During a trip to South-East Asia over the past two weeks, I watched from afar, stupefied, at the incredible snowballing controversy to which the Mediapart team, united against adversity, was confronted. When I left France on November 6th, I thought I had given the necessary clarifications in two television programmes broadcast the previous day; that of Mouloud Achour on Canal Plus (see here) and that of Apolline de Malherbe on BFM TV (see here).
The unbelievable suggestion that Mediapart could have had knowledge of accusations of sexual violence perpetrated by Tariq Ramadan and yet deliberately hid them from its readers had only just begun to circulate, based on nothing other than malevolence, if not calumny.
In a follow up to the interviews I gave, Mediapart’s editorial director François Bonnet wrote an article, The Tariq Ramadan sexual abuse affair: crusade of the imbeciles, detailing the political campaign that lay behind the rumour mongering. Isolated ever since his failed bid to become the Socialist Party’s candidate in this year’s French presidential elections, and now no longer belonging to any political movement since becoming an MP allied to (but not part of) Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party, elected to parliament with such a narrow majority that he now faces a legal challenge to the result before France’s Constitutional Council, former prime minister Manuel Valls has attempted to return to the political stage in force, adopting an authoritarian line centred on national identity in which the “war” on “Islamism – the latter assimilated to terrorism – is the only programme.
In this attempt to recover a political place, François Hollande’s former head of government decided to use Mediapart as his scapegoat and stooge, mobilizing for this all his partisan allies and all his networks of PR communicators. The first example of this was a hard-hitting cover-story interview with him published in the weekly supplement Le Figaro Magazine on October 6th, in which he denounced the “agents of Islam” – not terrorism or Islamism, but rather the religion that is Islam – among whom figured the publishing editor of Mediapart. Then, beginning his media campaign, he recurrently accused Mediapart of being an “intellectual accomplice” of Islamism, which for him signifies being an accomplice of terrorism.
That was the context in which the cover illustration of Charlie Hebdo magazine published on November 8th caricatured me as one of the “three wise monkeys” who “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”, along with the headline,“The Ramadan affair, Mediapart reveals: ‘We knew nothing’”. While Mediapart’s Société des Journalistes (journalists’ watchdog committee), on behalf of all our editorial team, and Mathieu Magnaudeix, now our US correspondent who last year wrote a five-part investigation (in French here) into Tariq Ramadan (the latter’s incensed reaction to the reports can be found here), together very clearly highlighted the inane nature of the accusations implying that we were the silent accomplices of sexual violence, the media frenzy over the issue continued.
It continued despite, also, a very factual clarification by François Bonnet of my supposed “relations” with Tariq Ramadan, and the very level-headed analysis published on Slate by a jurist who is not known for his support of Mediapart. It continued also notwithstanding the investigations by Mediapart journalist Marine Turchi into the accusations of rape and sexual assault levelled at Ramadan, the first of which was published on October 28th and the latest, which contains hitherto unpublished allegations against him, which can be found on Mediapart’s English-language pages here (and in French here).
This whole episode will no doubt later remain as an example of a French immersion in the “alternative facts” dear to Donald Trump, placing opinion before information. Because amid this whirlwind of controversy, what has been written, just like the facts of the matter, apparently have no importance. Because everything even remotely connected with Islam causes the media and politicians to lose their heads, there was no further place for reasoned argument. Clichés and prejudices abounded, as experienced by Mediapart journalists Fabrice Arfi and Jade Lindgaard when they stepped up to publicly explain our position in TV studio debates (see here, here and here). In contempt of the cause of women, largely forgotten and manipulated, “the Ramadan affair” became “the Mediapart affair”, and “the Plenel affair”. My principal perceived crime was to have published in 2014 a book called Pour les musulmans (published in English in 2016 as For the Muslims, Islamophobia in France), whose title alone was sufficient to make it intolerable for detractors who never took the time to read it, and even less to present an argument against the basic issues it raised.
When one is caught up in such a maelstrom, and in a balance of power that is fundamentally unequal, there is never an ideal riposte. The temptation is to remain silent, a distant position above the melee, but silence does not halt the pounding and can be misinterpreted as a supposed suspicious embarrassment. On the other hand, any retort is risky, when the communications machines, far from seeking a debate, hunt out any clumsiness or gaffe to turn a comment into a trap. That was how a truncated message I posted on Twitter in reaction to the events – my only response while travelling afar – was sufficient for the ogre among the media to feast at our expense for a good week, without ever taking into account the facts themselves. The aggressor has the right to commit every excess, while the aggressed party is allowed no right of weakness.
Beyond the fundamental issues, I did not appreciate the cartoon which portrayed me on the cover of Charlie Hebdo because I do not like caricatures which show a close-up of someone’s face in the style of posters of wanted criminals. To illustrate that by evoking a “Red Poster”, as I did spontaneously, was obviously not the cleverest thing to do. But in passing, one might note the paradoxical reverse situation which is that in the name of this freedom which Charlie Hebdo paid the highest price for, that of blood, the freedom to criticise a caricature or a satirical publication has become taboo.
As for the phrase that was lent to me referring to a “war on Muslims”, and which was the focus of the virulent editorial dated November 15th by Charlie Hebdo’s publishing director, it has been taken out of context; it was an extract from a brief radio interview in which I explicitly referred to the ideological line championed for quite some time now by Manuel Valls, who happily adopts a warlike tone.
