French PM, other officials denounce ‘woke’ culture amid worries it is ‘racializing’ France
Emmanuel Macron’s recent comments on woke culture come as France’s relations with the Biden administration take a turn for the worse.
France recognizes the dangers posed by “woke” culture and is leading the charge against the ideology to prevent it from further affecting the country. President Emmanuel Macron, along with several other French government officials, are now speaking out against wokeness, which has its roots in American progressivism.
Leading French magazine Le Spectacle Du Monde slammed America’s “woke” culture in a front-page article titled “The Suicide of America.” The article blames America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan on a “woke dictatorship” and posits the question of whether the “American empire was collapsing.”
The article sheds light on progressivism in the United States, highlighting wokeness in American universities, which have been at the forefront of the culture war and the encroachment of censorship upon academic institutions. In particular, the article cites Yale University, which made headlines several years ago when school officials landed themselves in hot water over allegedly racially insensitive Halloween costumes.
Macron recently told Elle magazine that he feared that woke culture was “racializing” French society, Fox News reported.
Macron’s views have been echoed by other members of the French government, including Elisabeth Moreno, the country’s delegate minister for gender equality and diversity. Moreno expressed concern over America’s “woke” ideology, telling Bloomberg News in May that “woke culture is something very dangerous, and we shouldn’t bring it to France.”
The minister also warned that the excesses of cancel culture “kick out people from ongoing debates because they think otherwise.” She stated that although she welcomed conversations on social, gender, and racial inequalities, no one should be shut out from conversation for their opinions.
“People are speaking up and that’s good,” Moreno said. “Everyone should fight discrimination. You can’t ask someone not to speak about a topic because the person doesn’t feel legitimate. It makes no sense.”
As detailed by the Daily Wire, a panel at the Tocqueville Conversations, named after the late 19th-century philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, took aim at woke culture and the censorship of free speech in the United States.
“Our mantra is that we should talk even if we strongly disagree. Nothing prevents you from talking and exchanging and dialoguing,” said Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville, a descendant of the late philosopher. “The French Revolution was an event that led to a bloody civil war because the people who were not in agreement with the new ideas, the really revolutionary ideas, were just killed and beheaded. It was not a good way to debate.”
Macron’s recent comments on woke culture come as France’s relations with the Biden administration take a turn for the worse.
British politician Nigel Farage, now a presenter at GB News, told Fox News that he agreed with France’s criticism of woke culture.
“The French are always quite critical of the Americans in the sense that they can never forgive you for saving them and World War Two,” Farage quipped. “Now, to begin with, the submarine deal, which has been struck by the USA, the UK with Australia, that is to give Australia 21st century submarines with nuclear reactors in the back, not the diesel ones.”
“So they're a little bit sore, however, when it comes to the point about woke and about cancel culture. Yes, I'm afraid this stuff was invented in the USA and it's being exported to Western Europe,” he said. “And the further criticism about is this the end of the American empire, let's be frank about this. Biden's calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan has removed America from the world stage and with that much respect that people had for the country.”
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