I studied at the time when far-left political parties were rampant in several CEGEPs and universities. What emerged from the conversations I had regularly with members of these groups was, in addition to heightened idealism, circular and sectarian thinking. The mirages of this left were so great, and its denial of reality so absolute that it lent itself to moral judgments as absurd as they were ridiculous. Some went so far as to denounce popular music or modern art. One of the most radical parties of this movement began its meetings by singing theInternational and designated as the model of inspiration for the advance of socialism Albania, the poorest country in Europe.
It is certainly not out of nostalgia that I rehash these old memories. But if, all the same a little. Because the extreme left parties of my youth have now given way to a new movement, that designated as the identity left (GI) or cultural left, the most radical fraction of which is now identified under the term “woke”. IM makes in anti-racism, gender theory, intersectionality, a bit of a disjointed terminology that is spreading today in social media and even in mass media. The GI has replaced the class struggle and the dream of a perfect society of the former communists with racialism and the exacerbation of individual rights, the new engines of history. Karl Marx who was a white bearded villain, must be turning in his grave.
However, GI has not erased everything from the Marxist heritage of my youth. It has retained the same sectarianism and the same circular thinking. Circular thinking is, for example, when we say that racialized people are victims of whites and that if you dispute this assertion it is necessarily because you are racist (and probably white…). The opponents are, in short, disqualified from the outset.
But unlike the old Marxists who had this kind of reasoning about social class, IM has no real purpose. The Manichaeism that reigns there with the culture of banishment (cancel culture) even evokes McCarthyism or, worse still, the culture of ostracism that raged during the Cultural Revolution in China. As Qussai Samak writes in his text The ‘cultureal ” and the genesis of neo-obscurantism identity : “With the identity slippage, which has become the main frame of reference for” progressive “politics, at the moment, the left has lost the very essence of its historic mission. Reduced to an instrument for the fetishization of identity, minorist and sexual rights, the left has been transformed into a tool of political polarization without a universal objective ”.
However, it is well known, to move forward somewhere, you need a plan. Otherwise, it’s a mess. And mess, that’s what the IM sows in its path. For example, to satisfy the gargantuan appetite for censorship of this new left, we would have to cancel a number of plays, shows and cultural productions and practically close entire libraries. And turn the language into incomprehensible gibberish where half of the words will be forbidden (like mother or father for example…).
But what seems even more pathetic (and ironic …) to me is that behind the social atomization which risks being its greatest legacy, IM does not give an even easier part to big capital and to all those who are pulling the strings of this increasingly unequal world, as a recent report from the World Inequality Lab, of which the great economist Thomas Piketty is a member, once again demonstrates. In other words, while IM enthusiasts multiply insults and anathemas on Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg and his peers continue to rake in a lot of money. Without ever being worried. What to miss the extremists of my youth. They, at least, had a real ideal.