*** ARNAUD ESQUERRE: The vertigo of alternative facts. Conversation with Régis Meyran. Editions Textuel (13 quai de Conti, F-75006 Paris. Tel.: (33-1) 53004040 - Internet: http://www.editionstextuel.com ). Collection "Conversations for tomorrow". 2018, 125 pp., 17 €. ISBN 978-2-84597-685-6.
For a long time, the European Union ignored the impact or even the existence of fake news, before the United States paid the price, the last American elections having exposed this gangrene of Western democracies. This phenomenon is now identified as one of the main threats to the European elections in May. So much so that the Juncker Commission presented, in December, an action plan to fight disinformation, in the hope of avoiding a scenario identical to the American presidential election, when the unlikely candidate Donald Trump had surfed on the false information broadcast on social networks to ensure victory. The billionaire has remained faithful to fake news, even once he has settled in the White House: not only does he use this term to describe any article or media he dislikes, but he does not hesitate to spread false information himself. Or "alternative facts", says his counsellor Kellyane Conway. This book opens with this "trouble in the writing of history": the moment when the advisor to the President of the United States continued to argue that the crowd present at the inauguration of Donald Trump was "the largest ever seen" - while all the images and counts showed the opposite -, explaining that she was only presenting "alternative facts".
"Between alternative facts, fake news and conspiracy theories, the idea of truth is in crisis", notes anthropologist and anthropological historian Régis Meryan, in discussion in these 120 pages with sociologist Arnaud Esquerre, who has devoted part of his work in recent years to investigating mental manipulation in sects, in individuals consulting astrologers or in people convinced that they have met aliens. In an era marked by a proliferation of media and a "completely fragmented information system", Donald Trump "is someone who, basically, admitted that all information was no longer controllable". And the author adds: "He lives in a world where no one any longer controls, or can even imagine mastering all the information on a defined area, but where the word of the most famous person weighs more than that of the others". Above all, the American President seems to have understood that, as Arnaud Esquerre explains, truth and facts are now subject to the law of sacrosanct competition in a capitalist regime, where the 'truth' that attracts the most people, regardless of the method used to achieve it, will prevail. Thus, the White House tenant got rid of the constraint of truth to win the race for retweets and likes, and thus impose his truth on others. At the end of the first part of the book, the author makes a long detour into the advent of relativism, the general movement of challenges to universal truths, as opposed to universalism, to better understand the emergence of alternative facts. He is also interested in how one comes to believe something is true, based on the power relationships at work in a given context.
In the second chapter, alternative facts and their logic are analysed in the light of what sociological studies have learned about the phenomena of rumours, manipulation and plots. How do these fake news stories stand out? To whom? And what do they impose? Why are there people who believe in it when the truth seems so obvious? Arnaud Esquerre answers this question by reminding us that "the human being is not a stable and coherent unit guided by reason, but" that "his interiority is a magma with more or less contradictions" which "evolves according to interactions with other human beings". And when these interactions result in controversy, the subject of the third chapter of the book, "what matters is to federate a group of people through the position we defend, in a logic of conquest and conservation of power". Therefore, explains the sociologist, "in the political model of the polemic in which Trump finds himself, we can deploy as much evidence as we want and identify facts, this will not have the consequence of convincing the other" since "the issue is elsewhere, it is a political issue, which is a position issue". And thus the effectiveness of the stories. Ways still need to be found to effectively combat alternative facts that "disturb democracy, not the idea of democracy but democracy in practice", a challenge to which Europe has not yet found an answer. With less than five months to go before the European elections...
Maria Udrescu
*** Futuribles. Anticipation in the service of action. Futuribles Sarl (47 rue de Babylone, F-75007 Paris. Tel.: (33-1) 53633770 - fax: 42226554 - E-mail: revue@futuribles.com - Internet http://www.futuribles.com ). November-December 2018, No. 427, 148 pp., 22 €. Annual subscription: 115 €. ISBN 978-2-84387-440-6.
