Grandma's fuming: we're making too much noise in the hallway. We can't even hear ourselves have tea with our left-wing friends anymore. It seems that all this commenting, tweeting, debating, and sharing has made us "unmanageable," and because of us, we can no longer think in peace or even among ourselves. Us? We, the people who talk on social media. Sorry: on "social gossip" (private joke (of a patronizing lady to disqualify the people). It's 2026, okay: their "public space" has turned into a chaotic mess, popular voices jostle, strain, and scatter. Some might watch this uproar with concerned sympathy, but these ladies do so with an almost religious nostalgia: in the past, opinion passed through "filters," "salons," "newsrooms"—in short, through well-guarded doors… but they held the keys. Ah, that made them indispensable… That's for sure. Today, words burst forth from all sides, like an uncontrolled torrent. And it's shaking up the little backyard hierarchies. We're flirting with disaster. Soon, we'll have to put up signs saying "Silence, democracy in recovery."

Is this a sign of a crisis? There are even those who write in the press—the real press, the one that endorses and re-examines itself—that—and I quote—"this civilizing process is turning into its opposite, primarily due to social media." Because sociability, apparently, was acceptable as long as it took place over tea. Mind you: not all forms of sociability, mind you. Because to pontificate about sociability in the 17th century and the foundations of The Goose and the GrillTo explain to you that inns "were the place of counter-power" and the "birth of the Enlightenment": there, people are all ears. But to understand that "networks" and "sociability" go hand in hand in the 21st century? Nobody. Just gossip. We celebrate the sociability of 17th-century inns, but we frown when it comes via fiber optics. That says it all: popular opinion, by speaking too loudly, has ended up disturbing those who prefer to speak quietly—and properly. Because deep down, it's really about morality. And silencing dissenting opinions. But that's normal, it's for your own good.
Yet, if we go back to the very roots of democracy, we discover that clamor is not the exception: it is the rule. Imagine: for the Athenians, the city-state was not founded on the hushed conversation of a drawing-room! It was forged in the agora, amidst shouts, calls, interjections, and public disagreements. Perhaps even Pericles, when he spoke of equality among citizens, included the poorest among them? Greek democracy was neither silent nor polite; it was alive. If this system degenerated, it was because it became closed off, not because it talked too much. And besides: Do we talk too much? That's curious: violence, on the other hand, tends to arise when we stop talking. It is precisely because we don't talk enough that violence is created. Real violence: the kind that killed Quentin. These women want to muzzle everyone, and one suspects they have a strange confidence in the power of force to silence dissenters for them. Isn't that right?

Looking at contemporary thought, some still dream of a rationalized, almost liturgical public sphere, where arguments are arranged in elegant syllogisms, and where debate is a university colloquium. What a joke! One can almost imagine a bailiff of reasoning ensuring the proper order of the syllogisms! This "model" forgets the essential point: democracy is not a colloquium. It is not consensus. It is not harmony. It is, as a certain tradition of social critique has so aptly demonstrated, the site of conflicting plurality, where voices long confined to the periphery finally come to hear each other and even argue. Of course, one must be able to remain in the same room as one's opponents and not systematically leave at the slightest disagreement. But the patroness has her image in mind. She defends the Republic as one defends a mirror: with concern.
What some call disorder is sometimes the irruption of the unexpected, the temporary victory of a marginal voice that would never have found an echo in the inner circle of the elite. The image is obscured by the chaotic clamor.

In reality, the democratic uproar is less worrying because of its content than because of its origin. It comes from below. It didn't ask for permission. It wasn't approved by a committee. It wasn't the subject of a soothing editorial. This noise makes those who are used to being the guardians of the intellectual temple nervous. Because noise, precisely, scoffs at filters. It doesn't respect the hierarchies of legitimacy that were once cherished. It spreads, it goes astray, it transforms, it starts again. It infiltrates. And sometimes: it's right. Rumor is not the enemy of politics. It is its shadow. Where institutional trust erodes, it thrives. Where trust is strong, it dies of its own accord. Social networks don't create disorder; they make it visible. They lay bare a plurality that is already present, already conflictual, already alive. Democracy is not dissolved in this uproar; on the contrary, it draws its vitality from it. For democracy speaks loudly. It hurls insults, it exaggerates, it contradicts itself. It sometimes displeases. But within this cacophony lies an energy. The energy that prevents ideas from becoming rigid, interests from becoming entrenched, and divisions from remaining alive.

And then comes the voting booth: that moment of sacred silence. The clamor ceases. The decision is made in contemplation. Only there, in this silence chosen and not imposed, is popular sovereignty expressed. Those who fear the noise of democracy perhaps forget that it is not a pathology, but a condition. Silence, when demanded outside of voting, is not the seal of political maturity: it is the sign of fear. Fear of the people, of their vibrant voice, of their diversity. Now, if we want a real democracy—and not a fiction muffled by a nostalgia for calm—then we must accept that freedom of expression is this fundamental clamor, this great dissonant accord, this noisy dialogue that only ends in the voting booth. Those who want to save democracy from noise forget that it was born of tumult.
By constantly protecting it from the people, we end up protecting it from them.
And on that day, it was no longer the noise that threatened – it was the silence.