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Inside a Campus Crackdown Over Wokeism in France | The New Republic
►https://newrepublic.com/article/194678/grenoble-france-university-islamophobia-controversy-wokeism

At a small university in the city of Grenoble, an accusation of Islamophobia set off a wild kerfuffle and a media frenzy. Sound familiar?

Retour sur l’affaire de Sciences Po Grenoble, vue par un observateur-enquêteur américain qui souligne ses similarités avec ce qui se passe aux USA aujourd’hui

Inside a Campus Crackdown Over Wokeism in France

At a small university in the city of Grenoble, an accusation of Islamophobia set off a wild kerfuffle and a media frenzy. Sound familiar?

On the morning of March 4, 2021, at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Grenoble, France—colloquially known as Sciences Po Grenoble—a group, probably of students, put up a poster on the side of the main building, a bright, modern structure with a view of the French Alps. The poster called for two professors, Vincent T. and Klaus Kinzler, to step down: “Fascists in Our Lecture Halls [T.] and Kinzler Resign. Islamophobia Kills.”

The poster was up for only a short while. But before it was removed, a student group took a picture of it and posted the photo online. Almost immediately, the media took note. The administration tried to keep a lid on things, but by March 5, the right-wing magazine Marianne had the story. The next day, the TV channel BFMTV ran an item about “two profs targeted” in Grenoble, an item that was in turn amplified by Caroline Fourest, a combative opinion journalist who made her name as a scourge of Islamism in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings and had more recently devoted her books and copious TV appearances to excoriating “wokeness.” Within days, the story had gone international. It was a time when accounts of campus wokeness, of out-of-control students and totalitarian social justice warriors, were at a premium, and the events in Grenoble seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

On March 8, the minister of the interior announced that the two professors singled out on the poster were under police protection. By March 9, Germany’s conservative daily Die Welt had published a lengthy interview with Kinzler, quickly supplying an English translation as well. By March 10, he was in Le Point. By March 12, he was speaking to Die Presse in Vienna. By March 13, an English version of Kinzler’s early TV appearance had been posted on the far-right “counter-jihad” blog Gates of Vienna. By March 23, the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle summed up the state of play as follows: “A German professor at a university in Grenoble, France, has become the target of a hate campaign for not wanting to compare antisemitism with Islamophobia.”

For this story, I spoke with several of the people involved in the affair. The fallout from the events of March 2021 clearly still cast its shadow over their lives. Some of those I reached out to didn’t respond, and among those who did, some didn’t want to be quoted. Everyone I spoke to reflected on events with evident exhaustion. For Sciences Po, which housed around 2,000 students and 150 staff, the row had created only bad outcomes: Almost immediately, the ministry commissioned two inspectors to write a report on what had happened. The report, released in April of the same year, recommended disciplining 17 students. Only one was suspended, according to The Times of London. François Jolivet, a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, demanded theatrically that the institution be placed under receivership. The conservative president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the region where Grenoble is located, cut back public subsidies for the university.

For one of the two professors mentioned in the poster, Klaus Kinzler, a German instructor who did not respond to an interview request for this story, the March events became the starting point for a campaign against his own university. In December 2021, Kinzler, a voluble and young-looking sixtysomething, told an interviewer that Sciences Po had become “a political reeducation camp” marred by “wokeism.” The BBC and The Times reported on the renewed controversy. Kinzler charged that the university explicitly encouraged students to “insult, abuse, and defame teachers who have the audacity not to share their extremist opinions.” In response, the university suspended him. A few months later, Kinzler published a book about the ordeal. Its title: L’Islamogauchisme ne m’a pas tué. Islamoleftism failed to kill me.

This article is about that term, “islamogauchisme.” It is about the incident at Sciences Po Grenoble. “Islamogauchisme,” as a term, has a curious fate and a more curious function. And it depends on a very specific information environment in order to seem at all plausible. That information environment, and the values and hierarchies it seems to operate with, tell us everything about our age of anti-wokeness—an age in which public discourse has allowed personal smallness and pique to be recast as big principles, encouraging a kind of opportunism that goes on and on about “values,” but that in truth knows only one currency: attention.

But the Grenoble story, the story of “islamogauchisme,” is not, or is not just, about media. It is about government. “Our society has been far too permeable to currents of thought,” declared Jean-Michel Blanquer, then minister of national education, in an interview about the supposed scourge of Islamoleftism. From the beginning, the media hubbub in Grenoble met a government all too willing to exploit it—in ways that make you wonder what type of university (or society) France’s nominally centrist, even liberal, government envisions. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly liberal one.

The reason a reader in the United States should care about what really happened on and leading up to that March day in Grenoble is that the same media dynamics exist in the United States. And because the federal and state governments have been getting involved in much the same way. Over just the first few months of the second Trump administration, there have been extraordinary attacks on Columbia University, Harvard, and other institutions. Signs point plainly to the onslaught continuing.

Our age has become once again obsessed with campus stories, stories that are supposed to vouch for far more and far more impactful trends than they’d seem able to sustain at first glance. Those stories are about the campus, but are incapable of paying attention to it. They race at breakneck speed away from what it’s actually like at a university, where professionals sometimes behave professionally and sometimes don’t. They dive headfirst into relentlessly abstract generality. And they appear actively impatient with the day-to-day grind that is instruction and research.

The sociologist Éric Fassin describes this crackdown as “illiberal anti-intellectualism.” Under the guise of safeguarding the liberal university against tribalism, politicians from the political center and right are in truth trying to integrate the university into a new tribalism. Our institutions of higher education have been captured by the other tribe, they tell themselves, and thus it’s only fair for our tribe to take it back.

You can’t understand what happened in Grenoble in March 2021 without knowing what happened in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a modest, pretty outer suburb of Paris, in October 2020, even though the two events were largely unrelated on their face. When the story from Grenoble became public, the name Samuel Paty, a secondary school teacher who was murdered there, was never far.

In the fall of 2020, Paty had decided to teach a unit on free speech that included cartoons involving the prophet Muhammad. Parents and local leaders protested vociferously. On October 16, a Chechen Muslim refugee named Abdoullakh Anzorov followed Paty from school, then stabbed and beheaded the teacher. Minutes after the attack, he posted an image of Paty’s severed head to Twitter. A few moments later he was dead, shot by police. At the time of his murder, Paty was 47 years old.

What made the homicide such a crucible was that, while Anzorov may have committed the act alone, it did not come out of nowhere. There had been a social media campaign against the teacher; various groups had amplified the case. Someone had driven Anzorov to the school, where students pointed out Paty to his killer. The prosecutor of the case, Jean-François Ricard, saw a “direct causal link” between the online campaign and Anzorov’s brutal attack.

One of the accusations leveled against Paty was “Islamophobia”—the exact word used on the poster at Sciences Po. That’s the connection between the two events, the full extent of it, if we’re honest. The university, the anti-woke journalist Fourest wrote on Twitter shortly after the poster went up, had not just put a target on Kinzler’s back, it had “unleashed a mob against the right to question a word that has killed.”

In the newspapers’ telling as well, the events that led up to the poster calling for Kinzler’s resignation can be traced to fall 2020. At Sciences Po, Covid had moved almost all campus activity online, and everyone was cooped up at home. Which is when the announcement email arrived that, according to Klaus Kinzler’s book, started it all. As part of the university’s “Equality Week,” there would be an event on “Racism, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism.”

