Rachida Dati estimated Tuesday that “Wokism has become a policy of censorship”, and she will ensure as Minister of Culture not to “support” these proponents of “deconstruction”. “I am for the freedom of art and creation, I am not for censorship,” she told CNews-Europe 1. However, “I am very sensitive, and it is a fight , to the fight against discrimination” that this movement is leading, but “I find that wokism has become a policy of censorship,” added the minister from LR.
The terms “woke” and “wokism” are borrowed from African-American struggles, whose meaning in English is “to be awake” to social injustices. They have been used by conservative movements, this time with a pejorative connotation, to denounce what they consider to be an excess of activism with regard to the demands of minorities and social and climatic injustices.
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Rachida Dati, who has already brought together the directors general of the ministry, will bring together “next week the regional directors of cultural action”. “And I will ask them to ensure that we support creative freedom, and not to support these new censors,” she said. And he insisted: “fighting discrimination and social determinism is a fight. Culture is not deconstruction, it is not erasure. I will not be someone on the side of the censors.
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In France, the term “woke” has become essential in the debate of ideas. But for his detractors, his supporters are not only activists of the anti-racist and social cause, but would be the instigators of a social project, based on the so-called cancel culture. This rhetoric, initially present on the far right of the political spectrum, gradually spread to the right, the center and in certain left-wing circles.
Furthermore, Rachida Dati repeated her comments on public broadcasting made in the Journal du Dimanche, another media in the fold of the Bolloré family. “I am very attached to this public service. He has the support of the French. But if he wants to keep it, at some point the public service will have to reflect the diversity of opinions of the French,” she warned. “I appeal to everyone’s ethics,” added the minister, specifying that she was to “meet the leaders (of public broadcasting, Editor’s note) very soon”.