Is French society facing a “decivilization”?

It is with this term that Emmanuel Macron qualified, during the Council of Ministers on Wednesday May 24, the increase in violence that our society would face.

Let’s first go back to the circumstances that led the head of state to use such a word. He specifically referred to three recent dramas: the murder of a nurse at Reims hospital; the death of three police officers in Roubaix in a car accident; the burning of the house of the mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins. Emmanuel Macron concedes that these events are not of the same nature, while emphasizing that he “No violence is ever justifiable”. And he concludes: “We must counter this process of decivilization.”

This argument is not convincing, for a simple reason: it is not an argument! Emmanuel Macron generalizes from three dramas that have nothing to do: intentional homicide, manslaughter, political intimidation. In doing so, he forgets the very first rule of sociology: a succession of isolated facts does not make a social fact. To allow oneself to go up in generality, one must be able to link the selected cases to a larger reality, supported by solid data, which establishes an indisputable regularity.

Being indignant, rightly, at three violent dramas is not enough to demonstrate that our society has become more violent.

Clement Viktorovitch

on franceinfo

It is even a genuine sophistry, a fallacious argument: in this case, a hasty generalization.

>>> “Decivilization”: the analysis of sociologist Jean Viard

The statistics of violence are mixed. Verbal abuse is on the rise, it’s true. Physical violence is much less clear: depending on what you measure, and how you measure it, the results can be contradictory. On the other hand, the number of homicides is falling drastically: it has been halved since 1988. On the whole, specialists agree that we cannot speak of an explosion of violence. This is, for example, what the research director emeritus Renée Zauberman says. Historian Gérard Noiriel even believes that, over time, the French have never lived in such a peaceful society. Nothing that justifies, in any case, to speak of speaking of an alleged process of “decivilization”.

“What did the state do?”

The interest of the President of the Republic in choosing this word is that it allows all responsibility to be transferred to “society”. The zeitgeist would change, and no one could do anything about it. However, when we take a closer look at these three cases, we realize that there may be some responsibility to be sought elsewhere. The nurse murdered in Reims, for example, was killed by a patient followed for a heavy psychiatric history. However, for years caregivers have been trying to draw attention to the catastrophic situation of psychiatry in France. On January 20, at Melun hospital, caregivers from the psychiatric unit demonstrated with placards saying: “Treat, yes, get hit, no”; “Take a beating and shut up”. What did the state do?

The mayor of Saint-Brevin, Yannick Morez, said he wrote to the prosecutor, the prefect and the government to alert him to the threats he was receiving from the far right, without ever having a response. What did the state do?

Neo-Nazis march in hoods in the heart of Paris, being not arrested, but escorted by the police. What did the state do?

Blaming the “decivilization of society” is nothing more than a way for the President of the Republic to make people forget that he may have some responsibility for what has been happening in France for six years. The problem is that if this concept is convenient from a rhetorical point of view, it also poses serious problems on the political level the word itself is not neutral. decivilization : this is the title of a book published in 2011 by Renaud Camus, the theoretician of the “great replacement”, condemned in 2014 for provoking hatred and violence against Muslims. When a man like him criticizes “decivilization”, “deculturation” or “wildness”, we understand very well who are those who, according to him, would be responsible for it.

So here is an originally racist concept that has found its way into the words of the President of the Republic.

Clement Viktorovitch

on franceinfo

The Élysée clarified that the head of state did not refer to this author. Maybe ! One can imagine, in fact, that he had in mind rather the book by sociologist Norbert Elias, The process of civilization. But words have a history that goes beyond those who use them. Whether through ignorance or calculation, by conferring legitimacy on the concept of “decivilization”, Emmanuel Macron has given credence to the theories that it carries. He was obviously trying to free himself from all responsibility in the tragedies that marked the news. The responsibility it has assumed in the public debate could be greater still.