This issue of Futuribles, the authoritative French foresight journal, opens with an editorial that focuses on the "tyranny of the short term" and, at the same time, seeks to discern how we will live in 2050. After recalling the threats - climate change, destruction of biodiversity, dependence on fossil fuels and other natural resources such as rare metals - that hang over the planet and, consequently, over humanity, Hugues de Jouvenel joins his voice with those who consider that leaders are not mobilising enough to find alternatives to "suicidal evolution", asking themselves in particular: "(...) what can we expect from Europe, whose construction is permanently hampered by the selfishness of its member states (...), many of which are now facing a powerful rise in populism?" For the editor of Futuribles, doubtless not much, he rather believes in initiatives from civil society as long as we succeed in "gathering these good wills around a shared vision of a desirable future". In this regard, the 2018 edition of the Vigie Report of Futuribles is summarised in this issue, outlining four plausible scenarios for 2050: a scenario in which "the dynamics of individualisation is reinforced"; a scenario of "society under control"; a scenario in which society is under the influence of technology (automation, etc.); a scenario in which affinity links replace territorial logic in social organisation modes. In this issue, it should also be noted that Jean-François Drevet's traditional "European Tribune" focuses this time on the tragic history of Ukraine, which has now been "abandoned", caught between the Kremlin's desire to link it to Russia and the inability of Europe and the Atlantic Alliance to oppose it with sufficient force. This former Commission official also takes a brief look at the problematic case of Hungary.
(PBo)
*** CALLIOPE SPANOU (under the direction of): Culture, History, Democracy. Volume in homage to Nikephoros Diamandouros. Papadopoulos Publishing (9 Kapodistriou, GR-14452 Metamorphosi. Tel.: (30-210) 2846074 - fax: 2817127 - E-mail: info@epbooks.gr - Internet: http://www.epbooks.gr ). 2018, 280 pp., 16.99 €. ISBN 978-960-569-869-0.
Nikephoros Diamandouros is a huge political scientist who embodies stability in a country, Greece, that is constantly in turmoil. He has left his mark not only in research and teaching at various Greek and foreign universities (Social Science Research Council of New York, Hellenic Institute of International and Strategic Studies of Athens, Department of Political Science of the University of Athens, National Centre for Social Research, College of Europe...) but also in institutions serving democracy and the rule of law at Greek and European level: first Ombudsman in Greece from 1998 to 2003, he held the post of European Ombudsman between 2003 and 2013. The authors, all academics active in different universities and recognized in Greece and abroad, pay tribute to him for his many academic and institutional contributions in this book coordinated by Pr. Calliope Spanou (National and Capodistrian University of Athens), herself a mediator in Greece from 2011 to 2015. Their texts touch on the different aspects of the work and concerns of the person who now sits at the Athens Academy. Each of them writes one of the thirteen chapters of the book, which are divided into three sections: culture and history, institutions and democracy, Greece and its European integration.
(AKa)
*** PIERRE JOUVENAT, JEAN-FRANCOIS RICHARD: Proceedings of the Colloquium "Democratic deficit of the European Union: what role for political parties?" Federalist press (Maison des Européens, 7 rue Amédée Bonnet, F-69006 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ) and UEF Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Collection "Carnet d'Europe". 2018, 153 pp., 15 €.
This publication is the proceedings of a conference organised by the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes section of the Union of European Federalists to discern the role that political parties could (should?) play in remedying the democratic deficit suffered by the European Union. How can political parties respond to "the growing need for a public debate on the European project"? What can their role be in "creating a European civil society"? How should they organise themselves on a European scale? These were some of the questions raised by the speakers, including MEPs Sylvie Guillaume, Jo Leinen and Françoise Grossetête, as well as representatives of political parties and the academic world. A summary of the debates summarises the interventions around the main themes addressed during two round tables, with Pierre Jouvenat, the project manager of this conference placed under the patronage of the European Parliament, drawing lessons from the event. It is supplemented by a more exhaustive and chronological account of the exchanges, often in the form of verbatim, as well as by the full text of some interventions. The whole is enriched by studies and articles that had been given to the participants.
(PBo)
*** MARC MAZOWER: Thirty years of Greek history. A personal flashback. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3650000 - fax: 3811940 - E-mail: bookstore@patakis.gr - Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). “Social and Political Sciences” Series. 2018, 73 pp., 5 €. ISBN 978-960-16-6601-3.
Historian and writer specialising in modern Greece, 20th century Europe and international issues, Mark Mazower (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Social and Economic Studies at the National and Capodistrian University of Athens) notes in the introduction to this book: "Due to the terrible crisis that Greece is currently experiencing, (...) I wonder if the options and policies implemented over the past decades have led to this impasse. The more I remember of when I started to take a serious interest in Greece, the more I see that things were then less predictable. Yet, beyond the clichés about the roots of the crisis, the more I think about it, the more I can see now that the origins of the eurozone crisis were then scattered all around us." This book shows in a remarkable way all that characterises Mark Mazower's work, which is committed to systematically going beyond stereotypes. The author does not consider anything as a given thing and this work is not the product of some strict rules of historical engineering. Nor does it obey any political feasibility rules, even if it is extremely political from beginning to end.
(AKa)