How did we get here? A France apparently confined to its most rancid smells. A hegemonic reactionary right in the media sphere, which imposes its themes in the public space. An atomized, fractured left, with an unrenewed ideological corpus, undermined by the narcissism of small differences. Consecrated conservatism, misguided progressivism. Universalism confused with Westernism. Anti-racism equated with totalitarianism. Its new forms covered with opprobrium, taxed with the infamous nickname of “Islamo-leftism” and supposedly disqualifying “wokism”. The feminisms of our era reduced to ?victim postures?. Young people mobilized for the climate compared to ayatollahs, and ecology to a new sectarian religion. The university accused of disseminating “militant knowledge” and importing “foreign theories”. The good turned into evil. The good in bad. And the generous idiot.

It is undoubtedly necessary to understand how neo-reactionary rhetoric works, its mechanics, to study why it is largely driven by an endogamous social milieu and a certain media class, how the evolution of the intellectual and political field has led to this rise towards the extremes, not to mention the responsibilities of the left in this cultural defeat. An intellectual counter-revolution analyzed by political scientist Frédérique Matonti, who seeks to understand why, ?on the eve of the 2022 presidential election, reactionary ideology now seems hegemonic? (How did we become reacs?, Fayard, 2021).

But perhaps it is appropriate, first of all, to look further into the reasons for such a discourse of restoration. Because this ideological reversal is first of all a reaction to major social transformations and real anthropological mutations. A shift in the ecological, intimate and geopolitical world that shakes up the West, affected by new narcissistic wounds.

Read also He stands up against the “dictatorship” of “well-meaning”: the rise of intellectual and media national-populism

In 1917, Sigmund Freud explained how “humanity’s self-esteem” had been tested by ?three serious humiliations? inflicted by scientific research (Applied Psychoanalysis Essays, Gallimard, 1933). The first humiliation, he asserted, is “cosmological” : as the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) attested, the Earth is not at the center of the Universe. The second vexation is ” organic “ : man is nothing but an animal, as demonstrated by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The third wound is of order “psychological”. It is carried by psychoanalysis and its theory of the unconscious, which Freud summarizes with a formula: ” The me is not master in his own house. »

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Read also He stands up against the “dictatorship” of “well-meaning”: the rise of intellectual and media national-populism

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?A French enigma. Why three quarters of the Jews in France were not deported?, by Jacques Semelin, with Laurent Larcher, Albin Michel, 224 p., ?19, digital ?13.

For historical knowledge to be accurate is not enough for it to be known, recognized, or above all correctly interpreted in the public space. This is the uncomfortable observation that runs through the new book by Jacques Semelin, emeritus research director at the CNRS. A French enigma is both a research diary and a plea for understanding the remarkable fact that forms its subtitle: Why three quarters of the Jews in France were not deported. He summarizes the results of the works he has already devoted to the question, including the recent and detailed The Survival of the Jews in France. 1940-1944 (CNRS Editions, 2018).

A useful summary of what has been learned

This reminder obviously comes in opposition to the assertions of Eric Zemmour who, starting from the same figures ? out of nearly 320,000 Jews established in France before 1940, approximately 74,150 were deported, i.e. a survival rate of 75% ? , falsely attributes the responsibility for this toll (less heavy than in most countries subjected to the Nazis, from the Netherlands to Poland) to the Vichy regime led by Marshal Pétain. One of the last chapters of the work, soberly titled ?To thwart the traps of Mr. Zemmour?, repeats with clarity why these views are untenable.

Read also this column by Jacques Semelin (2021): “Mr. Zemmour, your rhetoric is that of the ‘identity entrepreneur’ who can lead a country to massacre”

On the factual level, in fact, the book constitutes a useful synthesis of what has been learned, making it possible to understand this apparently astonishing proportion, already underlined in the work of Serge Klarsfeld (Vichy-Auschwitz, Fayard, 1983) and in Jacques Chirac’s famous speech commemorating the Vél’d’hiv roundup in 1995. If three quarters of the Jews in France escaped deportation, it is not due to a any protection from Vichy, which on the contrary undertook to discriminate against them and lent the assistance of its police to the occupier to track them down, but at the intersection of several factors: their own survival strategies; III strategic priorities^e Reich, initially less brutal in western Europe; networks of mutual aid or evasion relating in particular to the Churches; the ordinary complicity of a population quick to hide them or at least not to denounce them; as well as the public protests of several Catholic prelates, including the Archbishop of Toulouse, M^gr Jules Saliège (1870-1956), in 1942, resulting in influencing the policies of persecution. Of the’“riddle” of the title, nothing remains, in reality.