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Kinzler decided to sign up for the group planning the event. Not because he believed in its mission, however. He felt that the title equated antisemitism and Islamophobia, though his real objection, it quickly emerged, was with the notion of Islamophobia in general. He didn’t think it existed. He thought the very word was dangerous.

Kinzler’s disagreement with the other organizers led to an increasingly heated exchange via email. There were several students on the thread. The only other faculty member initially on the email chain was Claire M., who studies Jews in the Muslim world. M. wrote to Kinzler that “the notion of Islamophobia is indeed contested in the field of partisan politics,” but pointed out that “this is not the case in scholarship.” It is, she added, “a heuristic concept, used in the social sciences, and as we are at a university it seems to me quite legitimate to use it.”

At some point, someone—probably Kinzler—looped in the political scientist Vincent T., who, like Kinzler himself, seemed to be less a specialist in any of the subjects at hand than a person with a strong opinion on Islamophobia. “I fully subscribe to Klaus’s salutary reflection,” T. wrote, “and I am dismayed to discover to what extent academics are immersed in militancy and ideology.” To speak of “Islamophobia” at this point would be to involve the Institut d’Études Politiques de Grenoble “in the fight led by Islamists.” Claire M. responded with a patient email listing scholarly articles and reputable journals to show that the notion of Islamophobia has a basis in scholarship. When Vincent T. replied, he looped in the director of the institute, political scientist Sabine Saurugger. This email was less an argument than a litany: “Charlie Hebdo was accused of Islamophobia. Samuel Paty was accused of being Islamophobic.”

Given how the story evolved later, it is important to emphasize that the disagreement was never about whether Kinzler did or did not believe that Islamophobia was real. Claire M. simply asked him to accept that many scholars studying the issue had come to the conclusion that Islamophobia was real, and that meant it could be used as the basis for an academic panel. Kinzler’s (and Vincent T.’s) position seemed to be that the word itself was violence, was subversion, was a win for the Islamists. Claire M., for her part, seemed mostly taken aback by the lack of collegiality and respect.

But behind it—at least in Kinzler’s and T.’s interjections—lay the charge that would define the affair, a charge that had gained currency in the wake of the Paty murder: that having a conversation about Islamophobia at Sciences Po was a sign that woke “militancy and ideology” were becoming dominant at the university, that, as T. wrote, the Sciences Po “would find itself in their”—meaning the Islamists’—“camp.” The charge was, in other words, “islamogauchisme.”

The fight in Grenoble was ostensibly all about academic freedom. But academic expertise didn’t seem to matter. Those who wanted to analyze were told they were being hysterical, while hysteria was lauded as analysis, so long as it was the right kind of hysteria.

“Islamogauchisme” entered the French vocabulary in 2002, with a book by Pierre-André Taguieff. Other early users of the term were the philosopher Pascal Bruckner and the journalist Caroline Fourest, whom we’ve already met, in her eager early dissemination of the Grenoble story. While there have been a few attempts to bring the term “Islamoleftism” into anglophone publications, it’s usually on blogs sporting eye-searingly garish fonts. The terms that frequently surround it when it does appear—“identity politics,” “wokeism,” “cancel culture”—have had a far more global career and impact.

Authentically French as the expression may be, Americans of a certain age may be able to detect the traces of a U.S. vintage. After all, we remember the way early war on terrorism-rhetoric positioned leftists—particularly academic leftists—as unwitting allies of jihadists. But “islamogauchisme” and similar constructions go further. They position leftism and Islamism as essentially linked projects.

Books and articles about “islamogauchisme” (fewer in number than books and articles about “wokisme,” but increasing in number) have a way of constructing deeply weird genealogies. Bruckner traces the genesis of this supposed alliance through British anti-colonial activists and neo-Trotskyist splinter groups in a way that feels learned, but esoteric. He even starts his historical rundown with a long quote from international assassin Carlos “The Jackal” Ramirez, whose writings are, admittedly, still huge in the undergraduate curriculum. Like the stateside work of “critical race theory”–hunter Christopher Rufo, who seems convinced that entire academic disciplines can be traced back to the influence of the Marxist feminist activist Angela Davis, these accounts shade into the conspiratorial without ever coming out and alleging a conspiracy.

The most important thing about this discourse may be what it does, not what it represents. It never has to say outright whether it thinks academics, lefty organizers, or, in this case, a student union are useful idiots, secret fifth columnists, or actively subverting “the West.” (Many still do, of course.) It turns all analysis into apologia, it renders careful study suspect rather than necessary. And, for all its loud caterwauling about free speech, it aims to chill speech by associating critical analysis of Western societies with the “radical evil” of “Islamism.”

One of the most interesting and troubling developments of the last 10 years—a phenomenon that started in Europe, but has now firmly established itself in the United States—is the attack on liberal democracy that presents itself as its defense. Conservatives in the United States long drew the distinction between a Christian moral order and the secular world. Europeans tended to draw on a different distinction: that between Christianity and Islam. When Europeans attacked the institutions of liberal democracy, they did so not by attacking their secularism, but by claiming to defend the institutions from capture by the Other. Whether it’s a bunch of kids camping on your university’s South Lawn to protest the war in Gaza, or the idea that wokeness has captured the faculty lounge, the message is the same: Our intellectuals, our young, our institutions are in more or less witting alliance with the Islamists. The only recourse is to attack those institutions.

By January 2021—two months before the poster went up, in other words—the dispute between the professors appeared to have died down. Through an ombudsperson, Claire M. had written to the university director. Both M. and the director agreed that Kinzler had a right to his opinions, but that he had violated his professional ethics in how he expressed them. Professor Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, director of the social science research center for which Claire M. worked, had written a letter affirming that there indeed was a scholarly consensus that Islamophobia was real, and that it was legitimate to organize events about it. The director of Sciences Po had demanded that Kinzler apologize for his unprofessional behavior in the email, and Kinzler had obliged—twice. That, in another world, might have been that.

However, the students were not part of this attempt at calming the waves, even though they’d been copied on the email thread, and had in fact made up a majority of its recipients at any given moment. Over the holidays, it seems, the students reached out to their own groups, above all the “Union Syndicale.”

French student unions are different from what North Americans would mean by that term. Unlike American graduate unions, they do not bargain collectively, but like them, they represent and advocate for the interests of their members. The Union Syndicale, one member told me slightly ironically, is not a real union, but it tries to do for students what the real unions do for workers.

On January 7, 2021, a long note about the email kerfuffle appeared on the Facebook page of a student group called “Sciences Po Grenoble en lutte.” It detailed statements made by Kinzler in the emails—statements denying Islamophobia existed and generally parroting far-right talking points—without identifying the instructor by name.

In February, members of the Union Syndicale reached out to other students to describe their classroom interactions with Klaus Kinzler and, above all, Vincent T. While not naming either instructor, the student union did name one of Vincent T.’s courses. Students accused the university’s administration of turning a blind eye to “Islamophobic” and “far-right” instructors and failing to protect students from them.

That, at least, is the timeline outlined in the inspector general’s report, which laid much of the blame for the escalation at the students’ doorstep. According to those I spoke with, what the timeline doesn’t make clear is that at some point either before or during the email quarrel, Klaus Kinzler had decided to teach a class unit on the topic of “cancel culture” for his third-year German students, and had chosen to include among the course’s texts, which he was in the custom of posting on his IEP website, a PDF of his email exchange with Claire M. and the students. Based on screenshots of the syllabus, which is no longer online, it appears he also added, as a reading, a “defense of the accused” (i.e., himself), even though in the emails he had done most of the accusing.

