After saying of Marshal Pétain that he was a “great soldier” in 2018 and seeing his minister Gérald Darmanin mobilize the concept of “intellectual terrorism”, Emmanuel Macron once again used controversial terms, Wednesday in the Council of Ministers. Comparing the attack which cost the life of a nurse at the Reims University Hospital to the road accident in which three police officers died, the Head of State denounced a “process of decivilization”. A word far from trivial. 20 minutes make the point.
Where does the term “decivilization” come from?
Originally, the term is associated with the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias, who speaks of the “civilization process” and worked on the causes of the rise of Nazism. Along with other 20th century thinkers, he shows that “the de-civilization of the 1930s and 1940s consisted in destroying the individual to melt him into the mass”, explains historian Hamit Bozarslan in the Figaro. In the civilization of Norbert Elias, there is a “self-control exercised by individuals over their spontaneous violence”, quotes France Culture, which no longer exists in the barbaric society of Nazi Germany.
But in the political sphere, decivilization is above all the title of a book by far-right thinker Renaud Camus, published in 2011. The same year, the essayist developed his racist and conspiracy theory of “great replacement”, which members of the RN, Eric Zemmour or Current values. At the crossroads of the two concepts, the writer also publishes The Great Deculturationpresented as a “teaching of oblivion” of Western culture, essential to carry out the “great replacement”.
What are the politicians behind this term?
From there, the term has spread to the right and the extreme right to denounce the violence crossing society. Xavier Bertrand uses it on Europe 1 during the campaign for the primary on the right, in 2021, highlighting “every day, attacks against the State” without “response”. At LR, the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard signed a forum “Can we stop decivilization? ” in the Figaro after the aggression of an octogenarian, and Bruno Retailleau regularly employs him in the Senate. “France is going wild with a phenomenon of decivilization”, he estimated in September 2022.
“Ensavagement”, another term dear to the extreme right, closely follows “decivilization”. “The president does not take up a concept”, defends the Elysée, “it is a reality”, in which Emmanuel Macron includes the aggression of a nurse by a man suffering from psychiatric disorders, the traffic accident which has cost the lives of three police officers and the death of a little girl, run over by a car leaving its parking lot in Trappes. But serious incidents “are not the daily life of the French”, relativizes the sociologist Renée Zuberman on France Infoeven if “we can convey the idea that France is an increasingly violent country” with the media’s treatment of limited news items combined with an increase in “violence without contact” such as insults or threats.
What were the political reactions?
The use of the term, the title of a far-right book, has not gone unnoticed within the political class. “To consider that it would be pure coincidence is either a farce or distressing”, tackled the deputy LFI Alexis Corbière on Twitter. “I’m fed up with Emmanuel Macron’s complacency with the far right! “, annoyed Sandrine Rousseau on BFMTV, believing that” each time that (he) is faced with a difficulty, he throws a kind of pole on the far right “.
An accusation that Olivier Véran sent back to Europe 1, explaining that this term was “not the prerogative of the far right”, and underlining its use by Norbert Elias, “a Jewish sociologist”. This “is not a phenomenon which corresponds to a political party or which corresponds to a political idea” but a situation which “harms everyone’s well-being”, he argued. Nevertheless, at the RN, we rub our hands. “I have been talking about enslavement for years and I am accused of all the evils”, points out Marine Le Pen. “Decivilization is barbarism”, continues the president of the RN group in the Assembly on CNews, believing that Emmanuel Macron “gives us reason”.