A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - The Spirit of the Times (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"Remember well, brothers," Bakunin wrote in essence in 1869, "that 
educated youth must be neither the master, nor the protector, nor the 
benefactor, nor the dictator of the people, but only the midwife of 
their spontaneous emancipation, the unifier and organizer of the efforts 
and of all popular forces[note]." ---- This is nothing new; Bakunin had 
already warned his contemporaries about the dangers contained in the 
avant-garde excesses of intellectuals who consider themselves entrusted 
with a mission to "the people," whose tastes and social practices they, 
in essence, stigmatize without tenderness. That is to say, their codes 
and language tics. ---- As a friend said, "how can such stupid people 
still claim to control our consciences without us laughing like our 
fathers mocked the priests in cassocks?" His bad wit had endeared him to 
me. He certainly wasn't lacking in insight, the fellow. Spreading the 
good word among the people allows one to adopt the posture of a master 
educator and build political careers.

The people have become a fiction, or at best, a hypothesis. Abolishing 
them, Macron's flamboyant dream, is also the dream of neocolonialists 
living in a fiction that never existed but inspired generations driven 
by the desire to return to their roots-a sort of primitive community of 
which they would be the guarantors. Where the village community is 
spoken of as a lost paradise while the last of the few traces of this 
fiction is being destroyed. The Clochemerle of village life, subjected 
to the fantasies of current fictions, remains to be written.

And the enthusiasm provoked by these excesses of certainty within his 
fan club serves as a seduction. The bag full of moralizing on all 
subjects is devoid of simple humanity. The more militant they are, the 
less their humanity is evident in their injunctions. It's a waltz of 
defamatory labels. The die is cast. The ridicule is not silenced, and 
that's fortunate for them.

The sacred nature of their commitment gives the neo-colonists' stance an 
emotional dimension that is rather childish, or so false in its juvenile 
behavior that it contrasts with the desire to do "like the 
grown-ups"-it's striking. And it smacks of bad theater, somewhere 
between unintentional parody and a sense of self-importance.

Macron said, the people don't exist. The crowd to which he reduces them, 
the better to betray, without a guilty conscience, anyone who stands in 
the way of his project-the deconstruction of the social system. And 
Macron, like Brutus leading the Roman senators into a coup d'état, 
Macron will betray François Hollande[note]and, bolstered by the 
disconcerting naivety of the rallies from the left, he will betray his 
voters and ultimately hand the keys to power to the National Rally, 
because everything else in the political arena will be nothing but 
ruins. The effects of resentment fill the void created by the loss of 
hope in all its forms (technical and social progress, a more just 
society, in short, that of the "happy days" of 1945, has sunk into 
disillusionment with no hope of turning back). It fuels an increasingly 
vigorous nihilistic temptation. Mission accomplished! The people, this 
reactionary fiction, must blend into the habitus of a petty bourgeoisie 
of the soul and disappear from the political landscape with the utmost 
discretion.

The noise made by the "yellow vests"-which irked them and reinforced 
their feeling of being obliged to yield nothing to these people who 
smell of sweat, beer, and feast on grilled sausages-this revolt thus 
highlighted a class alliance, an ideological alliance of sorts, between 
the Macronian regime and its accomplice, the urban petty bourgeoisie, in 
the development of a narrative that dismisses the social aspect out of hand.

It cannot be emphasized enough how repellent this state of mind is and 
how it facilitates the National Rally's march to power. When we share a 
common feeling of humiliation, the reflex is to give in to the 
temptation of evil, simply to say "we exist." The PCF was once powerful 
in the region, and the foundations of its popularity were based on an 
identical principle. Class contempt, whether Macronian or pale green, 
with its festive creative tendencies, provokes an identical ferment of 
resentment. It inspires the same expressions of rejection as those 
provoked by the old-fashioned bourgeoisie. By constantly treating our 
neighbors like wandering souls waiting for the right word, we end up 
convincing them that they are "inferior." A superiority complex devoid 
of nobility and ultimately of unspeakable vulgarity. Definitely.

Jean-Luc Debry, August 2025

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8521
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