Whatever the case, over the course of January and February, interactions between the professor and the students escalated. Before long, he addressed his emails to “the little budding ayatollahs” and signed as “a genetic Nazi.” The report doesn’t make clear that most of the union’s communications were intended to be internal. The January 7 Facebook post that collected some of the more incendiary statements in the original exchange of emails was addressed to “the Sciences Po Grenoble Community” and meant to put pressure on the administration. And on February 22, the union posted on its Facebook page a request for “witnesses” to Islamophobic in-class behavior by T.

These details may seem like nitpicking, but against the backdrop of the Paty murder, the difference between a public and an internal social media post is significant. Paty’s killer was from a small city in Normandy, about 60 miles from the scene of the crime. He knew about Paty from the internet. Angry parents at the secondary school had spread the news, and incendiary claims had been posted on social media and circulated by the Facebook page of a mosque. To be clear: The internet and social media are not dangerous in and of themselves. They are dangerous insofar as they might connect a disturbed or radicalized individual like Abdoullakh Anzorov with a victim like Paty.

Throughout the inspector general’s report, however, the authors treat the digital nature of the student union’s efforts as problematic in itself. The fact that the emails Kinzler had put online were far more universally accessible than a Facebook post seemed to occasion no comparable worry on their part. It was the combination of youth and internet that worried them. Although Paty’s awful fate hung over everything that was to transpire in Grenoble, it’s worth noting that no one at Grenoble seemed to want to make the hubbub public. Until, that is, Kinzler started appearing in every medium that would have him.

Shortly after March 4, when the poster went up at Sciences Po, the instructor went on a massive media tour. LexisNexis lists more than 50 articles featuring his name for that month. By March 12, three former students of his took to the pages of Le Figaro in order to defend Kinzler’s academic freedom. The whole thing very quickly internationalized. In fact, only through this internationalization did the vocabulary around the entire affair solidify. Brits, Germans, and French people all had begun to worry about “wokeness,” and here was a perfect story to illustrate its supposed evils.
One year after the death of the secondary school teacher Samuel Paty, who was murdered in October 2020 for having shown cartoons involving the prophet Muhammad, mourners left flowers at a ceremony honoring him.

Some of the immediate responses to the poster of March 4 came from the usual suspects: far-right blogs and politicos. But it didn’t stay there. Within days, the French government was interested. Emmanuel Macron had swept into office in 2017 on a broadly centrist and liberal platform. As Macron’s fortunes, and those of his party, turned, observers began to notice a shift in the rhetorical winds. In 2020, in the midst of the global protests following the death of George Floyd, Macron complained about woke “social science theories” that were brought to France by ideological super-spreaders from the United States. Macron, who had long positioned himself as a bulwark against the far-right Rassemblement National party, started borrowing its buzzwords. With that came renewed scrutiny vis-à-vis the country’s universities—and a focus on “islamogauchisme.”

France has two ministries of education. There’s the Ministry of National Education and Youth, which in the relevant period was headed by Jean-Michel Blanquer, and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation, responsible for universities and research institutions, and headed then by Frédérique Vidal.

After the Paty murder, Blanquer had enthusiastically pushed the rhetoric of “islamogauchisme.” Soon he went on the hunt among the nation’s university professors for “the intellectual accomplices of the crime.” “The fish rots from the head,” he told one interviewer, adding that islamogauchisme “was causing havoc in our universities.” Were there tons of secret terrorists hiding in French faculty lounges? Not really. But the universities were encouraging “intellectual radicalism,” which “leads to the worst”—presumably crimes like the murder of Samuel Paty.

You’ll be forgiven if you find this account confusing. With Blanquer, things always lead to other things, resemble other things, things he then won’t fully spell out. As best I can discern, the suggestion was that French universities pave the way for Islamism by practicing identity politics. The French Republic is founded on universalism and laicism, the exclusion of religion from politics, and a rejection of a focus on particular identities or communities (the French term for identity politics is “communautarisme”). People studying ethnicity or researching racism, in other words, or affinity groups of students that are open only to women or trans people, are seen as promoting the fracture of society, and thus directly preparing the ground for Islamist terror.

But there is a strange contradiction in the way politicians like Blanquer wield universalism. For in defending universalism and laïcité as French values and achievements (and implicitly casting others as congenitally incapable of them), their opposition to identity politics can sound an awful lot like … French identity politics. “These are ideas that often come from elsewhere,” Blanquer said about communitarianism, “from a model of society that is not ours.” Something similar was in fact true of Klaus Kinzler: He had written in the email exchange that started it all that he “personally [had] no sympathy for Islam as a religion” and that he “much prefer[red] Christ.” It was left to the others on the email chain—the people who’d soon be tarred as cancel culture–crazed wokeists—to point out that this admission in fact violated the principle of laïcité.

It was a discourse riven with internal contradictions. Whenever you heard Blanquer talking in those days, you could sense that he sensed it, too. His statements had an improvisational quality, like a three-card monte player desperately shuffling his cards around. Still, the assertions got him on TV, more often and more extensively than the other French education minister, Frédérique Vidal, who appeared desperate to get a word in “islamogauchisme”-wise. On February 16, 2021, she announced “a review of all the research” to root out “islamogauchisme” and postcolonialism—to distinguish “that which is part of academic research and what is a matter of activism and opinion.” (In March 2023, Le Monde reported that no such survey ever took place.)

The government was, in other words, operating with an excellent theory in need of an actual event that it might explain. And Sciences Po Grenoble had the bad fortune of obliging. The government sprang into action with immense speed.

The resulting report, which came out just a month later, in April 2021, spread the blame around: oversensitive colleagues, lack of professionalism, an administration in over its head. But it saved most of its rhetorical powder for the student union. “The gravest fault in the chain of events which led to the events of March 4, are the accusations of Islamophobia and fascism” on social media. Again and again, faculty conduct is deemed “unprofessional”; but the student speech is deemed “violent.” You read that right: Addressing students as “little budding ayatollahs” is not violent, but calling someone a fascist is.

If this is so, someone forgot to tell Blanquer, minister of education (though, remember, not the one who called for the investigation). Blanquer had taken to a TV show to excoriate “things that resemble fascism.” His target had been a different student union, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France. The reason was even more negligible than the contretemps at Sciences Po: Apparently the union had held affinity group meetings that were open only to certain identities. The date was March 19, 2021.

It’s hard not to come away from the report with a sense that it holds the various protagonists of l’affaire Grenoble to vastly different standards. And it’s hard not to come away with a sense that that’s exactly the document’s point. There’s no question that everyone at Sciences Po could have benefited from dialing down the temperature on their rhetoric. But only certain forms of overheating were “violent”; others were covered by academic freedom. After all, the report seems certain, any overheated rhetoric on Kinzler’s part was merely in reaction to the rhetoric of Claire M. and the students.

People who present themselves as victims of cancel culture, political correctness, or here “Islamoleftism” often assume a pose of a babe in the woods. They step into controversy, they tell us, without meaning anything by it, and they are shocked by the outrage their innocent interjections elicit. Kinzler asks his readers to swallow more than the usual amount of this. The authors of the report fully obliged.

Reading through the email exchange that started it all, you do not get a sense of a well-meaning colleague guilelessly raising a point and being shouted down by fascist students. You get a distinct whiff of trolling. Kinzler had joined the email group because he didn’t believe Islamophobia was real; his arguments spoke to a steady diet of right-wing culture wars, mostly French and German varietals. And even in writing about the decision in his book, he can’t resist a weird joke about trans people that goes on for a page. Even by the standard of anti-P.C. outrage bait, Kinzler served up deeply hacky stuff.

Kinzler’s framing of the affair reveals a man fully immersed in the information environment that would later (briefly) make him a star. As he told Germany’s Die Welt shortly after the whole episode blew up, what happened to him was connected to a whole raft of other problems at French universities: “That science is confused with political activism,” for one. That “there’s no more debating or arguing because people might feel hurt.” You may agree or disagree with him on these points. But it’s fairly clear that this was a man primed, perhaps eager, for the kind of victimization narrative he now starred in.

But in some way, the Inspector General’s report leaves out an entire set of actors, for the simple reason that they commissioned the report. Several people who spoke with the commission told me they realized early on that the two bureaucrats had been sent to Grenoble to find what the minister wanted found, or to find what was least embarrassing to her. And they dutifully found fault among the one group their boss seemed most hostile to.

Between the lines, the report reveals that the ministry appeared to be actively distorting the case to its own ends. For instance, France’s interior minister announced on March 8 that he had contacted the two teachers. “Protective measures are being taken, work is being done with the prefect, with the police.” This early announcement became a big part of the story. The involvement of the police practically forced the comparison to the Paty case, and it escalated what was, at first blush, a bit of a trivial dustup into a crisis.

Something both the media stories and the ministry failed to mention: As early as March 8, the prefecture in Grenoble had offered police protection to several of the people at Sciences Po whose names had become public in connection with the poster—not just T. and Kinzler. Kinzler may have enthusiastically accepted the offer, writing in his book about getting whisked out of the Grenoble train station by police officers and being told to find a secret “safe space.” But professor Amilhat Szary, too, agreed to protection, even if she didn’t end up going on hikes with any police officers. A student I spoke to received an offer of protection (which I reviewed); he didn’t assent, he said, because he didn’t like the idea of having a cop follow him around.

And yet the minister seems to have deliberately created the impression that there were actual threats of violence that had exclusively or mostly been directed at Kinzler and T.

About those threats: They, too, were a big part of the ministry’s media campaign against Sciences Po. But here, too, the suggestion—both from media and from politicians—that Kinzler and T. were the main recipients of those threats turns out to be a distortion.

The first true targets were, in fact, the students. On March 7, the student union’s email account received a short email from an anonymous account. It concluded: “Beware, soon it will be your turn to be afraid.” Another, sent March 18, named two student representatives, calling him a “bastard” and her a “verminous bitch,” and suggested they “better start training for running by 2022. They’ll need it to make good time”—presumably referring to when far-right politicians Marine Le Pen or Éric Zemmour might become president of France. “We would need courts of the type Volksgerichtshof of the little mustachioed man,” meaning Hitler, “or military courts which existed under De Gaulle to judge the vermin leading these student mafia groups, with the guillotine in their sights.”

At some point, since journalists on the “islamogauchisme” beat seemed deeply interested in the story but equally allergic to actually talking to anyone at the university, the question turned to who had “given” the names of Kinzler and T. to the student union. They might have been able to learn that there was a PDF of the professors’ emails, put online by one of the men now claiming persecution. They did not. Instead, they decided that it was Amilhat Szary who had “leaked” the identities, never mind that her letters hadn’t mentioned anyone by name.

Fourest got the ball rolling on this line of accusation: “According to this,” she commented on an early news report on Twitter, “it was a teacher and the research laboratory ... who inveigled the students against these two professors.” On March 9, the CNews host Pascal Praud named the director of the laboratory on his show L’Heure des Pros. “This lady is an activist,” he explained, “who advances with the feeling of impunity,” accusing Amilhat Szary of “intellectual terrorism.”

For a group supposedly so concerned with the consequences that words can have, these journalists were shockingly uninterested in the obvious downstream effects of their own statements. On March 12, a post appeared on Facebook, where it seems to have attracted a fair bit of attention: “The Islamo-leftist Anne Laure Amilhat Szary is an instigator of the ‘fatwa’ launched against two professors at Sciences Po Grenoble! As she found it normal to distribute the professors’ photos, nothing will bother us if we distribute hers.” Again, she had not distributed them.

We know that there were threats against Amilhat Szary because in December 2022 10 individuals were charged with “harassment by means of a communication service” and “death threats.” A month later, they were convicted of the less dramatic charge of “cyber-harassment.” According to reporting from the trial, Amilhat Szary received “hundreds” of messages, including death threats, in the days after her name was made public. The French magazine Mediapart reproduced a few of the Facebook comments below her picture: “We are going to kill you!” “To the gallows!” “We must slit her throat!” are among the few printable ones. Again, remember that these torrents of abuse were raining down on Amilhat Szary while the inspector general was already composing a report accusing the student union of “violent rhetoric.” Somehow the threats of rape and guillotine didn’t make the cut.

So far, the only court-documented threats of violence in the entire Grenoble affair concern threats made not by “islamogauchistes” but by people claiming to oppose “islamogauchisme.” By contrast, just how many threats Kinzler and Vincent T. received is a bit of a mystery. If Kinzler received many such threats, they didn’t leave much of a trace in his book. Vincent T. filed a suit for defamation, but that suggests a different kind of message.

Still, it’s noticeable that media reports about threats were everywhere, while Kinzler describes his situation as follows: “1500 unread messages since the day before! Skimming through a few dozen, I see that they all express support for me.” The threats the media were referring to were most likely those on the original poster. The threat they were interested in was the one contained in the charge of fascism and “Islamophobia”; they seemed entirely uninterested in the torrent of threats precipitated by yelling about “islamogauchisme” in every newspaper and talk show.

The threat, by this line of reasoning, was saying that “Islamophobia kills,” as the students had done on their poster, a poster initially seen by a handful of people on an Alpine campus and among the social media followers of a student union. The idea that blasting an academic as an “islamogauchiste” on TV, radio, and newspapers might lead to messages like “Let her die with her ass stuffed with red rags and her mouth open,” as 73-year-old Alain B. said on Facebook about Amilhat Szary, did not seem to enter the equation.

This is where the story of Grenoble becomes the story of the university in the present age. The present age, meaning, in this case: a resurgent far right and a liberal, centrist establishment that seems increasingly ready to share the far right’s vocabulary and preoccupations. By December 2021, when the second round of stories about Sciences Po began to hit the international papers, the institute director told a French broadcaster that she was “stunned to discover the image of the IEP in the media.”

Grenoble was finding itself at the center of one of those campus stories that are effective, or maybe even meaningful, only when seen from the maximum possible distance. Within France, barely anyone seemed to bother to try to understand what had actually happened; and in the story’s international reception, that tendency was, if anything, heightened. Swiss newspapers could use the account to scare their readers about what might soon make its way to their own institutions of higher learning. German newspapers could combine it with a few American campus anecdotes to tell the tale of a woke virus that was threatening to spread to the Fatherland. It was that kind of international mythmaking that had led the Macron government to fixate on “islamogauchisme” in the first place. Now it was used to metabolize the events in Grenoble.