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?A French enigma. Why three quarters of the Jews in France were not deported?, by Jacques Semelin, with Laurent Larcher, Albin Michel, 224 p., ?19, digital ?13.

A useful summary of what has been learned

Read also this column by Jacques Semelin (2021): “Mr. Zemmour, your rhetoric is that of the ‘identity entrepreneur’ who can lead a country to massacre”

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Thomas Malthus, starting from an observation on misery in England in the 18th century, theorized in a radical mathematical expression the relationship between wealth and population: the growth of the wealth produced is algebraic while that of demography is geometric. In a famous metaphor, he predicts that one day there will be no food for everyone around the table because the cake does not grow as quickly as the number of guests.

When we know that the world’s population is growing by 50 to 80 million people a year and that the planet’s resources are already being undermined by our hyper-consumer lifestyles, his prediction takes on more and more force. Obviously, the definition of wealth is not limited to food, but includes other essential needs: education, health, housing, everything that is necessary for the dignity of man to live in society, which also implies a public good guaranteed by a protective state. […]

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection makes it possible to understand that the less well adapted around the table of Pastor Malthus are the first to suffer, all the more when they are in countries without a State, delivered to mafias, at war civil, in short without protections. This translates into two figures: a short life expectancy and a high infant mortality rate.

That the Covid has wreaked havoc, badly or not, in these populations living in regions where the gross domestic product per inhabitant is low, that is certain. The theories of the two Anglican pastors can therefore serve as a reading grid, both explaining the causes, the virus only adding a line to the endemic diseases that are little or badly treated and never eradicated; natural selection at its fullest, only the strongest remain. The available wealth is insufficient because of demography, which refers to natural selection: a deadly cycle.

A funeral in Evreux during the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020.

But we see that around the Malthus table, populations who find there everything they could possibly want, often seized with a kind of consumer rage, are also victims of the Covid, as well as those who are old age, despite the care they receive. We retain the terms “with comorbidity”, “the most fragile, the oldest” to designate those whom we strive to protect (vaccinate as a priority, isolate, quarantine if there is contact, etc.) , but who are despite this the main victims of the virus.

An observation: the life expectancy of the world population has increased sharply over the past hundred and fifty years, and this due to the development of science and technology, with its direct and indirect consequences on the way of life, food, etc Science and technology have therefore reduced the impact of natural selection, constraining it without adverse effect: reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy.

For Darwin, natural selection, that is to say that of the most apt to survive in a given environment, is inscribed in the evolution of living beings. Inseparable from this evolution, which is based on certain characteristics specific to the living that he highlighted, although they were in contradiction with the religious culture (divine creation) of his time and his own as an Anglican pastor: sexual variability and all the traits, role of chance in these variations, fixation of the most favorable characters which leads by successive reproductions to a selection of the most suitable (known as natural).

Mechanism of natural selection

However, modern medicine, since about the middle of the 19th century, has made it possible to preserve individuals whose characteristics acquired by reproduction would have led them to be eliminated, because they were not able to survive in their environment. Elimination that would have taken place at birth (without modern medicine, no premature babies) or in the course of life, with a shorter life expectancy than the average for their group. Medicine even allows people in poor health, with serious pathologies (obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc.), to live a long life with appropriate treatments.

These fragile people were few in number at the time of Darwin, the impact of medicine on life expectancy and therefore natural selection being then marginal. Now it is obvious that the developed world has gained more than twenty years of life expectancy in a hundred years thanks to medicine (and to technology which has improved working and living conditions).

But the coronavirus has come to remind us that the natural order of the living world cannot be permanently changed? Prolonging life with pink or blue pills is indeed very commendable, but there comes a time when natural law comes to put of the order ! We cannot twist the natural selection effect without expecting some course corrections: questioning of life expectancies that were artificial do not resist a virus. Its diffusion is slowed down but the blow is strong: millions of deaths on the planet, as if a demon had pressed the ?On? button to update the natural selection mechanism.

“They didn’t all die, but all were stricken…”, wrote La Fontaine before the good Anglican pastors formulated their theories. By paraphrasing his moral “According as you are powerful or miserable…”, we can write that the Covid either lays you underground if you have exceeded the ?deadline? set by Darwin too far or spares you if you have a place at Malthus? table.

Gérald Cursoux, Chambery

The world

Mechanism of natural selection

Gérald Cursoux, Chambery

The world

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). The NGO publishes, Thursday, January 13, its annual report on the situation of human rights in the 110 countries where it is active. He returns to the situation in the states of the former Soviet Union (USSR), thirty years after its fall.

