Edwy Plenel – författare

An award-winning French journalist’s far-ranging critique of Europe’s betrayal of universal values and equal rights as war and right-wing populism spread worldwide, with a new introduction for U.S. readers.“Europe is a garden…It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity, and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build…Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.” This is how Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, characterized the situation in 2022, several months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and one year before Israel’s war against Gaza.Europe has a singular image of itself and of the world. It persists in thinking of itself as the cradle of civilization, the incarnation of good and justice, threatened by a global environment where savagery, darkness, and evil reign. Clinging to this fantasy inherited from a colonial past, it is lost and misguided, turning its back on the values of humanism and equality to which it nevertheless claims to adhere. As long as Europe and, with it, the political West, have not renounced their desire for power, there will unite against them the resentment of all the peoples who have had the bitter experience of their domination over the last five centuries. Because the “jungle” is Europe’s own creation, produced by the blindness of conquest and exploitation.This powerful essay is an invitation to rebuild a Europe that is truly concerned about the fragility of the world and of life, with an acute awareness of the perils that threaten humanity.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, leading intellectuals are claiming "There is a problem with Islam in France," thus legitimising the discourse of the racist National Front. Such claims have been strengthened by the backlash since the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015, coming to represent a new 'common sense' in the political landscape, and we have seen a similar logic play out in the United States and Europe.Edwy Plenel, former editorial director of Le Monde, essayist and founder of the investigative journalism website Mediapart tackles these claims head-on, taking the side of his compatriots of Muslim origin, culture or belief, against those who make them into scapegoats. He demonstrates how a form of "Republican and secularist fundamentalism" has become a mask to hide a new form of virulent Islamophobia. At stake for Plenel is not just solidarity but fidelity to the memory and heritage of emancipatory struggles and he writes in defence of the Muslims, just as Zola wrote in defence of the Jews and Sartre wrote in defence of the blacks. For if we are to be for the oppressed then we must be for the Muslims.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, leading intellectuals are claiming "There is a problem with Islam in France," thus legitimising the discourse of the racist National Front. Such claims have been strengthened by the backlash since the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015, coming to represent a new ''common sense'' in the political landscape, and we have seen a similar logic play out in the United States and Europe.Edwy Plenel, former editorial director of Le Monde, essayist and founder of the investigative journalism website Mediapart tackles these claims head-on, taking the side of his compatriots of Muslim origin, culture or belief, against those who make them into scapegoats. He demonstrates how a form of "Republican and secularist fundamentalism" has become a mask to hide a new form of virulent Islamophobia. At stake for Plenel is not just solidarity but fidelity to the memory and heritage of emancipatory struggles and he writes in defence of the Muslims, just as Zola wrote in defence of the Jews and Sartre wrote in defence of the blacks. For if we are to be for the oppressed then we must be for the Muslims.