“Democracy dies in darkness”: it was in February 2017, following the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president, that The Washington Post, celebrated for its investigative journalism, which remains best-known for its revelations of the Watergate scandal, decided to place the phrase on the masthead of both its online and print editions. It was in response to the alternative ‘truths’ promoted by the new occupant of the White House who, during his mandate, would never cease to attack the freedom of the press, its duty to reveal and its right to criticise.
While Donald Trump, beaten at the polls, will soon no longer be president of the US, it is now in France under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron that we must today raise this same alarm that democracy dies in darkness. Because, within a climate of fear caused by terrorism, the “global security” law presented by the executive and its parliamentary majority proposes to put an end to a fundamental freedom – that of informing, documenting, revealing and criticising the wrongdoings of the state towards the sovereign people.
By impeding, and even prohibiting in certain cases, the taking and dissemination of images of police violence, Article 24 of the draft legislation installs a police state in place of a constitutional state. It is the advent of a state that has every right, including that of hiding its illegal acts, to prevent the knowledge of illegitimate violence committed in its name, and to cover up the scandals, injustices and abuse of power involved.
If this measure is approved by parliament, there would no longer be exposure of scandals like that concerning Alexandre Benalla, or the death of Cédric Chouviat or the injuring of Geneviève Legay, to cite just three examples of cases of public interest, now all subject to judicial investigations, and which originally came to light through the circulation of images of police violence. Three different cases which illustrate just how much an end to this freedom will allow a black veil to cover over events which concern us all. In the case of Benalla, this included the private management of police affairs by the presidential office, the Élysée Palace; the case of Cédric Chouviat was yet another example of police violence; the injuring of Geneviève Legay involved the issue of the right to demonstrate.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The question is not only that of the media’s right to inform but also, and above all, that of the citizens’ right to know. In the three cases cited above, the images that exposed the wrongdoing came not only from professional journalists but also whistleblowers. Press freedom is not the privilege of journalists, but is the right of citizens. Any amendment of this liberticidal article of the draft legislation which might pretend to protect the work of journalists would only make the scandal all the greater. By granting the press a monopoly on information gathering, the law would deprive all the population of a right that belongs to everyone – precisely, that of informing, of alerting and of challenging.
Democracy is an ecosystem in which the right to know and freedom to say are the vital organs. Without free information and without pluralist opinion, unhindered by the control of the state and the interests and ideologies of those who manage it at a given moment, there is no longer any true democracy. Without the free and independent presentation of the truth of events, above all those which raise concern and surprise, which disturb and upset, the sovereign people would no longer know about things that involve them, would no longer be able to decide or debate their collective future. Blinded by the official ‘truths’ which hide brazen lies, the people would be plunged into darkness.
But this Article 24 is just the flagrant symbol of a wider debacle, that of sliding into an authoritarian regime, cutting away from what remains of liberal spirit in our major republican laws. Which is why we call for the withdrawal, not just of this article, but of the whole of this draft “global security” legislation whose measures increase the surveillance powers of the state while annihilating the counter-powers of society. Together with the other fracturing draft legislation, targeting “Islamist separatism” and now presented under the emblem of “republican principles”, it makes up a whole that unhinges two pillars of democracy; while one attacks the freedom to inform by and for all citizens, the other attacks their freedom of expression in a plan to introduce expeditive legal procedure of immediate fast-track trials for dissident or provocative opinions.
If these bills are adopted by parliament, there will no longer be simply arbitrary decisions to ban demonstrations, to crackdown on protests, to prolong a state of emergency etc. No, these will become legal and definitive. A permanent arbitrary, uncontested and incontestable, which will be the ordinary way of things. Throwing out the democratic spirit of France’s landmark law of 1881 enshrining the freedom of the press and speech, these two proposed laws signify the end of a vibrant republic, rich and strong with its disputes and polemics. Moreover, they also place in question the political liberalism of other founding republican laws, that of 1881-1882 on schooling, that of 1901 regulating associations, and that of 1905 on the separation of the church and the state.
When “Republic” becomes an empty word, brandished as an argument of authority for imposing silence and as a baton for repression, it means simply that it exists no more, or at least not in its democratic form. The republican house has always included conservatives and reactionaries sheltered under the motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” but who are also fierce enemies of what that signifies; equality of rights, the freedom to defend them, the courage to invent them, the promise of society free to organise itself, to inform itself, to assemble together, to demonstrate, to make demands to engage in protest and to campaign.
Those republicans who are opponents of democracy, of its spirit and its essence, of its founding laws and its vital principles, have dressed up in multiple attires in our past history, and the current government is but the latest representation of this. For the “republic” forever invoked by those now governing us is little more than a curtain hiding a lifeless skeleton. It is a republic with no adjective, neither democratic nor social, with no spirit or compass. A republic that has become lost.
When, in 2017, The Washington Post adopted its masthead warning of the obscurity that was falling on democracy, it was echoed by American historian Timothy Snyder in his book published that same year, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. One of these lessons was entitled “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives”, and sets out: “Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”
Because we refuse to fall for it, we will peacefully demonstrate in face of the unthinkable: the calling into question of democracy by a democratically elected government. And we will not stop doing so until it retreats.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse