Freedom, equality, fraternity? the facistoid drift of Europe

“July 14” was a long time ago world celebration. In my town, located at the foot of the central mountain range, my teachers – trained in the ideals of the European Enlightenment – taught us to sing the most seductive hymn that mobilized the revolutionary armies with its vibrant chords when the reaction, internal and external, rushed to drown them in its blood who dared to cut off the heads of kings and establish a Republic as a form of government for free citizens.

Between 1775 and 1781, the North American colonies rose up and forced the English Empire to accept their independence after a painful and bloody struggle; which they had to reaffirm between 1812 and 1815 in the lesser-known Anglo-North America across the Atlantic. But in 1789, a popular subversion in one of the the central powers of Europe from the end of the 18th century it was real impudence.

Our childish minds imagined mobs in which the streets of that fairytale Paristhat in the fifth grade history textbooks were illustrated with contributions from ancient “cooperatives” and that later those were made in the color they were already wearing – not knowing who was Delacroix- to a gallant woman, bare chested, on Freedom that leads the people (which did not correspond to the storming of the Bastille), but which was equally consistent and more than relevant to the rebellious legacy with which France since those times asserted the rights of man and citizen in the streets, building so many barricades in Paris or Marseille, to make them effective . “Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!” And the fire of freedom and citizenship burned in our infantile breasts. We were brothers from those that they did not want to bow their heads before anyone, that they wanted the country to be equal before the law and that no man or woman believed that they were superior because they commanded the government. This at best represented the people and their servants. Because sovereignty lies in the people, and power is exercised by the people through freely elected representatives.

Later came nuances, which the story already nuanced in the third year of high school: France suppressed the Haitians. Freedom was for white people and landowners, not for the colonies and their black-skinned inhabitants. But there we heard of Petion and how that black man of all blacks and nobility promised to help the South American independents, Miranda and Bolívar, if they would free the slaves and include them as full members of the future American republics. And later, in the fifth year of high school, for the first time the teachers made us look beyond the fallen leaves anecdotal story and they pointed to the entire history, to long waves of transformations of means of production and mentality. But all this increased the meaning of “July 14” even more and set it as the horizon of justice and universal brotherhood towards which true humanity should move, transcending individual freedoms and establishing the rights of the second, third and fourth generations for everyone and among everyone.

July 14. Paris is burning again. The introduction of a state of emergency was considered. It’s off for now. Instead, financial sanctions were imposed on the parents of the protesting teenagers. (See: France 24: https://www.france24.com/es/europa/20230704-macron-announces-reconstruction-plan-after-the-riots-decrease-arrests-of-protesters) This time, like many others others in noble the history of France – unyielding, resurrected– reaction calls in the name of order, to the sacrifice of freedom, and in the name of freedom commits crimes against brotherhood and equality that hundreds of thousands in the streets of France come looking for years, through fiery protests and successive governments – right, center-right and center-left – turned a deaf ear. In its place: corruption and repression.

As the journalist noted, referring to UN Commission on Human Rights: French security forces have “deep problems of racism” and are plagued by a history of operational deaths: 861 since 1977, that’s about 19 a year (See: Teruggi, Marco, 3 July 2023: “France: if there is no future there is fire”) But not only racism, but also the forces of order exist precariously, which was condemned in 2019, when it was stated that in that country every four days, between January and April, one police officer committed suicide. ((See https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/mundo/mondo-cane/2019-04-23/un-suicidio-cada-cuatro-dias-por-que-los-policias-franceseses-se-estan-matando_1955794 /.).

Paris is burning. How did you manage the invitation? “Yellow Vest” protest (October 2018), and then in the massive national protest against the change in the pension regime (June 2023), which President Emmanuel Macron imposed legal means, but with very little democratic legitimacy, doing what servile European leaders seem to know best: favoring the interests of 1% of the population over 99% of their countrymen; coddling and rewarding transnational capital – they don’t even want the French – putting their American masters in charge above the interests of France, renouncing French tradition in favor of “strategic autonomy” France and Europe. Macron it allowed protests to thrive in order to justify repression and a fascistic shift in state control over increasingly hidden human rights, including the right to protest. Macron, when France was burning from Paris in Marseille, from Lyon to Strasbourg, he was at the Elton John concert, he very curtly called on the mayors of the affected cities for the 4th of July to solve the measures, and belatedly called on parents to control their children. there are causes complex and conjunctural structures that the security services know best and the French executive. No one can plead surprise or innocence.

Everything was calculated… or done. Bonfires have been built for years, leaving the run-down favelas and suburbs (“banlieues”) that surround France’s major cities to rot in abject misery; the rest is that the “black French” lose all illusion and all hope in the country-the cradle of modern civil liberties; Adolescents of two generations who served as precarious workers for the benefit of the dwindling French welfare state were left to their fate. And then fire was poured into the pyre, and then the coal was charged to burn. We are on the brink of what some are calling the “great reset” of the global extreme right. (Compare today’s France with the USA in the last 5 years). Someone has to pay the piper; except the owner of the dishes.

France this July 14 is an example, perhaps extreme, of what can happen in the rest of the “European garden” (Borrell dixit). Its leaders agreed to devote 2% to arms and security spending; impoverishment through rising interest rates that make it impossible for the middle class to own a home; and galloping inflation that is eroding the purchasing power of all Europeans. The European Central Bank has caused inflation and stagnation that are degrading and will continue to degrade the lives of Europeans without disturbing the liberated Christine Lagarde. Banks were bailed out and capital flight was allowed productive – especially German – in the US. European Union, In the voice of Úrsula van der Leyen – who has become the new Führer of the European plutocracy, – a racist, suprematist, capitalist and anti-democrat – she says that they are going from “separating from China” (its first commercial partner) to “de-risking” with an Asian power (although we do NOT say that it is increased to the most incredible submission, military, technological and financial, from Europe to the USA; and that his speech follows, without retouching, what Joe Biden and his hawks dictate from Washington).

July 4: “Aux arms, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons! Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons!” I, who am a republican at heart, because I get it from my teachers and it is a civil choice, I believe in the best man. If not today… tomorrow. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu taught me that. I sing that with Hugo and Zola, with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus: with Simone de Beauvoir and Margarita Yourcenar. I studied history with Georges Duvy, Lucien Febvre, Pierre Chaunu, Jacques Le Goff and Fernando Braudel; Geography with Yves Lacoste and Pierre Salam; Education with Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron. And I learned to think again with Edgar Morin.

To you, Nahel Merzouk, 17 years old, who was also French citizen and you have worked in France, if you loved rugby, I tell you: Neo-fascists will not pass! Long live France!