Left and right

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani holds to the divide between right and left against those who call it obsolete1, but he refuses to judge the left by its label. Following Marx, one does not judge an epoch by its self-consciousness: calling oneself left-wing is not enough to be so2. He contrasts the left of Jaurès with that of Mitterrand, a man of Vichy and an Atlanticist, and of Jules Moch, and he maintains that the leftists of '68 stood to the right of De Gaulle1. For him, the anti-communist left has served the far right, as Noske shows2. He describes a "left-washing": a false left replaces class struggle with societal demands that divide the collective worker, and it abandons the tricolour flag and popular sovereignty to Marine Le Pen3. He adds that the right is more effective under a left-wing label. He sees "Islamo-leftism" as a right-wing term that masks "Islamo-Atlanticism". Finally, he defines the left by its content: taking the side of the victims, of David rather than Goliath4.

1. 1#11 UKRAINE : La mathématique unit les hommes, la politique les divise (Aristote)24 Mar 2022
2. 2Dominique Pagani - Qui se cache sous les surfaces ? Esthétique et politique20 May 2022
3. 3Left-washing : Les wokes sont-ils les plus endormis ?17 Nov 2021
4. 4Ni gauche ni droite ? Islamo gauchisme ?17 Oct 2023

Introduction produced automatically from the 4 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.