What Sciences Po experienced is something that has begun to characterize campus life in many Western countries. The strange magic by which a demand suddenly becomes a threat, while very real, very material threats somehow fail to register. The campus where an ineffectual administration barely contains the threat from within is apparently embodied by a group of undergraduates who have gotten hold of some paper and a canister of paint.

In the United States in 2023, seven university presidents were hauled before Congress to be yelled at by representatives of both parties for failing to discipline their students. Media and commentators seemed to desire nothing more than combat boots and truncheons raining down on blue-haired undergraduates (and in many places got exactly what they desired). The dynamics that enveloped the pretty campus in the Alps in 2021 have become an export item.

When U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York started her crusade against elite colleges, she mostly avoided talking about Islam. She instead described a university that, as she wrote in the New York Post, had been weakened by “decades of moral decay, intellectual laziness and dangerous far-left radical groupthink.” The notion that the West has weakened its institutions through relativism and thus primed them for takeover is widespread in conservative circles, but it is worth saying: Stefanik’s reasoning is “great replacement” logic applied to the university quad. During congressional hearings, Representative Kevin Kiley went further, and suggested, for instance, that Harvard’s Claudine Gay regarded “antisemites” as her “constituency.”

The idea that woke multiculturalists were in secret and intentional alliance with Muslim terrorism has become a favorite go-to of the second Trump administration. So has the idea that this supposed alliance never had to be substantiated by more than vibes. Each letter that goes out from the interagency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism draws on a mishmash of actual complaints about antisemitism; conservative grievances over free speech, woke­ness, and “diversity, equity, and inclusion”; and accusations of terrorism. In using Title VI claims and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, and by linking these to “woke” or “postcolonial” theories, the administration has created the perfect cudgel to attack campus life. Its aim appears to be, in each instance, state control. In April, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard University. The top-line items—mandated appointment of conservative scholars, curtailing of faculty governance—got most of the attention. But in between all the other demands, the federal government expressed the opinion that the venerable university literally shields students “supportive of terrorism.”

Again and again, leaders were not responding to what was actually happening on local campuses—they were reacting to what they had been told had happened at faraway campuses. “Islamogauchisme” wasn’t explicitly invoked, but the idea that when students object to war crimes, “Hamas” is “taking over” the campus draws on the same connection. The charge of “­islamogauchisme” is a rumor about the university, insubstantial, changeable, impossible to disprove. And it is destructive of the very institution it pretends to be so concerned about.

►https://newrepublic.com/article/194678/grenoble-france-university-islamophobia-controversy-wokeism

#affaire_de_Grenoble #université #ESR #université_grenoble_Alpes #Sciences_Po_Grenoble #islamogauchisme #woke #wokisme #Klaus_Kinzler

Sur l’"affaire de Grenoble" :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

Ce que ça coûte de s’exprimer sur Israël-Palestine | Le Club
►https://blogs.mediapart.fr/thomasvescovi/blog/280124/ce-que-ca-coute-de-s-exprimer-sur-israel-palestine

https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/og/club-billet-blog/files/2024/01/28/capture-d-ecran-2024-01-27-a-14-25-12-1.png

Personne ne devrait avoir à craindre de prendre la parole dans le champ médiatique, y compris pour exprimer des critiques à l’encontre de la politique israélienne. Pourtant chercheurs, journalistes ou responsables politiques préfèrent souvent ignorer le sujet, ou nuancer leur propos, plutôt que d’être la cible de la fachosphère et de ses relais institutionnels.

#libertés_académiques menacées

Retour de la question @seenthis : est-ce qu’on vire les comptes qui puent (trop) la fafitude ?

– On a LieuxCommuns qui continue à creuser son sillon, on a un Hérétiques Podcast qui ne sent pas la rose non plus, et donc on me repose la question de virer les fachos.

– Je relance la question ici, parce que comme vous le savez, depuis le début je suis extrêmement réticent à virer des comptes pour des motifs politiques, du moment qu’ils ne perturbent pas le fonctionnement du réseau lui-même.

– Mais ma position évolue, et je suis moins réticent, parce que maintenant moi aussi j’ai le sentiment d’être submergé par les fachos et leurs discours, partout et tout le temps, sur le Web et hors du Web.

– Donc je relance la question, en annonçant que si on a un relatif consensus, je ne m’opposerai pas aussi fortement qu’avant à des fermetures de comptes fafs.

– Par contre j’ai toujours la crainte qu’on ouvre ainsi une boîte de Pandore, avec chacun qui se met à réclamer la fermeture de sa petite liste de détestations : Untel voudra fermer les comptes qu’il croit antisémites, Machine ceux des TERFs, Trucmuche ceux qu’il soupçonne d’être complotistes… J’aimerais donc qu’on sucre des comptes si on a un consensus sur le principe, mais aussi sur les comptes en question, et qu’on fasse bien gaffe à ne pas partir en mode Comité de Salut public.

"Affaire de Grenoble" : Annulation des #poursuites contre Thomas Mandroux

Vous vous souvenez de l’affaire de l’IEP de Grenoble avec les accusations d’islamophobie et les représailles judiciaires, administratives et médiatiques contre les étudiants et ces horribles « Islamo-gauchistes » . Et bien le Tribunal a annulé les porsuites. A suivre...

https://i.imgur.com/2J90Ybd.jpg

Pour mémoire, la métaliste sur ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

A #Sciences_Po_Grenoble, des plaies toujours vives après l’affaire des professeurs dénoncés par des colleurs d’#affiches

La direction de l’#IEP a choisi de garder le #silence après la récente suppression de subventions décidée par le conseil régional d’Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Deux ans après, deux procès viennent raviver cette affaire.

« Vous émettiez souvent des avis sur les cours dispensés à Sciences Po ? », s’enquiert la juge, le regard interrogateur. A la barre du tribunal correctionnel de Grenoble, mardi 10 janvier, la voix de #Thomas_Mandroux, ex-coprésident de l’#Union_syndicale (US) des étudiants de l’institut d’études politiques de la ville, est posée, mais porte peu.

Accusé de #diffamation et d’#injure par #Vincent_Tournier, l’un des deux enseignants dont le nom avait été placardé sur les murs de l’école, le 4 mars 2021, le jeune homme a tenté de justifier l’appel à témoignages lancé sur la page Facebook de l’US, le 22 février 2021, pour collecter « les propos problématiques » et « islamophobes » qui auraient pu être tenus lors du cours de M. Tournier sur l’islam et les musulmans en France.

Désormais diplômé de l’institut, Thomas Mandroux a indiqué qu’il n’avait pas poursuivi en thèse. « Je suis considéré comme horrible, a-t-il commenté. Cela a mis un terme à toute possibilité de trouver un directeur de thèse. »

Cette comparution rappelle que la crise qui a ébranlé l’IEP il y a près de deux ans est encore loin d’être soldée. Le président (Les Républicains) de la région, Laurent #Wauquiez, a récemment soufflé sur les braises : un vote du conseil régional Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, le 16 décembre 2022, a acté l’annulation du versement d’une somme de 400 000 euros, habituellement allouée aux étudiants de Sciences Po pour leur cursus à l’étranger. En cause : la supposée « longue dérive idéologique et communautariste » de l’école, qu’il avait dénoncée fin 2021. Un professeur d’allemand, #Klaus_Kinzler, venait d’être suspendu pour une durée de quatre mois par sa direction pour avoir qualifié son établissement d’« institut de rééducation politique » où des enseignants « endoctrineraient » les étudiants.

