Emmanuel Macron calls for being “intractable on the merits” to counter a “process of decivilization”

During the Council of Ministers, Emmanuel Macron returned to the violence within society, using in particular the term “decivilization“, learned Wednesday May 24 franceinfo from the Elysée Palace, confirming information from the Parisian. For the head of state,you have to be intractable on the bottom“. For him, “no violence is legitimate, whether verbal or against people“. Must therefore “work in depth to counter this process of decivilization“.

Asked by franceinfo, the president’s entourage says that “it is an interpellation addressed to society“. According to a relative, Emmanuel Macron considers that “violence is multifactorial and multicausal, and that if we look for responsibilities on the side of politicians, who can take their part, the subject is nevertheless more global“.

“Decivilization”: “Not a concept, a reality”

Regarding more specifically the term “decivilization“used by the Head of State, the Elysée Palace denies any borrowing from the writer, far-right activist and theoretician of”great replacement“, Renaud Camus: “The president does not take up a concept. It’s a reality“. Renaud Camus is the author of a book entitled decivilizationpublished in 2011. More recently, at the beginning of May, Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate, had also used this term, this time to express his concern at the increase in violence against elected officials, declaring then: “They are confronted with a form of decivilization of our society, an enslavement“. In September 2022, David Lisnard, LR mayor of Cannes and president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), had also co-signed a forum in Le Figaro, “Can we stop decivilization?“, after the attack on an octogenarian in Cannes.

This statement comes as a month ago, the mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique), Yannick Morez, presented his resignation after the arson of his home due to a project of transfer of a reception center for asylum seekers (Cada). Other elected officials were also the target of violence. Monday, May 22, it was a nurse who was fatally attacked at Reims hospital by a patient suffering from psychiatric disorders.