French Government Declares American Leftism National Threat

Recently several prominent French government officials made public statements to the effect that they have begun to view some subjects taught in American social science faculties as a threat to French heritage and identity, including some of the major figures of French President Macron and Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.

This backlash against American politically correct education can start to be seen in summer-fall 2020 when the George Floyd inspired riots began spreading out of North America and into Europe as well as other places, which was surprising to many European cultural commentators and public figures. 

European countries simply do not have the same historical legacy of racial tensions as the United States, and many commentators on the specific French situation see the cultural tipping point to have been earlier in February when the director of the 350-year-old Paris Opera, Alexander Neef, published a 66-page report on his plan to ‘diversify’ the opera company, which was met with steep criticism from the mainstream media termed ‘far-right’ leader of the French, ‘National Rally’ political party.

Despite left-wing leaning media outlets such as The Guardian continuing to denigrate and demonize La Pen as ‘Alt-Right’, the political realities on the ground in France seem to have shifted since 2016, as even the middle-of-road, pro-globalism ‘La République En Marche!’, the party of current president Emmanuel Macron, seems to understand the terrible optics of just going along with whatever pro-SJW talking points the U.S. hyper-progressive leftwing spews out.

The shift in politics in France away from progressivism and towards security and controls on immigration has been so dramatic that even senior ministers in Macron’s government have admitted that la Pen could win the next presidential election despite Macron previously beating her with a 33 percent margin in 2017.

On this subject, back in Oct. 2020, Macron gave his ‘Fear is going to change sides’ speech, which targetted radical/violent Islamist terror groups within France in the wake of the highly brutal, and publicized Samuel Paty beheading incident. 

Surprisingly, although their rhetoric might not have reached the same heated levels of ‘alt-right,’ ‘National Rally,’ the current French government actually has not backed down on their commitment to combat radical Islamist terror groups, as one might’ve expected in the wake of Joe Biden ‘winning’ the U.S. presidency; Biden, leader of the Democratic Party, will obviously favour left-leaning policies during his stint as U.S. leader. 

Despite this ‘win,’ however, the current French government seems to still be scaling up their criticism of American SJW culture, as the French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer gave public remarks as recently as Jan. 14th, 2021, that he views imported American social science ideas as at least partially responsible for Islamist terror attacks within France. 

It isn’t just the French government, however, that has picked up on the idea that American style Social-Justice-Politics may be past their best-before date within France, as French public intellectuals have begun to voice hard-handed criticism of the movement. While this might sound like an anecdotal point for an English speaking-world or North American reader, it’s actually more significant than it sounds: French public intellectuals actually inhabit an important space within French society, culture, and the national identity, with no parallel role existing really in the English-speaking world. 

In any case, to circle back to the French government issue: when Macron’s government signaled it would be stepping up efforts to fight Islamism in France it was thought to be possibly a political ploy to head Marine la Penn off, and pinch off a few more right-leaning voters before the 2022 French general election. 

The continued pressure against not just Islamism, but also American style ‘woke’ leftist culture seems to the French are taking the issue of internal, ideologically based terror more seriously than at any point previously, although time will tell.