A Coded Word From the Far Right Roils France’s Political Mainstream - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/world/europe/france-ensauvagement-far-right-racism.html
The word “ensauvagement” has been a favorite dog whistle of France’s far right in recent years, used to suggest that the nation is turning savage. With its colonial and racist overtones, it has been wielded in discussion of immigration and crime to sound alarms that France is being transformed into a dangerous, uncivilized place, stripped of its traditional values.
“Behind it, there is an underlying imaginary world, with savages on one side and civilized humanity on the other,” said Cécile Alduy, a French expert on the political use of language who teaches at Stanford University.
So it did not go unnoticed this week when sitting ministers of President Emmanuel Macron’s government started throwing around the word themselves, arguing forcefully that talk of France’s “ensauvagement” was legitimate.