“Big corporations are playing with wokism, giving token benefits to minorities, installing unisex bathrooms so trans people don’t feel discriminated against,” said Couturier, the left-wing anti-woke. But “behind identity politics, the reality is that wages are not increasing.”
After all, France is a country where Woody Allen, the director accused by his adopted daughter of sexual abuse, continues to make films; where Roman Polanski, convicted of rape, receives film awards; and where Johnny Depp made his first film with a female director after winning his defamation case against Amber Heard.
France “simply respects justice much more,” said sociologist Heinich. “Polanski is not charged here, unlike in the United States. The case is very old and his victim has asked that the prosecution stop. And Woody Allen was completely exonerated. So that’s enough. »
In France, the #MeToo movement has been met with some ambivalence, with film star Catherine Deneuve defending “the right to seduce” and “the freedom to disturb” women as part of sexual freedom in France. While some women have spoken out against abusive directors or actors, recent allegations of sexual misconduct against France’s best-known actor, Gérard Depardieu, have descended into a brawl, with rival factions aligned on both sides.
When it comes to race and religion, the left can sometimes be less concerned with intolerance than with the right to offend, embodied in particular by the weekly Charlie Hebdo. In 2015, Islamist gunmen, outraged by obscene caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad, attacked his offices, killing 12 people and sparking a cry of support under the slogan “I am Charlie.»
“It is especially the left which is very resistant to racial questions in France,” said Rokhaya Diallo, commentator and anti-racist activist. “Universalism was first a left-wing value, then it was adopted by the right. »
Politices
