
US President Donald Trump, after signing executive orders, during the inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC, Monday, January 20. / JIM WATSON / AFP
In Putin’s Russia, many opponents, ordinary men and women not involved as liberal activists, have gradually given in to the temptation of “internal exile”, as explained in a recent article in the New York Times taken up by International mail.
Realizing their powerlessness to fight – and the physical and moral risk of trying – they opted for a life “alongside” politics, withdrawn, without noise, favoring their privacy, home, family, friends, work, sport… A Russian specialty, we believed until then, that of a people accustomed for centuries to submitting to the yoke of the Tsar and leading their lives away from politics. A practice now shared by young people, qualified, informed, trained, or not yet deformed… Without them, who will make the voice of Navalny resonate?
In the United States, the day after the election of Donald Trump and even before his official inauguration, the beginnings of a similar withdrawal were noted among Democratic voters, stunned by the scale of the defeat. According to them, come what may: we might as well turn away from politics and invest in the stock market, or even in personal development. Hoping that the prophecy of Douglas Kennedy in his novel written in 2022, “And this is how we will live”, does not come true, namely the partition of the United States between a theocratic confederation in the center of the country, bringing together the ex-Republican states, and a technological republic emerging from ex-Democratic states on the east and west coasts. Let’s dare another disaster scenario, isn’t the alliance of Tech and theocracy germinating in the minds of the Trump-Musk duo, joined by Zuckerberg and others?
Unplugged from politics
In France, if this withdrawal into its own territory has been at work for a long time (abstentions, blank votes, etc.), it has accelerated since the European elections of June 2024, followed by the dissolution of the Assembly and the legislative elections. Dismayed, indignant, revolted by the failure to take into account the results of the ballot boxes and the pathetic spectacle given by a part of the political class of all parties, a number of voters, yesterday still concerned, even involved in the political debate, entered into internal exile, and disconnected themselves from politics.
Is the house burning? Failing to take the fire, as Cocteau advised, they still have the garden, winter or interior, or even the bush paths. Outside the field of institutional politics, they join those who did not wait for them to invest in agricultural, environmental or cultural collectives, shared housing, circular consumption… But are these not eminently political, because concerning the life of the city?
We still have a choice
If we think of barring politics from our door, it always ends up forcing it. By the ram of laws to which we do not subscribe, by choices which commit us in spite of ourselves. We still have a choice. That of not being silent, that of telling – all conceptions of life represented, all votes and non-votes gathered – to the political personnel tempted by populism of the right as well as the left our refusal of their indigence and their irresponsibility, our rejection of disproportionate egos, speeches not translated into action (and for good reason, because they are unrealistic), device shenanigans, shameful reversals.
Not by shouting “all rotten”, but on the contrary, by appealing to the high idea that we have of the Republic – even if it needs to be renewed, starting with the Constitution –, by affirming our visceral attachment to democracy, where controversy serves to produce the common good, and not partisan interests.
Interpellate
How ? By individually challenging our elected officials, deputies in particular. By contributing to the debate, in the private sphere as well as in the public sphere, when it is respectful of opinions and not orchestrated by media stuntmen. By informing us, by flushing out misinformation. By paying our contribution in the spaces opened by online media – subject to respecting the charter. And if necessary, one day, in a non-customary movement for many of us, by taking to the streets to demand the rejection of demagoguery and a raising of the level of democratic practices.
Let’s dream a little: then we will want to and will finally be able to vote. Vote pour. Pour men and women who represent us, and not against a man or a woman, a party, an arc or a front, whether national, popular or republican. Pour a vision, values, a project, embodied by women and statesmen – and not against an above-ground program or back-kitchen amendments concocted by band or clan leaders. Pour see ourselves and behave as citizens of this world, and not as stateless politicians.