« On est là pour étudier »

Ce professeur, dont le nom avait été placardé auprès de celui de Vincent Tournier, accolé à la phrase « Des fascistes dans nos amphis. L’islamophobie tue », s’était opposé à Mme M., une historienne, fin 2020, sur l’usage du terme « islamophobie » auprès des mots « racisme » et « antisémitisme », ces trois thèmes devant servir à définir le contenu d’une table ronde. Près de deux ans plus tard, les colleurs de ces affiches n’ont pu être identifiés, indique au Monde le procureur de #Grenoble, Eric Vaillant.

▻https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/01/11/a-sciences-po-grenoble-des-plaies-toujours-vives-deux-ans-apres-la-polemique

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ajouté à la métaliste atour de ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

Après la polémique des « #collages », la Région stoppe certaines #bourses

En 2021, après la polémique à Sciences Po, Laurent #Wauquiez avait suspendu l’ensemble de ses coopérations avec l’établissement. Et cette année, les élèves ont été exclus des bourses de mobilité internationale.

Souvenez-vous : en 2021 éclatait la polémique à #Sciences_Po_Grenoble (#IEP), qui se soldait par la suspension, par sa hiérarchie, de Klaus Kinzler, l’un des deux enseignants accusés d’islamophobie par un groupe d’étudiants. Peu après, le président de la Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Laurent Wauquiez (LR), annonçait le #gel de l’ensemble des #financements_régionaux versés à l’établissement qu’il accusait de soutenir des « #pratiques_communautaristes ». « Je ne lâcherai pas sur Sciences Po Grenoble. Qu’une institution de notre territoire, qui forme des cadres, ait été capable de laisser jeter en pâture un professeur, avec les conséquences que cela aurait pu avoir, je ne peux pas l’accepter », avait lancé l’élu.

« C’est totalement discriminatoire et injuste » disent les élus insoumis

L’affaire rebondit aujourd’hui, puisque le groupe des Insoumis de la Région nous a fait part d’une décision prise jeudi lors de la commission « Enseignement supérieur » : l’#exclusion des étudiants de Sciences Po Grenoble du dispositif de bourse à la #mobilité_internationale, habituellement proposé par la Région. « Ce choix est inacceptable, les premières victimes seront les étudiants qui, pour bon nombre d’entre eux, ne pourront effectuer leur année à l’étranger, pourtant obligatoire dans leur cursus […] La Région rompt le principe d’égalité entre tous les étudiants pour l’accès aux bourses », déclarent les Insoumis régionaux.

Et la conseillère LFI, Émilie Marche, de rajouter : « C’est totalement discriminatoire et injuste. En commission, je me suis élevée contre cette décision, et je leur ai rappelé que cela pénalisait les étudiants qui ne sont pas tous des gauchistes, comme ils disent. Mais cela n’a rien changé. »

https://i.imgur.com/Rd3CSzP.png

▻https://twitter.com/emiliemPG/status/1598685798362071040

On a contacté l’exécutif régional, qui nous a confirmé les faits : « Depuis décembre 2021, la Région a suspendu l’ensemble de ses financements et de ses coopérations avec Sciences Po Grenoble suite à la longue dérive idéologique et communautariste de sa direction. La suspension d’un enseignant accusé d’avoir fait état de la dégradation des conditions d’enseignement dans cet établissement fut un nouveau cap franchi que la Région ne peut accepter. Si l’an dernier, ces subventions avaient été maintenues, c’est qu’elles avaient déjà été votées. Cette année, la suspension de l’ensemble des aides entre totalement en vigueur ».

▻https://www.ledauphine.com/education/2022/12/02/isere-sciences-po-grenoble-apres-la-polemique-des-collages-la-region-sto

Pour rappel, un extrait d’un article du Monde (20.12.2021) :

Dans un message publié sur Twitter, le président de la #région_Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, #Laurent_Wauquiez, a cependant fait savoir qu’il suspendrait les financements régionaux – environ 100 000 euros par an hors investissements sur projets – à l’IEP de Grenoble, du fait de la « longue dérive idéologique et communautariste » , qui vient de « franchir un nouveau cap » avec la suspension de l’enseignant. Selon lui, « une minorité a confisqué le débat » au sein de l’établissement, « sans que la direction prenne la mesure de cette dérive préoccupante » .

►https://seenthis.net/messages/940669

#aura #région_aura

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ajouté à la métaliste atour de ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

Des septuagénaires jugés pour avoir menacé de mort une enseignante « islamo-gauchiste »

Lors de la polémique qui visait Sciences Po Grenoble en mars 2021, certains journalistes à l’instar de Pascal Praud et Caroline Fourest, avaient accusé à tort une enseignante. Après avoir subi une vague de #cyber-harcèlement, celle-ci avait porté #plainte contre dix personnes.

« Je vais tenter de parler bien fort », prévient le président de la 24e chambre du tribunal judiciaire de Paris. L’audience a en effet quelque chose de peu banal. Les prévenus présents ce vendredi et poursuivis pour « #harcèlement au moyen d’un service de communication » et « #menaces_de_mort » sont majoritairement très âgés. Il fallait donc s’imaginer des personnes de plus de 70 ans saisir leur clavier, se connecter à leur compte Facebook et lâcher des #insultes et des menaces d’une extrême violence. Leur cible ? Une enseignante-chercheuse accusée de n’être rien d’autre qu’« une islamo-gauchiste ». 

« Pour bien situer le contexte », le président résume la situation en lisant un article de presse. Il rappelle le début de cette affaire médiatisée en mars 2021 lorsque deux enseignants, #Klaus_Kinzler et #Vincent_T, sont la cible d’affiches placardées sur la façade de l’#IEP de Grenoble : « Des fascistes dans nos amphis Vincent T. […] et Klaus Kinzler démission. L’islamophobie tue. » Le syndicat étudiant Unef relaie l’action sur les réseaux sociaux, avant de tout supprimer. 

Comme le racontait Mediapart (►https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/110321/accusations-d-islamophobie-la-direction-de-sciences-po-grenoble-laisse-le-), ce #collage, condamné unanimement, venait après d’intenses tensions entre ces deux professeurs et une autre enseignante, Claire M., autour d’une journée de débats nommée « Racisme, antisémitisme et islamophobie » et organisée dans le cadre d’une « semaine pour l’égalité et la lutte contre les discriminations ». Rapidement, Klaus Kinzler fait le tour des plateaux télé pour livrer une version comportant de nombreuses omissions. Il affirme, à tort, avoir été viré de ce groupe préparatoire pour s’être opposé à l’utilisation du terme « islamophobie ». En plus de l’enseignante, il accuse Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, patronne du laboratoire Pacte, rattaché à l’IEP, d’avoir livré son nom en pâture et d’avoir contribué à ce que des gens placardent des affiches sur les murs de l’institut. 

Une victime ciblée par #Pascal_Praud et #Caroline_Fourest 

https://i.imgur.com/MQENvlC.png

L’accusation est rapidement reprise par Marianne, BFMTV et par l’essayiste Caroline Fourest. « D’après ce témoignage, c’est une enseignante et le laboratoire de recherche Pacte (CNRS) qui ont excité les étudiants contre ces deux professeurs et lâché la meute contre le droit de questionner un mot qui a tué. Affligeant. Elle a bon dos la “liberté académique” », tweete cette dernière le 6 mars 2021. Tout est faux comme l’a révélé Mediapart, mais qu’importe, l’accusation se propage en même temps que naît l’emballement médiatique. 