It remains that it would have been no doubt preferable to have abstained on both counts so as not to give any pretext to adversaries who seek not to debate but to eradicate. The proof of this was given by Manuel Valls himself, when on November 15th he added his comments following the Charlie Hebdo editorial: “I want them to retreat, I want them to pay back, I want them to be removed from public debate,” he said of Mediapart, its publishing editor and team, speaking on RMC radio and BFM TV. Thus it was that, in a matter of just a few weeks, in a frenetic build-up that was beyond all understanding, we had moved from being a supposed agent of Islam to paving the way for Islamism, to being accomplices of a suspected rapist, and, latterly, potentially responsible for future terrorist attacks by making “a call for murder” and using “the same words as Daech” (another term for the so-called Islamic State group).
In this affair, in a contrary sense to an often used saying, everything that is excessive is significant. By taking hostage the martyrdom of Charlie Hebdo, the former prime minister used it against the liberty of the press, creating imaginary crimes of intellectual complicity which is worthy of McCarthyism, calling for the banning from the public space of a publication whose leaning displeases him. Must we remind him the constitutionality of the pluralism of the media, established in France since 1984, meaning that it is one of our fundamental rights.
A democratic culture and plural identity
Having set out these facts here in the most sober manner possible, there remains the question of why there was such aggressiveness – and the word is weak – towards us. The personalisation of the attacks centred on Mediapart’s publishing editor cannot hide the fact that it is a pretext to weaken Mediapart by discrediting it and impugning it. That there are political disagreements between our editorial position and Manuel Valls has been clear for some while. It suffices to read our articles covering many issues, whether they be about democratic, social or security questions, about migration and discrimination, or the fight against corruption, and more still. But gone is the period when he accepted to appear on one of our live-streamed debates (as he did in March 2014). Why is it then that in what should have been a debate, however lively, he now expresses himself with a virulence that would never be employed by one of us, neither written nor spoken. Furthermore, he employs this tone not against a political rival but against an entity of the press, which he has treated as if it was a far more dangerous adversary.
The question in itself no doubt offers the answer, such as it is that the style employed speaks for what lies behind: a political loss of direction, moving towards authoritarianism and intolerance, going against the grain of a democratic culture that respects the plurality of opinions and the independence of journalism. As journalists, our job, through investigations, reports and analysis, is to always offer precision and nuance, complexity and contradiction. It is in fact the best antidote against blinding detestation which loses sight of understanding.
For example, at Mediapart we do not muddle up Islam, Islamism and terrorism. We refuse to place them together into a homogenous block that would make a religion the univocal breeding ground of a uniform political reality which in turn would inevitably produce terrorism. Because Islamism, in the diversity of political expression that lays claim to representing the Muslim religion, is promoted by the PJD party of Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani, is represented in the coalition government in Tunisia by the Ennahda Movement, and is espoused by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party, the AKP. The diverse factions in Libya with whom the United Nations and European countries negotiate lay claim to Islamism, just as does the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia with which the government led by Manuel Valls, just like its predecessors and successors, were happy to have dealings with.
In other words, while we have no complacency with regard to terrorists and the totalitarian ideology they serve (see for example the series of investigations into the Islamic State group by Mediapart’s Matthieu Suc), Mediapart refuses to resume the reality of France and the world only through the angle of the terrorist threat. Taking advantage of legitimate fears, the talk of war is a brutal call to abandon comprehension and debate – in sum to no longer know. Dismissing all other urgencies, such as social, democratic, and ecological issues, the warring speeches attempt to delude us into believing that we face only one danger, totally minimizing the reality of the rise in Europe of far-right, xenophobic and racist movements, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim, which are far closer to imposing their hegemony on public debate than Islamist formations.
But on top of this, our refusal to yield to a virtual military agenda is to also refuse to recognise a hierarchy in suffering, oppression and violence, and the causes that these inspire. We join in the combat against sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia – all of these oppositions to rejection and the persecution of an individual or a group because of their origins, beliefs, appearances and sexuality – but without allowing any one to eclipse the other. In Anglophone countries, this progressist position would hardly be surprising, summed up by an “intersectionality” in filiation with an affirmed political liberalism. But in France this is regarded as a sort of disorder.
That is true to the point that addressing a Muslim public has now been demonized. For that is what I did after the publication of my book Pour les musulmans and which led me, on two occasions of public meetings, to cross paths with Tariq Ramadan. To take part in such events is the opportunity to defend the common causes of equality, combating the retreat of communities into confinement by affirming, without any indulgence, that the wounding of any individual on the basis of simply who they are is nothing other than the wounding of all humanity. More essentially, since its creation Mediapart has demonstrated a constant opposition to the uniform image of French identity and our people. On the contrary, it has underlined the reality of a plural and multi-cultural nation.
No doubt it is here that lies an explanation of the attacks that we are subject to, in which the journalist co-founders of Mediapart (François Bonnet, Laurent Mauduit and myself) again come across one of the refrains during attacks against us in 2003, when I was editorial director of Le Monde and we were portrayed as anti-France agents (which I detailed in a book published in 2006). Added to this is an intolerance quite largely shared by the ruling establishment towards a media organization that is too enquiring about the secrets of political and economic powers, which does not spare them. This is a media organization which jealously guards its freedom to the point of perhaps appearing to preach to the rest of the profession; it takes seriously what is at stake for democracy through the right to know, even if that might lend an impression of self-importance. A French proverb has it that it is better to cause envy than pity, and Mediapart evidently pays the price of an insolent success, which was often marked by engaging in battles over its revelations, even when that included reproaching, or shaming, rival and dominant media.
But, unless we succumb to that pathological form of egocentricity that is paranoia, we must admit that amid this constructed cabal, Mediapart is but a symptom. It is a symptom of a country that is still unclear about its democratic culture and its plural identity. It is also that of uncertain times, fumbling forward between impatience for democracy and the temptation of authoritarianism.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.