Mr. Julien Aubert.
Mr. Minister of National Education, last week, the Observatory of Decolonialism and Identity Ideologies, which brings together a hundred French academics, submitted to you an alarming report that reveals the extent of the penetration of decolonial ideas and what is called woke culture, according to the term used across the Atlantic. This discourse is based on the pseudo-scientific theses of intersectionality, according to which it is appropriate to bring together minorities who are victims of discrimination in order to fight against the white hegemony that prevails in Western civilization. In other words, to colonize is bad; to educate is to colonize minds; therefore to educate is bad.
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
Because colonizing is good?
Mr. Julien Aubert.
The finding is clear: according to the report, the university is today the scene of an ideological battle led by the proponents of deconstruction against the institution itself. Examples are cited of professors who had to leave their rooms in 2020, under pressure from students: one had wanted to show the film J'accuse by Roman Polanski, but around fifteen students attacked her, accusing her of being an accomplice to the director's crimes.
We would be wrong to think that this is a folkloric movement or a simple fashion: it is a fascism that essentializes its adversary in order to eliminate it.
I had asked the President of the National Assembly, with the President of my group, Damien Abad, and a hundred parliamentarians from the LR group, to create a fact-finding mission. You refused.
Why did you receive this report and not Ms Vidal? What do you intend to do to crush this identity movement? (Mr Jean-Luc Mélenchon laughs.) What is the status of the CNRS's work on Islamo-leftism, a related subject? (Applause from the benches of the LR group.)
Mr. Régis Juanico.
Ah!
Mr. President.
The floor is given to the Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports.
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports.
Mr Aubert, I am answering you, but it could just as well have been the Minister of Higher Education, as we regularly discuss the subject and our positions are identical.
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
Well, that's not reassuring!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
First of all, you are right, we cannot underestimate the phenomenon you are talking about (Exclamations from Mrs. Marie-George Buffet). It is absolutely not marginal. We see it in American universities, in places of education and culture all over the world. It is a groundswell. All republican, humanist, universalist thought...
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
What do you know about this thought? You are a reactionary!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
…must be perfectly aware of the danger represented by differentialism, which seeks to oppose and classify people, particularly by race, as many notions that we thought had disappeared and which are resurfacing. The fact that these concepts enter through the window of the extreme left while they had gone out through the door of the extreme right changes nothing: they are dangerous; they are preparing the worst for our society, as for others.
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
What a mess!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
So I am very sensitive to this – it is public knowledge. That is why the report was given to me – there was nothing formal about it – so that I could read it.
Mr. Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
What do you know about it?
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
You are not a Republican!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
We are therefore thinking about how to approach this subject calmly and serenely, first of all on the substance...
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
You're ridiculous! You're talking nonsense!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
…because it is first and foremost an intellectual fight for humanism, which must be the foundation of education, whether in national education or in higher education. Frédérique Vidal and I are very clear on this point.
This of course requires taking the measure of the phenomenon, first, by studying it – that is what we do – and then by acting. For the training of teachers, which concerns me directly, it is obviously out of the question to accept what you have described in your own way and which I would call a new McCarthyism, a thought police.
Mrs. Mathilde Panot.
Ah!
Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister.
We don't want this thought police for our children. (Applause from several benches in the LaREM group.)
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
Still ten months to go!
Mr. President.
The floor is given to Mr. Julien Aubert.
Mr. Julien Aubert.
Mr. Minister, I believe that we agree on the diagnosis. (Exclamations from the benches of the FI group.)
Mr. Alexis Corbière.
And There you go !
Mrs. Mathilde Panot.
Obviously !
Mr. Julien Aubert.
Now, we must act to protect teachers and students. When I hear the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution on the other side of the chamber, I unfortunately tell myself that this diagnosis is not unanimously shared. (Applause from the benches of the LR group. – Protests from the benches of the FI group.)