How do you interpret the recent riots in Kazakhstan and the repression orchestrated by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with the support of Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

These events are part of two different dynamics. First, a popular uprising in response to rising fuel prices. This protest very quickly expressed a broader discontent against the autocratic regime in power in this country. Then, in a few days, this phenomenon was accompanied by a struggle for power between those close to President Tokayev and those of the former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

It is not surprising that the Kremlin has been very attentive to the situation to avoid any possibility of destabilization, as has been the case elsewhere in the region in recent years in the face of “color revolutions”. Thus, the three countries of the region which concentrate the efforts of the Russian army are states which have experienced a kind of democratic upsurge. Kazakhstan falls into this category, as does Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko likely lost the 2020 election before violently suppressing his opposition.

Read also Moscow in a strong position in Kazakhstan

Only Ukraine has been able to realize its democratic ambition. In my opinion, it is the proximity of Ukrainian democracy that frightens Vladimir Putin, much more than the threat of one day seeing this country join NATO. The hardening of Moscow is explained by the fear of any form of democratic changes at home and among its neighbors.

About Belarus, what do you think of the attempt, in 2021, to exploit migrants by bringing them to the Polish border?

It was, for Alexander Lukashenko, to protest against the sanctions taken against him by the European Union (EU), but this cynical calculation did not work. He had to give it up, because the migrants massed on the border could not cross to Poland. The Polish government seized the opportunity to try to divert the attention aroused in Europe by its own excesses, such as the contested reform of justice, by brandishing a xenophobic discourse.

In this case, the EU acted in a miserable way when Warsaw decided to deport these people. She closed her eyes, a bit like it also happens in Greece. It is a way of violating international conventions on asylum.

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How do you interpret the recent riots in Kazakhstan and the repression orchestrated by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with the support of Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

Read also Moscow in a strong position in Kazakhstan

About Belarus, what do you think of the attempt, in 2021, to exploit migrants by bringing them to the Polish border?

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Delivered. Judaism in France would be a “blind spot” of our national history. However, the presence of Jews has been attested for more than two millennia on our territory ? the first traces date back to the I^is century before our era ? but it would remain absent from the collective consciousness.

This is at least the opinion of the director of the Museum of Art and History of Judaism (MAHJ, Paris), Paul Salmona. “The Jewish presence and its material, cultural and heritage legacy are largely ignored in the history of France”, says the former director of the auditorium of the Louvre Museum. He intends to remedy this situation, with the publication of two books in recent months: a Archeology of Judaism in France (La Découverte), taking stock of the many remains exhumed in recent decades, and a collective book, The Jews. A blind spot in the national narrative (Albin Michel), co-directed with Claire Soussen, from the symposium ?Judaism: a blind spot in the national narrative? », organized in January 2019 at the MAHJ.

In 2021, the question mark disappeared from the title, reflecting the conviction of Paul Salmona. ?Forgetting the Jews contributes to maintaining an amnesiac imagination? and “a biased image of the nation as a homogeneous body, Christian in its essence”, explains the specialist, in the introduction. He points to the shortcomings in terms of archaeological research ? the author would like the study of the remains of the Jewish presence to become a line of research for the CNRS as well as for the National Council for Archaeological Research (CNRA) ? and studies universities, but also a virtual absence of school programs and museums.

“Secular bias”

Paul Salmona also castigates a heritage ?often poorly maintained and rarely enhanced?. As many shortcomings as the director of the MAHJ attributes to the ?secular bias? of the republican tradition, but also to the preponderance given in teaching to a ?tear history? bringing the history of the Jews back to the Holocaust and the persecutions.

The Jews. A blind spot in the national narrative, edited by Paul Salmona and Claire Soussen, Albin Michel, 304 p., ?21.90.

Nineteen contributions come to support this conviction, and sometimes to correct its excess. The study of Great Chronicles of France ? narration of royal deeds from Louis IX (1226-1270) ? nuance this absence: “Without authorizing us to speak of a ‘blind spot’ in the national narrative that was taking shape in the Middle Ages”, the medievalist Claire Soussen evokes a presence marked by “long eclipses”.

Another study concerning the place of the Jews in the work of the great historian of the XIX^e century Jules Michelet also concludes that the Jews are there “widely present”. About the “blindness” on the subject sometimes reproached to the historian Marc Bloch (1886-1944), the contribution of Peter Schöttler recalls that the famous founder of the School of the Annales always felt French ” first of all “.

