In several countries, the notion of democracy refers to the right to vote of all adult citizens. And it is good that it is so, democracy wanting to be a power of the people (from the Greek demos, for people, and kratos, to can). But this vote through which peoples elect their rulers is not simply attached to a right, it is associated with a duty: a duty to be informed, to make informed choices. It is moreover in this spirit that democratic societies, on the one hand, ensure the free flow of information, promote media competition, require journalists to verify their sources, to expose various points of view and, on the other hand, facilitate access to instruction and teach to discern the true from the false, the analytical from the dogmatic. With credible information available, citizens educated, states can, in principle, expect citizens to participate in elections sensibly.
To be informed is not simply to receive information. It is acting on the words that come to you. It is wondering where they come from. It means looking for positions that contradict them. It is questioning the way in which we experience them. It is measuring them, then judging them. It is necessary to make the share of the things. It is to detect the lie and know how to discard it. It is to identify demagoguery. It is to flush out authoritarian discourse. It is knowing how to differentiate the places where the polemic aims to demonstrate and those where it aims to convince.
To be informed is to come to fear a speech in which a head of state from the centre-left is presented as a left-wing fascist or portrayed as Adolf Hitler. It is to oblige oneself to be wary of theses in which the free press is embedded in the register of fake news. It is to fear a movement which does not oblige itself to take into consideration all the information, which refuses analysis in the name of impressions, which rejects science in the name of what is expressed on the platforms where there is no truth imperative, where it suffices that a statement be advanced to be considered true.
Where the right to vote and the duty to inform are not combined, it is the very idea of democracy that is threatened. And it is often on these shifting territories that violence manages to establish itself.