This text first appeared on the Telos-eu website: https://www.telos-eu.com/fr/politique-francaise-et-internationale/laprs-7-octobre-un-titanic-des-gauches-en-democrat.html
The disaster of October 7th did not only shatter the illusion of Israel's invincibility, nor that of a possible military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also brought to light, seen from home, another disaster: that, in democratic societies, of a part of the left, which has shifted to direct or indirect support for Hamas, from the refusal to describe this attack as "terrorist" to the resumption of slogans openly calling for the destruction of Israel (such as the infamous "Palestine, from the Jordan to the sea"), through the argument of "resistance", which sullies a fetish word of national memory.
And this is not just the case in France of a few small groups, such as the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) or the PIR (Party of the Natives of the Republic), but also of a party duly represented in Parliament, and which even claimed to be able to win a presidential election – namely LFI (La France Insoumise).
A quintuple disaster
Disaster: the fight against anti-Semitism, which was for a long time an important marker of the left, has thus been abandoned by people who claim to be on the left. If we have known for a long time that anti-Semitism is "the communism of imbeciles", we understand today that anti-Zionism has become the anti-colonialism of the mediocre.
Disaster: the defense of secularism is also shelved, since these people who claim to be left-wing prefer to take the side of a political movement that has become, with Hamas, both military and explicitly Islamist. These so-called "left-wing" activists are ready to support the worst bigots as long as they are identified as "dominated", in line with Islamo-leftism - a term conveniently created in the early 2000s by Pierre-André Taguieff[1]. Let us not forget the unworthy statement made by Jean-Luc Mélenchon on November 12, 2020, thus justifying his participation in the “march against Islamophobia” organized by the defunct CCIF: “There is in this country, fabricated, fueled by a whole current of ideas, a hatred of Muslims disguised as secularism.”
Disaster: the fight for equality and the emancipation of women – once again a classic marker of the left – is forgotten, drowned in the glorification of an Islam that has become, thanks to the inversion of victimhood, synonymous with the fight against domination, even when it condemns Muslim women to exist in the public space only as zombies.
Disaster: the fight against homophobia and discrimination linked to sexual orientation has also sunk in this shipwreck of the Titanic of the radical left – a cause which, however, also belongs to the catalogue of the left's struggles. That homosexuality is demonized by Islamic fundamentalists, that homosexuals are even thrown out of windows in countries governed by sharia law, this does not seem to worry LGBT activists. Hamas friendly ", who do not hesitate to proclaim their support for their potential executioners like chickens running to get under the wing of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken).
Disaster finally: while support for democracy is – or at least should be – a pillar of the left, here is a fraction of it openly supporting the most authoritarian, despotic and anti-democratic regimes as long as they declare themselves victims of the only democratic country in the Middle East (despite the disastrous policies pursued by some of its leaders, and by the current one in particular). Victory therefore of the eternal return to the Stalinist dogma of “the end justifies the means”…
How can we understand this fivefold shipwreck of a part of the Western left, which has happened so suddenly, so brutally, so mercilessly since October 7?
The Iceberg of Wokeism
It was not difficult, however, to anticipate it. Because this unconditionally pro-Palestinian turn, going as far as the assumed support for what deserves the name of “Islamofascism,” is based on two basic ideas. The first is communitarianism, which assigns by principle every individual to an essentialized identity community: here, “the Jews,” without distinguishing between Jews by religion and Jews by ancestry or culture; “the Israelis,” without distinguishing between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis; and “the Palestinians,” without distinguishing between pious Muslims and those who have broken away from religion, nor between those who support the Hamas military and those who loathe them, nor between those who aspire to Jihad and those who aspire to democracy – without even mentioning Christians and Druze.
The second idea is the exclusive focus on the dominant/dominated couple, assigning the first term to one so-called "community" and the second to another, ignoring at the same time that there are different factors of inequality. Ignoring, therefore, that not all inequality is reducible to domination; and ignoring, for example, that a small Jewish worker weighs little compared to the heir of a large Palestinian family, or that a Muslim woman is infinitely more "dominated" in her own family than her husband is in Gaza, provided that he is a member of Hamas, shamelessly exploiting his fellow citizens, using them as human shields and diverting humanitarian aid to his own benefit.
We therefore see here at work two regressive conceptions of social relations: communitarianism, heir to clanism and tribalism, and the obsession with domination, based on an infantile Manichaeism. Now it is their intersection that makes the fundamental characteristic of a phenomenon well identified for some years in Western societies: wokism, whose worrying aspects I have shown behind its apparently progressive facade[2], particularly highlighting its links with anti-Semitism[3].
The disaster of the left after October 7 is therefore only the tip of the iceberg of wokeism, the danger of which has been pointed out by some of us for several years.[4], despite the reluctance of so many of our peers, paralyzed by the idea that the legitimate criticism of wokeism would assimilate them to the Trumpist right – exactly as, sixty years ago, a part of the left was reluctant to denounce the gulag for fear of being stigmatized as “imperialist”. Because by choosing to unconditionally defend the “dominated” constituted in “communities” (Palestinians, Muslims, women, homosexuals, blacks…), the ideology Woke inevitably comes to forgetting to defend not clans, but values: “campism”, in other words the bias for one camp against another, quickly takes the place of political and moral reflection.
It is this shipwreck of the reference to constituent values that was already confirmed by the advance of wokism and, with it, of Islamo-leftism.[5] – a shipwreck that was brought to light by the sinister shift of the radical left, which thus cut itself off from the founding values of the left.
The war of the left
Kamel Daoud, however, had sounded the alarm a week after the attack: it, he wrote, is "a defeat for the Palestinian cause" because it is "the confirmation of an anti-Jewish messianism. Now Talibanized, the "cause" fuels a strictly hateful Judeophobia."[6]. From this defeat which constitutes, in Taguieff's words, the "jihadization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", the pro-Palestinian left could have taken note, by firmly condemning a barbaric drift that no political cause, however just, can justify, and by having the courage to say this truth: Hamas is the worst enemy of the Palestinian people. It would thus have demonstrated not only lucidity but also, quite simply, dignity.
However, it must be acknowledged today: the radical left is unworthy – unworthy, in any case, of the values of the left. And it is for this reason that I titled this article “a Titanic.” lefts ", in the plural: because "the left", from now on, no longer means much. There are only "some" lefts, at war with each other, or which at least should clearly declare themselves as such. The lefts can no longer be said except in the plural. And this is one of the major consequences of October 7 in Western countries, from Paris to Harvard, from Rome to London and from Madrid to Berlin.
The universalist, rationalist, secular, democratic left, attached to freedom of expression and allied against anti-Semitism – this left has nothing more to do with a so-called left that despises these values, having traded them for the ready-made thinking of wokeism, and which only displays its detestation of the extreme right to open up a boulevard for it with its excesses. This is why the “radical left” does not have to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the representation of the left, any more than Benjamin Netanyahu has to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the representation of Israel, and any more than Hamas has to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the representation of the Palestinian people.
What October 7 will have taught us, ultimately – but we must still seriously learn the lesson – is that the left can only regain its dignity by resolutely cutting itself off from its radicalized faction. We owe this break to our progressive ideals, as we owe it to all those in Israel who campaign for a fair and lasting peace – that is, for the survival of the country.
