So who would die for Maran that’s a slightly more optimistic title than the one uh provided on your presentations I asked myself this question because a few days ago I was watching a video of young French people who were asked well if France had to go War would you fight for
France all of them were saying no so I thought oh dear if there’s a third world war we’re going to need the Americans again France used to have a glorious history of being this country of Freedom at the Forefront of identity and uh the defense of individual liberty as you can
See it here and the emblem for this was this figure of Marian so this woman with her frian cap leading people to its freedom in 1790 more or less this figure became emblematic of the New Order of the Republic the trouble is that nowadays this figure is not the most unitive we
Have and if we want to look at a moment when the history of France shows France being united again it’s when we win the World Cup I was uh 11 years old in 1998 and that was a moment of great exhilaration and unity because all of a sudden France appeared as that country
Where the white the black the Arabs would get together and Achieve something great and that was the kind of story that would bring people together and make everyone happy four years later slight surprise who comes in front of very classic goal list ja Shak we have Jean
Marie Leen leader of the front National for my generation FR National was the synonymous of political hell no one wanted the FR National I remember the slogan forgive my French so why did all all of a sudden France moveed from this it’s wonderful we’re doing things together no matter if
You’re black white Arab you are French and you will do great things here to we need to stop these Savages from destroying our country one thing that happened is that the end of the second World War and the end of the French Colonial Empire led to a need for reconstruction so the city
Were built to welcome the workers from North Africa and uh subsaharan Africa who were previously part of the colonies and who would be welcomed in France to contribute to the rebuilding of the nation when these towers were built they were considered Peak modernity it was great it was this lcar ideal of the
Building responding perfectly to its function so your home is a square where you live and we’re going to provide you with lots of light a bit of fresh air the roads here so that you can go to work and isn’t it amazing yes you’ll even have some green spots here that’s
Great so it wasn’t a matter of excluding them or putting them apart this was seen as progress it was seen as social Mobility you live there you spend a few years there you gain enough wealth to move elsewhere and then these buildings are available for the next Generation to
Come in start their family and then they’d move on it was a great idea idea but what people forgot was that we are not L we are not the sum of our functions and whenever you reduce an individual to his functions it’s dehumanizing so enters the recession of the
1980s these buildings are now completely degraded people do not have the social Mobility to live these places and they feel stuck and trapped in a world that has no connection with the west of French culture here where are the libraries where are the museums where are the churches no places that can
Bring people together because people who lived there have been seen as workers or as tools so here is what the young people of the bonu look like here they look pretty nice they just chilling out everything is fine but this shows you know a majority of unemployed young men who do
Not have any grounding in country where they live and build up a certain resentment so I’m not planning to Advocate or remove any kind of moral responsibility from them when they do something bad but you know they feel stuck in France just for the reason explained here here I am a North African
Woman in Sweden coming from an English University talking at you in English if the world was perfect I’d be talking to you in French you know like we are doing when during the societ but French is not a selling language anymore France has zero soft power in comparison with The
Prestige it used to have let’s say just 30 years ago so speak French visit France speak English visit the world if you speak the bonu French you can never ever leave that place so the Bon problem is not so much an ethnic problem as it is a space segregation problem if your
Postcode in France starts with 93 the employers won’t like you so even if your name is Jean dupon if your reference is the Bon culture you have no social Prospect and this leads to that the 2023 riots the proof that there is a whole part of the youth in France that has no
Grounding in French history and continuity and they don’t belong in the place and they don’t want to belong in it we used to have stories that we tell children to make them feel proud of being French and here she is jovar who kicked out the English from uh from oron
And just managed to reinst store a king that was a great great feat and we tell these stories of Victory and we have the impression that yes some great things were done by French people in the past even when they lost if you lose to Caesar it’s not really losing right
Right so this is ver surrendering to Caesar throwing his weapons he’s been taking a prisoner to Rome horrendous ending for him but this illustrates a phrase that was the opening of many history books all across the French Colonial Empire our ancestors the GS this might seem ridiculous that you know someone
From Congo someone from andin could say no but in fact there is something very logical about it which is that from the moment you acquire French literature language history you are just as French as any other French person no questions asked and that is still the policy in
France in so far as if you’re born on the French soil educated in France you’re French that’s it and it explains why French data is colorblind we don’t know exactly how many people are born from immigration and so on so forth because everyone is French so France doesn’t really do
Multiculturalism in the way the UK or the us or Canada would do it’s just your French and that’s it this is explained by the complexity of France in of itself if you look at the details here so um when jonar intervened she created the unity between this North France let’s say butter and
Beer France and this France that’s olive oil and wine France and it was so important because you know until the very beginning of the 20th century these people from Britany didn’t like the Normans who didn’t like the P who didn’t like the people from the East everyone dislike the parisians
