The Totalitarian Temptation: how Democracies End

In an interview Sarah Knafo MEP gave to C News, following the brutal murder of an 11-year old French girl in a Paris suburb, she quoted the famous French political scientist, Jean-François Revel, who said that a political regime should be judged by the number of its dead bodies.  For this, she was accused of ‘demagoguery’ by a prominent left-wing television personality, Jean-Michel Aphatie.  FVD International is honoured to publish an English translation of her reply.

Dear Mr Aphatie,

You have attacked me on Twitter in a manner which leaves no doubt about your aggressive intent. This is typical of your style as a fashionable society agitator.  Allow me to respond to you in a more structured way.  

Let us start with the remark by Jean-François Revel, which I quoted with reference to the murders of Louise, Lola, Thomas and Philippine.  He said, “To judge a regime, count the number of bodies”.  According to you, I have not understood Revel correctly or, worse, I am twisting his words.  

What does Revel say in his two major works, The Totalitarian Temptation and How Democracies End?  He says that there is no closed border separating freedom from tyranny.  If we are not careful, democratic regimes can at any moment tip over into dictatorship or civil war.  Once this happens, it is very difficult to go back.  It is therefore essential to be prudent and vigilant.  

Jean-François Revel never assumed democracy to be eternal.  He was concerned for its future and warned us against what might happen.  That is why he proposed a very precise means for measuring regimes: the number of dead bodies, which never deceives.  Of course, the mass graves of totalitarian regimes are full of innocent victims, tens of millions of them, while the coffins I am speaking about - those of these French people murdered in broad daylight because our judicial and criminal law system has collapsed under the weight of immigration, delinquency and terrorism - are fewer in number.  But the small numbers are getting bigger all the time.  Knifings are no longer exceptional and have instead become a terrible normality.  

Every family which suffers such a murder is broken forever.  A murder is a murder: no tragedy can be ‘put into perspective’ without adding insult to injury.  We do have the right to count the number of victims of this barbarism.  We must do so.  It is not a matter of opinion but of duty. To count the number of dead in France today is neither a whim nor a luxury. The French people as a whole is counting them.  They see the names of these young people who have been battered, strangled and stabbed to death, simply because they are French and peaceful, which makes them living targets.  

Yesterday, as you were posting your mini screed against me, parents all over the country were worrying about how to protect their children on the way to school.  They are afraid.  Do not think they are extremists.  They are from the Left as much as from the Right.  Fear, when it is visceral and legitimate, does not belong to one or other political camp.  Whether you like it or not, these people are indeed using Revel’s method: they are counting the dead bodies and they are right to do so.  They have the courage to be clear-minded.  You have the cowardice to insult them.  

If Jean-François Revel had seen the way France is now, he would be appalled.  He would definitely not have adopted the same attitude as you do.  See for yourself:  in 1997 he wrote in Le Figaro: “Any measure taken today by a state to contain, limit or regulate immigration is denounced as fascist.  This is sheer political fantasy: no country in the world allows people to come to a country just because they want to.”  

Revel’s words allow us to imagine that if he were with us today, he would denounce the current state of affairs in the same way as he denounced evil everywhere: with his gloves off.  Maybe he would even point the finger at you.  Aphatie, you smirk every day on television.  You live in the fantasy world Revel hated.  That world is comfortable and you find it amusing.  But ordinary people are not allowed in.  Ordinary people are trapped in a reality which is becoming ever more cruel.  While you get applause for your appearances on television, ordinary people are in tears.  

Now, Jean-Michel Aphatie, before concluding, let us discuss my honour which you are trying to besmirch.  You have accused me of ‘surfing on misfortune’.  With this painful and banal metaphor you at least accept that there is a wave.  But I am definitely not surfing on it, quite the contrary.  I am doing what I can to hold it back.  I show how this can be done.  The means are simple, I explain them and I call for them to be applied without delay.  It is not a game, it is my duty as a French woman.  Do not think for a moment that Tweets like yours will prevent me from accomplishing what I need to do.  There would have to be something much stronger than you to stop me.

You conclude by accusing me of ‘pure demagoguery’.  I would be interested to know whether you would look into the eyes of the French parents I am talking about and say the same thing to the millions of them who live in fear and who are crying for help.  Would you dare say to them that they are surfing on their own anguish?  That their need to be reassured is demagogic?  That there is something bad about their ‘feeling of insecurity’ and that they should seek refuge in the blindness of the media?  I think you would have a hard time reassuring anyone, let alone them.  They know you.  They consider you to be an enemy of the truth.  They just zap you.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Knafo MEP.