emphasizing fundamental rights and core values such as equality and liberty.
The contention that France is being contaminated by American leftism was buoyed last year after French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to side with the academics.Macron warned in an October speech of "certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States."
Amid protests in June inspired by the leftist American group Black Lives Matter, Macron blamed universities for encouraging the "ethnicization of the social question" — amounting to "breaking the republic in two."
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer also warned in October that there is a "battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities."
An open letter from 100 prominent French scholars blasted social theories "transferred from North American campuses."
One of the signatories, Gilles Kepel, argued that American 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."
Historian Pierre-André Taguieff noted that the "American-style black question" was a "totally artificial importation" to France.
Taguieff said that it was all driven by "hatred of the West, as a white civilization. The common agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize. Straight white male — that's the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate."
Sociologist Nathalie Heinich last month established an organization that fights against what she called "decolonialism and identity politics."
The organization has written warnings against "American-inspired social theories" in many major French publications and has spoken out against "cancel culture" at French universities.
"It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture," Heinich said of the BLM-inspired protests.
Free Press International