And other points of tension people here had more in common with the people here than with the people here people here had more in common with people here and so on so forth people here no they didn’t have much in common with people there no so um
Dul great man of French Unity after the chaos of second world war during the war said something like well a country that has 350 cheeses cannot lose the war good uh later after the Americans and the British helped us out of quite a messy situation he said how is one supposed to
Govern a country that has 258 different cheeses so you’ve noticed fewer cheeses but more importantly in France we don’t say that diversity is our strength diversity is chaos it creates complications it creates a very difficult possibility of unity so either diversity or Unity you have to make a
Choice there is a very sad way of achieving unity in human anthropology which is scapegoating you take a group whether they’re innocent or guilty it doesn’t matter you just put all the blame on them and then execute them and France sadly enough has a very dark history of scapegoating minorities to
Create its Unity there is the dfus laf dfus in 1894 where a Jewish officer was degraded uh deprived of his military orders under fce accusations just because he was Jewish another dark page of French history uh that’s the m M of eggot so Italian workers were hired by a French F
Salt mine to work there what did the French do they met them with pics and axes and something between eight and 150 Italians were killed and that’s not the worst part of the story the worst part of the story is that the murderers were acquitted and when the jury announced
That they were innocent everyone in courtroom stood and gave them a understanding Ovation so France does have a dark past when it comes to creating Unity by singling out and executing the minorities this leads to well what we all remember of French actuality since 2015 the Charo attacks the batakan
Attacks the death of Samuel PTI of Jac AML and the list keeps going on and on and on the problem is that nowadays we don’t tell the Young Generation how much blood it cost to create the extremely fragile Unity that France has achieved at the moment you have a minority that believes
That all of French evildoing in the colonial era is the cause for everything that is wrong now well France has been violent long before the Colonial period so you can’t reduce everything to the the ultra contemporary history we need to have some uh distance and perspective so how does one ensure that
The Next Generation does not repeat these Horrible Histories I think France has a problem with one religion no she won’t say that oh no no no it’s the hardcore republicanism it’s a religion that sets the state as the highest standard as the norm for DEC creting what is
Transcendental and what is not and of course everyone will be frustrated with that especially when your motto is liberal fraternity but no one is free no one is equal and there is no sense of community and Brotherhood so how do we use this figure of Marian to recreate to
Reinvent a shared national identity I think we should perhaps redefine what Liberty egality fraternity means Liberty freedom for what for achieving happiness you love the place where you are happy if you feel trapped in a place where you are unhappy you’ll end up not liking it so there are serious economic
Problems that lead to a feeling of stagnation all across the French society that have to be addressed egality I don’t believe much in equality I’m ready to fight physically against any man in the room who tells me that men and women are equal um it’s just not a thing as an
Absolute equality is relative equality is the equality in front of the law so double standards can’t really work under that regime but the only way you can stop having double standards is by having a one single standard on many things you can’t expect people to just
Come along with a different set of norms and try to navigate all of that or to repress any form of uh strangeness or diversity and now fraternity well we used to have a way of creating fraternity by fighting against other people you know so let’s let’s shed lots of blood
And then we’ll be United perhaps there’s a better way of creating this sense of fraternity of Brotherhood by seeing the nation as a place towards which we have a depth a place to which we owe something so I have four suggestions for achieving that this one libraries that’s
The bibl S Viv believe it or not in France it’s rather easy to get a library card to work in this environment this is where you can receive and transmit the knowledge that history is not just what happened over the last 60 years and history is full of
People who have given their blood who have given their time energy and creativity to entrust us with beauty France has this immense cultural heritage linked to Catholic Christian history you could ask any Muslim in France they’re more well they’re happier with Cathedrals than with hardcore secularism people who share a religion a
Faith in something Transcendent have more in common than with people who want to eradicate any form of religious feeling except for the one true state so another thing the love of the land L Tero as we say in in France we live in a society where the food we eat doesn’t
Have much connection with the land where we live and CS Lewis had that beautiful phrase saying that because we don’t eat the fruit of the land we import things from all around the planet the strength of the hills is not with us if you know
That the food you eat costs the time and energy of your neighbor of another citizen then you have this sense of unity and finally family intergenerational families that can pass on and transmit the sense of belonging to one place that people might love and want to die for thank you very much thank
You why did um why did France lose its soft power because well I I think the economic Factor was at play here uh I’ll say it I won’t say it very loud it’s because of the EU as well that in this power dynamic with Germany France has
Lost a lot of its shining power while Germany didn’t gain more soft power either and of course the United States has engineered a way of influencing shared culture in such a way that you know my students ask me what kind of TV show can I watch to improve my French
Because you know I tell them that’s how I improved my English I don’t have any anything to advise them to watch I don’t know just ask people your age maybe they know but there is no um cultural production that shows what the country can offer and there’s just a general sense of
Disillusionment people don’t love the place anymore
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