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“Secular bias”

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The first confinement had created an unprecedented situation: already threatened with anachronism due to its exorbitant environmental impact, fashion, an industry of perpetual renewal, at the rate of production more and more in frenzy, seemed to be going through an existential crisis. A year and a half later, it is doing wonderfully, and luxury groups are raking in historic profits.

Benjamin Simmenauer, professor of philosophy and director of research at the French Fashion Institute, analyzes a situation that he does not consider so paradoxical.

During the first phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, luxury goods players sent a lot of signals of some sort of awareness. What about today ?

During confinement suddenly arose a question that never arises: are we going to dress again? If you get stuck at home, and your professional life is spent online, the need for fashion may become very secondary. There was a very strong collective concern. The summer 2020 parades have been canceled. Instead, brands have produced creative videos, some of which have interestingly updated the way the collections are presented.

Read also Costume makers faced with lax sartorial practices

Doubts about the frenetic agenda of fashion weeks, which have long been the subject of criticism, have been expressed with new force: a collective of brands and designers published an open letter online, in May 2020, calling for streamline the schedule of presentations, and houses like Saint Laurent, Gucci, Céline and Balenciaga have chosen to show their collections outside of ?official? weeks, and thus take control of their rhythm.

The impression that dominates now is that of a return to normalcy. Fashion houses have come back to fashion weeks. On the commercial level, the pandemic has not redefined everything, but rather accelerated dynamics already observable before, such as the consumption of fashion and luxury online. As soon as the stores reopened in China in 2020, attendance records were reached. As luxury brands are now present all over the world, they have been able to fall back on local markets. Tourists, especially Asians, who normally bought in Europe bought from them.

Read also Chanel, symbol of the rebound in the luxury sector

Demand has not declined, nor has interest in fashion. When we look at the year 2020, dose horribilis in fashion, of course luxury is affected, but not as much as other industries: at the end of the year, growth resumes, and, from 2021, it picks up exponentially.

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Benjamin Simmenauer, professor of philosophy and director of research at the French Fashion Institute, analyzes a situation that he does not consider so paradoxical.

During the first phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, luxury goods players sent a lot of signals of some sort of awareness. What about today ?

Read also Costume makers faced with lax sartorial practices

Read also Chanel, symbol of the rebound in the luxury sector

You have 74.7% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.

Benjamin Simmenauer, professor of philosophy and director of research at the French Fashion Institute, analyzes a situation that he does not consider so paradoxical.

During the first phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, luxury goods players sent a lot of signals of some sort of awareness. What about today ?

Read also Costume makers faced with lax sartorial practices

Read also Chanel, symbol of the rebound in the luxury sector

You have 74.7% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.

Benjamin Simmenauer, professor of philosophy and director of research at the French Fashion Institute, analyzes a situation that he does not consider so paradoxical.

During the first phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, luxury goods players sent a lot of signals of some sort of awareness. What about today ?

Read also Costume makers faced with lax sartorial practices

Read also Chanel, symbol of the rebound in the luxury sector

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Social right. A teleworker, living alone, with little social contact, did not participate in the online service meeting to which he was usually diligent. He also did not answer phone calls from his colleagues or from the HR department. Two days later, he was finally discovered dead at his home.

How to know if this tragedy is also an accident at work? The qualification chosen will have an impact both on the payment of funeral costs and on pensions paid to possible beneficiaries, both by the general social security system and by complementary company or branch plans, and on employer contribution rates when the company employs 150 or more people.

Article L. 411-1 of the Social Security Code teaches us that any injury occurring during the time and at the place of work must be considered as having its cause in work, unless proof is provided that this injury has an origin totally foreign to work. Article L.1222-9 of the Labor Code completes this text by assimilating the accident at the teleworking place to that occurring on the premises of the company.

Read also Sedentary lifestyle, an increased professional risk by teleworking

Also, assuming that the place where the employee died is indeed the place of telework designated by the agreement between the employer and the employee or by the collective telework agreement or by the ad hoc charter, it is necessary to determine if the death occurred at the time of work and if there is not a cause totally unrelated to the work which would invalidate the qualification of work accident. The proof is difficult to constitute.

Autopsy

Often all that remains is the autopsy to try to determine the time of death and reveal the cause of death, or specify the causes that may have contributed to the genesis of the accident. This step can also highlight a previous condition and potentially link the death to working conditions.

Two kinds of autopsies coexist.

The first is triggered by the doctor who establishes the death certificate by refusing, in the event of a suspicious or violent death, to grant the burial permit. A judicial police officer is then informed of the situation and draws up a report on the circumstances of the death. The judicial investigation is open and the public prosecutor can order an autopsy. This type of autopsy is rare in France.

