Pantheonizing Marc Bloch, but forgetting the lessons of his history

The President of the Republic rewarded us with an excellent speech during the pantheonization of Marc Bloch, many passages of which deserve to remain. But why stay?

His words, as much as a policy, outline an attitude, that of every French person conscious and proud of his heritage, showing us that history is not only about the past, but that it is a source of inspiration for the present and a path for the future. We know, since Montesquieu and Roussea u, since these Enlightenments about which we talk so much but which we read less and less, that to be relevant, a proposition must be generalizable. Let us therefore return to the presidential remarks and examine them in the light of what I will call his “Muslim policy”, consistently implemented throughout his two mandates.

From the memory of Marc Bloch to “Muslim politics”

What did the life and work of Marc Bloch matter to the men of Vichy? For them, nothing matters more than his Jewishness. (…) What does this life of grandeur and labor matter. The men in the service of the French state only see Marc Bloch as a Jew. The evil, disastrous, harmful Jew. Guilty because he’s Jewish. To exclude, persecute and erase because they are Jewish. From the end of 1940, Marc Bloch, like so many of our compatriots, suffered the consequences of this policy carried out in the name of France. And his family with him. Infernal sequence. He is excluded from the university after an unfair bureaucratic process. His salaries and pensions are canceled, his bank accounts blocked. His Parisian apartment requisitioned.

All things being equal, and without wanting to establish a strict, outrageous parallel between the state anti-Semitism of the Vichy Regime, can we not say that there is no suspicion from the administrations both towards Muslims and towards researchers on Islam today? Didn’t Ms. Borne, then Prime Minister, castigate “Islamo-leftist” academics without her ever being denied? Have researchers not been subjected to security investigations simply because they spoke about Islam that contrasted with the journalistic hype on the subject? How many building permits have been refused or security visits by local authorities in violation of the law simply because “we don’t want a mosque”?

So yes:

The cowardice of some and the wickedness of others combine. Anti-Semitism stole his job, his apartment, his money. He must also steal her books. These are shipped to Germany, dispersed. And for many lost. In the France of collaboration, eager to take revenge on the Dreyfus affair, the case of Marc Bloch shows that as soon as it is necessary to attack a Jew, there is always a prefect to requisition. A police officer to search. A judge to convict. An academic to justify. A journalist to approve. A neighbor to denounce. And so many others to look away. Let us never forget it. All this happened. And an ideological mechanism of hatred combined with an epidemic of cowardice was put in place. At the same time, there were a few of them to rekindle the embers of what we are, and save the honor and the soul of France before hastening its victory. Yes, a few, which we cling to.

Yes, daily cowardice, the wickedness of others, combined, wreak havoc: limit the exercise of worship? violate public freedoms? “yes, well, at the same time…” and after all, it only concerns Arabs, right? Because Islam is necessarily Arab, didn’t you know that? The Turks – more numerous in Alsace, the Afghans, who arrived several years ago, have gone to profit and loss, are refused any representativeness and, more simply, any respect for what they are, being only slightly disturbing auxiliaries in the beautiful simplicity of the Arab-centric perception. If they are also Shi’ites, they just have to remain in the neglect of the administrations: they are after all only a minority.

However, it is precisely in the fate it reserves for its minorities that a society shows the relevance of the values ​​to which it claims. We invoke the Enlightenment in the face of the obscurantism decreed by Muslim populations, but what do we not remember the remark of Rabaud-Saint Etienne who was criticized in 1789 for wanting to establish a religious freedom “which did not exist anywhere in Europe” (which was, moreover, false): “We are not here to receive the example, but to show the example”, he replied to his detractors.

The spiral of hatred and the spirit of defeat

Let’s say it here: this is where anti-Semitism inevitably leads, as soon as anyone sets out on this path of darkness. Faced with this nightmare, the greatness of Marc Bloch lies in never having given up on France and the French people. Marc Bloch’s resistance is also in thought and writing. Since he is a historian and History is a struggle. Since Vichy stole his books, here he is writing new ones.

So yes, this is where anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and more generally the rejection of the Other are leading. It is unfortunately on this path of darkness that we have been engaged for years, with laws limiting religious freedom, blocking the accounts of associations, dissolving them, casting systematic suspicion on certain French people because they are believers and practitioners, not hesitating, as minds are so confused, to blame some of the acts committed by others.

The spirit of defeat, constantly maintained by those who proclaim themselves more French than you. They are always the first to sacrifice France to the interests of hostile powers. The first to deny it. The first to betray her. The first to sacrifice a free people to their interests, a people that, deep within themselves, they do not love. Thus persists again and again this spirit of defeat inseparable from the spirit of Vichy, a slow poison in our public life which must be fought tirelessly. Spirit which claims to save France by distancing it from our principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Fascination with the brute force of weak minds who had grown tired of the complexity of the world, lacked character and no longer believed in the French people.

So yes, it is indeed the spirit of defeat which is maintained by those who proclaim themselves more French than others, who have often been so for a shorter time, and who sacrifice, deny and betray the French heritage of the Enlightenment, Napoleonic tolerance and the secular and inclusive work of the Third Republic. They are bearers of this Faustian spirit which always denies and which lead us towards the abyss of thought and the shipwreck of ideals, such as the militiamen of Darnan, French, who arrested Marc Bloch.

Cherish the truth and defend the Republican heritage*

Dilexit veritatem: he cherished the truth. Epitaph and compass, democratic ideal which joins the profession of the historian. Thus Marc Bloch links France and History, Republic and science, Government and Reason. This method and this link are still today the best antidotes against the poisons of historical revision that we see emerging almost everywhere. Yes, for Marc Bloch, a teenager at the time of the Dreyfus affair, the Republic organizes the respectful confrontation of facts and ideas, gives its place to science and justice, frees one from dependence on easy beliefs and credulity in false news. Intellectual integrity is never without moral strength or physical courage. Two fronts of the same war for the truth: science and Resistance.

So yes, let’s cherish the truth, let’s observe, let’s study the facts, let’s stop the trials of intention and the distortion of reality that those who doubt themselves, which is not serious, and of our values ​​and our history, which is more serious, stop exploiting minorities in contempt of those who make them up, let’s grant them the eminent dignity that the Catholic Church demands for the poor. It is about respecting the republican motto: how can we demand respect for it from citizens if the public authorities flout it in words and deeds?

And his legacy becomes ours, formulated in his own words: “France will remain, whatever happens, the homeland from which I cannot uproot my heart. I was born there, I drank from the sources of its culture, I made its past my own, I only breathe well under its sky and I strove, in my turn, to defend it as best I could. »

It is because our past, our culture and our values have nourished us, because they have made France this sovereign country, that is to say bearer of a sovereign word and vision that the world has respected and still envies us, that some imitate us, that we must defend, beyond the speeches of circumstance, which are then only postures, that we must therefore defend this heritage in deeds, in action, and never give in to the cowardly debasement of hatred shared and identity-based selfishness, which, like all selfishness, is the mark of decadence.