French Leaders Warn That Social Justice Ideas Imported From the U.S. Are Undermining Their Society

When the French think you’ve gone too far with your wokeism, you might want to back up a bit. According to the New York Times, French politicians, high profile intellectuals, and journalists warn that ideas from the U.S. about race, gender, and post-colonialism are an existential threat to their country.

French President Emmanuel Macron felt the sting of social justice criticism last year following terrorist attacks that targeted France’s religious past and secular present. A Chechen refugee beheaded a schoolteacher for sharing the cartoons drawn by artists at Charlie Hebdo that were caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. He opened a class on free speech to celebrate France’s tradition of free expression and Enlightenment values. The same cartoons that triggered a massacre at Charlie Hebdo cost Samuel Paty his life.

This was one of three terrorist attacks during the trial in Paris for the Charlie Hebdo perpetrators. Two people were injured by a Pakistani refugee outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Three people were killed when a Tunisian man carrying a copy of the Quran entered a church in Nice with a knife. Macron responded with measures to eliminate Islamism. According to the New York Times:

In a long-awaited speech on the subject, Mr. Macron said that the influence of Islamism must be eradicated from public institutions even as he acknowledged government failures in allowing it to spread.

The measures include placing stringent limits on home-schooling and increasing scrutiny of religious schools, making associations that solicit public funds sign a “charter” on secularism. While these measures would apply to any group, they are intended to counter extremists in the Muslim community.

Under the measures, the widespread practice of bringing over foreign imams to work in France, where they are often accused of preaching an outdated or extreme version of Islam, would be ended.

Macron made distinctions between Muslims and Islamism as many other commentators, including Bill Maher and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, do in other parts of the world. He was roasted by the New York Times for a right-ward tilt and Islamophobia. Macron’s response to the criticism was to pick up the phone and call the reporters at the paper.

“When France was attacked five years ago, every nation in the world supported us,” Macron said, referring to the series of terrorist attacks across Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed.

So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values – journalists who write in a country that is the heir to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution – when I see them legitimising this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost.”

Macron actually encountered the radical Left’s inability to hold two ideas in their heads at once. Maher and Hirsi Ali have faced similar accusations. The ability to be tolerant of the Muslim religion and Muslims and yet also critical of or concerned about Islamist fundamentalism is beyond the Times‘ staff.

French culture has always taken the core values and of equality and liberty very seriously. The French government does not keep race-based statistics and rejects the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism. There is an expectation that...

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