Sur CNews, Pascal Praud va beaucoup plus loin et tient à être le premier à donner le nom et le prénom de la patronne du labo. « Puis intervient ce laboratoire Pacte avec cette dame, je vais citer son nom, Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary. Cette dame-là, c’est la directrice du laboratoire, cette dame c’est une militante […] qui avance avec le sentiment d’impunité, et c’est très révélateur parce qu’on voit le #terrorisme_intellectuel qui existe dans l’#université à travers leurs exemples », déclare-t-il le 9 mars 2021. 

Il n’en fallait pas plus pour que la directrice en question reçoive des centaines de messages d’insultes et de menaces de mort. Entre le 12 et le 17 mars 2021, on veut « la buter », « l’éliminer » ou lui « trancher la gorge ». 

Première invitée à la barre, Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary veut d’abord laver son honneur en rappelant les vérités bafouées par certains journalistes. Non, elle n’a jamais publié un communiqué officiel pour livrer le nom des deux enseignants mentionnés sur les affiches de l’IEP. Il s’agissait d’un simple courrier pour défendre une membre du laboratoire prise pour cible par ces deux professeurs. « Je suis intervenue pour assurer le respect de la laïcité et défendre une collègue », explique-t-elle tout en précisant avoir immédiatement « affirmé sa solidarité » avec ces deux enseignants lorsqu’elle a pris connaissance des affiches. Klaus Kinzler s’attaquait violemment à Claire M. et n’hésitait pas à fustiger les musulmans et hiérarchiser les religions en disant préférer le christianisme. 

Très émue, elle détaille ensuite les conséquences de cette haine virtuelle. « Je craignais pour ma sécurité et d’être suivie dans la rue, raconte-t-elle. Je me suis mise à passer mes nuits sur les réseaux sociaux pour voir ce qui tombait. » Dans le même temps, plusieurs posts Facebook la ciblent directement et reprennent l’idée amorcée par Caroline Fourest. « L’islamo-gaucho Anne Laure Amilhat Szary est une instigatrice de la “fatwa” lancée contre deux professeurs à Sciences Po Grenoble ! Comme elle a trouvé normal de diffuser les photos des professeurs… rien ne va déranger à ce que l’on diffuse la sienne », peut-on lire dans un post accompagné de la photo de la directrice et publié le 12 mars par un certain Jean-Luc.

https://i.imgur.com/BiNTeMJ.png

Dans les commentaires, on peut lire un flot de #haine et d’#insultes. Et les messages des dix personnes poursuivies ce vendredi. 

- Jacques L., 79 ans : « Quand ils la violent elle aura compris à moi que ça lui plaise !! […] Déjà pour la violer, il faut vraiment le vouloir beurk !! »
- Alain B., 73 ans : « Qu’elle crève le cul bourré de chiffon rouge et la gueul ouvert. »
- Annick L., 73 ans : « Horrible nana !! Le caillou rasé ! Pauvre tâche. Un jour viendra où tu devras te repentir ! »
- Jean-Marie C., 60 ans : « Saloupe à butté »
- Dominique B., 74 ans : « Il faut lui trancher la gorge »
- Wilfrid B, 65 ans : « A l’échafaud (…) Regardez la gueule de la bavure. A expédier au pays du Maghreb »
- Christian D., 58 ans : « Pauvre conne ton tour viendra »
- Ronan M., 56 ans : « Grosse connasse on va te butter »
- Dominique V., 56 ans : « Il faut tondre cette collabo de merde. »

Seul Maxence D., 32 ans, se démarque en lâchant sur Twitter : « Potence + corde pas trop épaisse pour lui lacérer le coup à cette p*** ». 

Des prévenus âgés et amnésiques 

Très sûrs d’eux sur les réseaux sociaux, les quatre prévenus présents à l’audience sont désormais beaucoup moins fiers. Presque tous se disent amnésiques et affirment ne pas se souvenir de toute la polémique liée à Sciences Po Grenoble. Certains minimisent aussi la teneur de leur propos. « J’ai vu le post Facebook, j’ai lu deux trois commentaires et j’ai mis le mien, mais c’est juste une insulte, pas une menace de mort », lâche Alain B, qui contraint le tribunal à se répéter du fait de ses graves problèmes d’audition. « Qu’elle crève », ne serait pas une menace de mort selon cet ancien plombier aujourd’hui retraité. Tout juste « une connerie ». 

Les mains dans les poches, il considère que « ce qui est fait est fait » et tarde à s’excuser, sans vraiment penser à la principale intéressée. « Je regrette bien sûr, si j’avais su que ça allait me ramener des ennuis comme ça… » Et d’insister face à une assemblée quelque peu médusée : « Je n’ai pas dit “je vais la crever”, j’ai dit “qu’elle crève”. Comme si elle tombait et que je la laissais par terre sans la ramasser. »

Dominique B, secrétaire de direction à la retraite, qui voulait « trancher la gorge » d’Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, aurait tout oublié. « C’est parti de mon ordinateur, mais je ne me rappelle pas avoir marqué ces propos », justifie-t-elle tout en expliquant ne pas vraiment maîtriser Facebook. Wilfrid B, 65 ans et ancien ouvrier, tente d’expliquer en quoi « À l’échafaud » n’est pas une menace de mort « puisque cela n’existe plus ». 

« Je débutais avec Facebook et je ne savais pas comment ça fonctionnait », avance-t-il avant de reconnaître : « J’ai lu qu’on instaurait une fatwa contre ces profs. Je répondais à ça, mais je ne la visais pas particulièrement. » Même dénégation de Christian D., 58 ans, qui tente d’expliquer en quoi écrire « ton tour viendra » n’est pas une menace de mort. Pourquoi la phrase était-elle accompagnée par trois emojis « crotte » et trois emojis « flammes » ? « J’utilise l’emoji flamme pour tout, pour les anniversaires par exemple », tente-t-il avant de laisser sa place à Annick L. 

Cette femme de 72 ans se déplace difficilement et dit avoir été « traumatisée » par sa garde à vue. « Depuis je suis sous antidépresseurs », confie-t-elle. « Y a rien à faire, je n’ai aucun souvenir de cette histoire. J’ai vu mon nom qui apparaissait sur Facebook mais je ne comprends pas. Je ne conteste pas l’avoir écrit mais je ne m’en souviens pas », poursuit-elle. Elle aurait donc oublié qu’elle voulait voir cette « traître », l’ex-directrice du laboratoire Pacte, clouée « au pilori » « le caillou rasé ». 

Des sympathisants de Zemmour et Le Pen 

Les quatre prévenus semblent aussi sincères que vulnérables et aucun d’entre eux ne veut laisser d’indice sur ses accointances politiques. Tant mieux puisque le président du tribunal ne souhaite pas en savoir plus et tient à rappeler qu’il « se fiche » de savoir ce « qu’ils pensent sur le fond ». Il faut attendre la plaidoirie de Raphaël Kempf, l’avocat d’Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, pour avoir un profil politique un peu plus précis. 

