The woke ideology also lands in France and Germany
We have known for some time that the Woke ideology has landed in a big way in the United Kingdom – we also wrote about it here a few months ago – and it was in detail attested by a field research carried out by the American pollster and political scientist Frank Luntz, of whom he punctually reported in the Daily Mail by Luntz himself. More recent is the discovery that even in Germany and France the phenomenon has begun to spread and arouse heated discussions at all levels.
In Germany, to begin with, the "dethronement" of Julian Reichelt, one of the most famous and respected journalists in the Federal Republic, was much discussed, who was removed from the management of Bild , the most popular newspaper in Europe, following the accusations of relationships with younger colleagues contained in a New York Times article by Ben Smith. The piece also suggested that Axel Springer SE , the German publishing giant that owns Bild , is not in line with today's woke and MeToo values. Additionally, a few weeks earlier, Springer announced that it would buy Politico , the US policy website, for about $ 1 billion, the German publisher's largest ever investment. One more reason to adopt the new values that dominate American capitalist culture today. After all, as Ben Smith said, an American manager would be fired for 5 percent of the charges Reichelt has on his back. All in all we can say that Springer sacrificed an excellent newspaper editor on the altar of woke capitalism , or, in the words of Springer boss Mathias Döpfner, “the last and only journalist in Germany who still bravely rebels against the new authoritarian state. DDR model ".
Meanwhile, debate rages across the country over gender-neutral and inclusive language. Unfortunately, however, the whole matter is made extremely complicated by the relentless German grammar, less inclined to compromise than the English one …
In France, the discussion is even more heated. The leading French quarterly magazine Le Spectacle Du Monde , a few weeks ago, published a cover story entitled "The Suicide of America". He attributed the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan "to a woke dictatorship" and wondered if "the American empire was collapsing". In the same issue, an article stigmatized American universities as islands of extremism, where even students' Halloween costumes are controlled, citing Yale University, a place where wearers of costumes deemed "offensive" are punished. ".
Emmanuel Macron's government, in turn, is making the fight against Woke theories a cornerstone of its electoral strategy (French presidential elections are very close: April 2022). "Our country has become a target of the woke movement," said Pierre Valentin, an expert at the new think tank Le Laboratoire de la République , led by French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer. By the way, absolutely to be read, in Italian, the International Gazette of 9 August, edited by Giulio Meotti and entitled " The woke, opium of intellectuals ", in which the interesting interview by Kevin Boucaud-Victoire is re-proposed in Italian to Pierre Valentin published in Marianne magazine at the end of July.
Le Laboratoire de la République has the task of fighting what Minister Blanquer calls " wokism imported from the United States". “The Republic is completely against wokism, ” Blanquer said in an interview with Le Monde . "In the United States", argues the minister, "this ideology provoked a reaction and led to the rise of Donald Trump". And Trumpism, ça va sans dire , is the worst of evils in the enlightened Macronian-Blanquerian thought… Obviously the initiative has aroused controversy. “It's McCarthyism,” said Rim-Sarah Alouane, of the Toulouse 1 Capitole University: “A minister is using a private body to block discussions on these issues […]. They are trying to attract reactionary and conservative voters. And, of course, the voters who are fascinated by Eric Zemmour ”.
In an interview with Elle magazine last summer, President Macron himself complained that the " woke culture" imported from the United States is "racializing" France and creating more division among minorities. Monsieur le President was obviously criticized by progressives, while just as obviously several members of his government, such as the delegate minister for gender equality and diversity, Elisabeth Moreno, a woman of color, shared her fiercely critical approach. “ Woke culture is something very dangerous and we shouldn't import it into France,” Madame Moreno said in an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this year.
"No, woke is not a 'reactionary' ghost, it is an ongoing cultural revolution," wrote French journalist and essayist Brice Couturier in Le Figaro on October 25, responding to those who deny the reality of woke activism and attribute his complaint only to conservatives. Couturier is the author of the recently published book “ Ok Millennials! Puritanisme, victimization, identitarisme, censure … L'enquête d'un 'baby boomer' sur les mythes de la génération woke " ( Ok Millennials! Puritanism, victimization, identitarianism, censorship … The investigation of a" baby boomer "on the myths of woke generation ). This new cultural revolution does not come from China, he says, but from the United States. And it's just as devastating. The "social justice warriors," he argues, are our new Red Guards. "This book is dedicated to reconstructing the history of what has become known as the woke revolution", declares the author in the introduction, and "focuses on recent American cultural history, where this ' ésprit ' was born and has already done havoc, and is still far from having reached its peak in France. We remain confined to the margins of society. In the United States it has seized power, without ever winning the majority, simply by conquering cultural hegemony ”. L'Oréal bans the terms "white" and "bleaching" from its catalogs, Evian apologizes to Muslims for an ad posted on social media on the first day of Ramadan, Lego deletes its advertisements depicting police officers in solidarity with Black Lives Matter …
Who can still say that woke is a folkloric phenomenon confined to North American campuses? I honestly don't think you can blame Couturier. But not even, for that matter, to Emmanuel Macron and his zealous collaborators.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/rubriche/lideologia-woke-sbarca-anche-in-francia-e-germania/ on Thu, 11 Nov 2021 03:51:00 +0000.