Read also Telework: an employer sentenced for wanting to force an employee to return to the office

Under the terms of Article L. 442-4 of the Social Security Code, “The fund must, if the beneficiaries of the victim so request or with their agreement, if it considers it useful for the manifestation of the truth, ask the court (?) to have the autopsy carried out ?. The case will then be brought before the judicial judge, whom they will have to convince of the need for the implementation of a forensic medical expertise.

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Read also Sedentary lifestyle, an increased professional risk by teleworking

Autopsy

Two kinds of autopsies coexist.

Read also Telework: an employer sentenced for wanting to force an employee to return to the office

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Lhe meteoric spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has rekindled the specter of a presidential election under Covid-19. We must therefore welcome the initiative of the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, to bring together, on Tuesday January 11, the leaders of the political parties as well as the declared presidential candidates to try to define common rules likely to save the campaign.

While constitutional law protects freedom of assembly, some candidates have chosen to cancel or postpone their January meetings. Others prefer, on the contrary, to maintain them by imposing gauges, by distributing FFP2 masks or by asking for the sanitary pass at the entrance. Harmonization is desirable, as well as a minimum of understanding around how the election of April 10 and 24 will unfold, over which the specter of abstention hangs over the records recorded in the 2020 municipal and regional elections. from 2021.

Read also A presidential campaign under the influence of the Covid-19

This quest to unite in a new difficult moment for the country should not, however, be misleading. Ninety days before the presidential election, the varnish of unity has definitely shattered and the executive is not for nothing. He now acts as if the virus had become a political object in its own right. He no longer apprehends it only as the scourge to be fought by uniting forces. On the contrary, he uses it as a weapon of fragmentation, a lever to reshape the political imagination and structure a new cleavage likely to trap his opponents.

Two levers

The shattering statements of the President of the Republic, who assured, Tuesday, January 4 in an interview with Parisian, to want “Piss off” the unvaccinated, have brought the fight against Covid-19 into a new dimension, much more political and controversial. This is why we should no longer just mention the risks of a presidential campaign under Covid-19. We must also question the problems raised by the management of an epidemic under electoral influence.

A big danger threatened the executive at the beginning of the year: that the ending quinquennium would become the symbol of impotence because of the pranks of a virus which has continued to appear for two years, to disappear and then to reappear in forms. always different and more or less resistant to vaccines. As long as the accusation was formulated, relayed and then anchored in people’s minds, the stalemate threatened and, with it, the risk of a sweep, against a backdrop of collective depression.

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Read also A presidential campaign under the influence of the Covid-19

Two levers

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To not miss anything on African news, subscribe to the newsletter of World Africa from this link. Every Saturday at 6 a.m., find a week of current events and debates treated by the editorial staff of World Africa.

Tribune. For several years, debates on development issues in Africa have been clouded by the emphasis on birth control and reducing fertility rates. United Nations projections that suggest Africa’s population will double by 2050 have become a cliché, even as fertility levels on the continent are on the decline: they have already fallen by more than 36% since 1970 and the rate Average fertility is expected to drop from 4.2 births per woman to 2.1 later in the century.

Equally disturbing is that experts are quick to use such clichés to describe a region still reeling from the effects of centuries of slavery and colonization that have decimated its population. According to the most recent estimates, Africa has the lowest population density in the world, with 46 inhabitants / km², compared to 150 in Asia and 112 in Europe.

Read also Rama Yade: “Only Africa, with its youth in perpetual movement, appears capable of thinking about the collective destiny of humanity”

At the same time, many European countries are implementing policies to promote births, with financial incentives, inspired by the model devised by Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker. According to this model, the parents’ desire to have children “Depends on the cost of an additional child”.

Risks and opportunities

In 2021, the Africa Progress Group, chaired by Olusegun Obasanjo, former head of state of Nigeria, released its annual report, titled ?Making Africa’s People an Asset?. The study is a welcome contribution to discussions on the relationship between demography and development in Africa. In terms of economic growth, she underlines that the inability to invest sustainably in African youth and to train them to meet the main challenges of development, health, security, trade and infrastructure is proving to be very costly.

For example, instead of using major public works programs to expand employment opportunities for young people on a continent where unemployment rates are at the level of those recorded during the Great Depression of the 1930s, African governments have relied for decades on international partners to build infrastructure. One of the consequences of this policy has been the weakening of the learning-by-doing process, which both marginalizes young Africans and exacerbates the debt trap risks associated with outgoing growth models.

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Read also Rama Yade: “Only Africa, with its youth in perpetual movement, appears capable of thinking about the collective destiny of humanity”

Risks and opportunities

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