Lors de leur garde à vue en effet, la plupart ont confessé leur colère contre les « islamo-gauchistes », qu’ils définissent tantôt comme des « musulmans de gauche », tantôt comme des « gens de gauche pro-islam ». À la lecture de son audition, on découvre que Christian D « adore » Éric Zemmour et qu’il est, comme d’autres prévenus, membre du groupe « L’avenir France avec Éric Zemmour ». « Les gens de gauche sont des pro-islam et immigration qui organisent des réunions interdites aux gens de type caucasien et amènent des idées nauséabondes au sein des établissements publics français », déclare quant à lui Jean-Marie C, 60 ans et sous curatelle. 

« Grâce à cette procédure, il devient évident que je voterai à tout jamais Marine Le Pen et que j’inciterai ma famille à faire de même », lâche de son côté Dominique V. aux enquêteurs. Annick L., enfin, a plus de mal à disserter sur ses opinions politiques. Lorsqu’on lui demande si elle connaît le groupe « Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, on t’aime » qu’elle suit sur Facebook, la réponse est évasive : « J’ai peut-être déjà mis un pouce, mais sans plus. »

L’exploitation de son téléphone portable révèle pourtant de très nombreux commentaires virulents et des termes parfaitement explicites du type « nous les Français de souche ». « Ma belle-fille est chinoise, mon mari est d’origine polonaise. On n’est pas raciste », jure-t-elle. Elle affirme avoir répondu sans réfléchir et ne pas connaître Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary. Interrogée pour savoir ce qu’elle a contre les islamo-gauchistes , elle déroule les arguments déployés par certaines chaînes d’info en continu : « Y a cette histoire de Samuel Paty qui avait été égorgé, vous ne trouvez pas ça horrible ? Les gens qui sont poignardés pour rien, c’est affreux, c’est inhumain. Y a pas que ça. Tous les faits divers qu’on entend franchement c’est horrible, toutes ces jeunes femmes qui se font tuer. On ne vit plus dans un monde serein. »

Une vie « bouleversée » pour Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary 

Les avocats de la défense insistent sur l’âge des prévenus qui ne sauraient pas vraiment utiliser les réseaux sociaux et ne sauraient pas vraiment qu’un commentaire publié sur le réseau est lisible par tous dès lors que l’option privée n’est pas cochée. L’un des conseils, l’avocat de Jean-Marc C., tient tout de même à évoquer la responsabilité de certains journalistes dans cette affaire. « Les chaînes d’info en continu peuvent avoir une vraie influence tout comme certains journalistes, estime-t-il. Mon client a pu se dire que Caroline Fourest , qui elle, est journaliste , a recoupé ses sources avant de tweeter. Pour beaucoup de personnes et pour mon client, son tweet était une information. »

Les prévenus, sorte de #fachosphère du troisième âge, ont en effet en commun de considérer les réseaux sociaux comme des sources à part entière et de ne rien vérifier. Ils confondent « article de presse » et « post-Facebook », et baignent dans des groupes qui s’affranchissent de toute réalité et qui partagent la même obsession que leurs journalistes préférés : la lutte contre des supposés islamo-gauchistes. 

Lors de sa plaidoirie, Me Kempf livre sa déception de ne pas avoir eu « les explications » qu’il espérait. « Je regrette l’absence totale de prise en compte de ce que Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary a pu dire », enchaîne-t-il. Il rappelle donc les conséquences de ces mots sur la vie de sa cliente. Les quatre jours d’ITT, l’arrêt maladie, les troubles du sommeil et la dépression qui ont suivi. Il insiste aussi sur le « bouleversement professionnel » que cette victime collatérale de l’affaire de Sciences Po a dû subir.

Peu de temps après ces attaques, l’ex-patronne du laboratoire rattaché au CNRS et renommé dans le milieu scientifique a préféré renoncer à son mandat. Si elle enseigne de nouveau depuis peu, elle dit ne plus pouvoir prendre un poste de direction. Il revient sur le rôle de Caroline Fourest qui a contribué à relayer « la légende » selon laquelle Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary aurait contribué à ce que deux professeurs de l’IEP soient pris pour cible. Il n’oublie pas non plus « la communauté d’intérêt politique » qui lie tous ces prévenus et demande qu’ils soient condamnés solidairement à une peine de 20 000 euros d’amende.

La procureure, elle aussi déçue par la plupart des justifications, s’étonne que tous ces gens qui prétendent dénoncer ce qui est arrivé à Samuel Paty déploient la même mécanique « qui a tué Samuel Paty ». Pour les dix prévenus, elle a requis des peines avoisinant les mille euros d’amende à payer dans les 90 jours sous peine d’incarcération. La décision sera rendue le 13 janvier 2023.

▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/021222/des-septuagenaires-juges-pour-avoir-menace-de-mort-une-enseignante-islamo-

#affaire_de_Grenoble #justice #réseaux_sociaux

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ajouté à la métaliste atour de ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

ping @_kg_ @karine4 @isskein

Islamophobie à l’#IEP de #Grenoble : deux interpellations dans le Var pour des propos haineux en ligne

Deux personnes ont été interpellées dans le Var ce mardi pour des propos haineux qu’elles sont accusées d’avoir tenus en ligne il y a tout juste un an à l’encontre d’une enseignante du laboratoire de sciences sociales, opposée à un autre enseignant de l’IEP de Grenoble.

C’est un rebondissement varois dans l’affaire de l’IEP de Grenoble, avec l’interpellation de deux personnes ce mardi à Toulon et la Crau. En toile de fond de cette affaire, un conflit autour de la signification du terme islamophobie opposant un professeur notamment de l’IEP de Grenoble en début d’année dernière et cette enseignante du laboratoire de sciences sociales.

L’enseignant avait reçu des menaces de mort après avoir tenu des propos sur l’islamophobie et avait été placé sous protection policière. Mais à son tour, après s’être officiellement excusé, il avait publié sur son site personnel, un échange de courriels avec une autre enseignante de l’Université rendant public son nom.

Un nom jeté en pâture

Cette enseignante, maitresse de conférence et membre du laboratoire de sciences sociales travaille depuis des années sur la question de l’Islam et des musulmans, selon France Bleu Isère. Quand son nom est dévoilé sur le site de l’enseignant avec qui elle a échangé des mails, elle devient elle aussi la cible de menaces et de propos haineux de la part, cette fois, de sympathisants de l’extrême droite.

Derrière leur écran d’ordinateur, un toulonnais de 60 ans, sans profession et une retraitée septuagénaire de la Crau. Le premier l’insulte et évoque sa mort, la seconde est dans le même registre parlant de « lui trancher la gorge ». En garde à vue, les deux reconnaissent les faits, sans être en mesure de préciser ce qui les a poussés à écrire de tels propos. Une vague de propos haineux qui avait conduit cette enseignante à être placée sous protection policière, elle aussi, comme celui à qui elle s’était opposée. Les deux mis en cause ont fait l’objet, à l’issue de leur garde à vue d’une convocation en justice pour le 2 décembre devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Paris.

Dans un communiqué, la direction de #Sciences_Po_Grenoble indique « se féliciter de l’avancée de l’enquête et que de potentiels auteurs de propos haineux particulièrement graves à l’encontre des personnels puissent être identifiés. Nous faisons confiance aux services de police et à la justice pour établir les responsabilités et prendre les sanctions pénales appropriées ».

▻https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/islamophobie-a-l-iep-de-grenoble-deux-interpellations-dans-le-var-pour-de

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ajouté à la #métaliste atour de ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble
►https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

#métaliste de la saga autour du terme l’#islamo-gauchisme... mais aussi du #woke et du #wokisme, #cancel_culture, etc.