In his latest book, Un fauteuil sur la scène (Gresset), Amin Maalouf looks back over four centuries of French history, painting the picture of the eighteen figures who, from 1634, occupied the 29th chair of the Académie française. He looks back on Ernest Renan who, while perfectly reasonably believing that a nation is a daily plebiscite, was very wary of “universal suffrage which, in his view, gave too much power to the uneducated popular masses, 'devoid of any ideal', he said and 'rejecting an higher social principle in favour of individual desires'”. Maalouf argues that, in the opinion of this 19th century intellectual, “society's progress should be achieved through educating the masses, not giving them power”. Comments that are strangely apposite to what is taking place at the present time.
Renan, and his successor Maalouf, remind us, firstly, that democracy is in a permanent state of convalescence forever watchful of relapse into various ills. It is the defining - though always delicate - stamp of Western civilisation which, according to sociologist Jean Baechler, is bad but so much to be cherished: “It is bad because it entails risks and anxieties of freedom; the others are worse because they maim the human being with arbitrary certainties and underlying oppression”. This reasoning is implacable, revealing dictatorships, powerful regimes and, ultimately, the illiberal democracies that can be seen trying to take root in some corners of Central Europe for what essentially they are: instruments that deny individual freedom and, thus, one of the foundations of the principle of democracy. Yet, is this not a time to consider the potentially harmful, and perhaps even fatal, nature of the risks and anxieties of freedom that are currently swelling? At a time when the people of the United Kingdom are preparing to say through a referendum whether or not they want their country to remain in the European Union, it is not inappropriate to reflect upon it.
In 1762, in Of the Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the observation that some may now feel is elitist: “The general will is always right but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened”. This takes us back to the need felt by Renan to educate the masses rather then put power into their hands. Who, nowadays, is prepared to assume the heavy responsibility for education - civic education, in particular? Quite apart from the fact that education is perceived in many countries to be as sick as democracy, it is possible to answer by looking at the two main sets of players in the referendum campaign: the media and the politicians.
Let us begin with the easier set: the media. Easier because, in the United Kingdom, media bias has for very many years been pushed to an extreme. If the “Brexiteers” win the day, it will be impossible to deny that this will be the culmination of decades of effort by the tabloid press - the “authorities” to which the ordinary person in the street refers - to undermine the EU. Who watches the BBC? Who reads the Financial Times or any of the other quality press? A very small proportion of the British population, derided in populist circles as “the elite”. In the minds of the vast majority of the British citizens who will go to the polls next Thursday will probably be absurdly ridiculous tales, unashamed lies built on that murky editorial line of misinformation upon misinformation - mud sticks, after all! How far we are from the way in which Emanuele Gazzo, Agence Europe's first editor defined the task and the responsibility that bear on the press and, first and foremost, on journalists: “The press is to a great extent responsible for forming and expressing that mysterious thing that is called 'public opinion'. It is as much a basic duty of the journalist to be aware of that responsibility as it is to tell the truth and to leave nothing out that can help understanding of the truth”. In the events in the United Kingdom, the media have to a great extent created the groundswell which, having swollen into a tsunami, is destabilising British democracy and, collaterally, the European Union.
Let there be no mistake, no matter the outcome, this referendum is a triumph for Nigel Farage and his populist, xenophobic party, his victory over the traditional political parties which lacked the moral courage to prevent a referendum being used to undermine representative democracy. On the other side of the Channel, representative democracy has been embodied over the last few weeks in the posturing by David Cameron and Boris Johnson, the former being the herald of remaining in a Europe which he admits to not liking and the latter playing the “Brexit” card not through any firm conviction but because he has his own ambitions to be prime minister. Hence the question: should the EU be the toy of a national democracy that has lost its way?
Michel Theys