Guy Konopnicki

Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, pro-Brexit campaigner and 'Blue Labour' thinker

May 8, 2021

PaulEmbery

May 8, 2021

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It has long been evident to me, as someone involved in the Labour movement for over a quarter of a century, that many of my colleagues on the Left have no comprehension of what is going on. They have no idea about the extent to which traditional political tribalism has broken down in our country and the old certainties no longer apply.

This conviction struck me most forcibly during a pivotal debate on Brexit at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool in 2018. Before the discussion, I had wandered around the city’s pubs and conference fringe speaking to delegates and visitors. There was an undue chirpiness in the air. Labour was now the largest political party in western Europe, people would remind me. The glorious leader was playing to packed houses everywhere. Ergo, we stood every chance of forming the next government.

Then, during the Brexit debate itself, the conference rallied enthusiastically behind a motion explicitly putting a second EU referendum on the table. I remember gazing around the hall in despair as speaker after speaker pledged support for the motion, each drawing wild cheers and applause from delegates. That the adoption of this policy was almost certain to result in electoral oblivion seemed lost on virtually everyone present.

At that moment, I tweeted that the conference was effectively handing a P45 to every Labour MP in the North and Midlands. I knew then that this self-inflicted wound would take years — possibly a generation — to heal. Images from the debate would that evening be beamed into the homes of loyal Labour voters across the party’s pro-Brexit heartlands, and millions among them would perceive the outcome as the ultimate kick in the teeth. Labour had betrayed its already-diminishing traditional working-class base and would pay a heavy price.

Nearly three years and one general election annihilation later, and the relationship remains in a serious state of disrepair. That point is proved by what we know so far of Thursday’s election results, and what we may reasonably predict will unfold in the coming days. That Labour, in a set of ballots two years into a parliament, appears to have lost so much ground in working-class communities against a Tory Party that has been in power for over a decade — and during that time imposed a programme of economic austerity which inflicted financial adversity on many of the nation’s poorest — speaks to the magnitude of the former’s estrangement from its one-time core vote.

That Labour’s losing Hartlepool — a seat which, since its creation in 1974, it has held at every general election — came in the end as no great surprise, itself speaks volumes. What was striking, though, was the plunge in the party’s share of the vote there by nine percentage points, and the increase in the Tory share by a remarkable 23 points.

At the time of writing, the picture looks bleak for Labour in the local authority elections, too, with the party in retreat in many areas. Heavy damage was sustained in the Midlands and North-East, and the party has lost control of at least four councils — including Harlow in Essex, a 1960s new town often described as the home of White Van Man.

The mistake — and some among Labour’s ranks are already making it — would be to lay the blame solely at the door of Sir Keir Starmer. The devastating results are attributable to the leader’s attempts to shift the party to the “centre” ground, argues the radical Left, adducing, among other things, the fact that Labour held Hartlepool under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 (though ignoring the inconvenient truth that it did so only as a consequence of thousands of would-be Tory votes being redirected to the Brexit Party).

For their part, the Starmerites blame the Corbyn legacy, as though the rot set in only with the latter’s elevation as leader in 2015.

Both camps are profoundly wrong. The schism between the party and the working class began to materialise as long as three decades ago. The historical coalition in which Hartlepool had for generations rubbed along contentedly with Hampstead — blue collar and white collar united in the struggle for social and economic justice — started to fall apart as Labour began to be dominated by the latter, transforming itself into a party of the managerial and professional classes, graduates and urban liberals. Not only was the party abandoning those in provincial and post-industrial Britain, it started to privately — and sometimes publicly — scorn them.

The inevitable result was the steady flow of working-class votes away from Labour. Some were swept up by the likes of Ukip and even the BNP; millions more from that point simply went uncast.

For a long time, disillusioned working-class voters in the Labour heartlands were reluctant to throw in their lot with the Tories, conscious of the stigma that often came with voting for the traditional enemy. It was only in 2019 that these voters, still brimming with anger over attempts to reverse the referendum result, decided in huge numbers to back a Conservative Party that had pledged to “Get Brexit Done”. The taboo had been broken. Having voted Tory once, these voters would — as we have seen — have no hesitation in doing the same again.

All of this means that Labour faces the prospect of being out of power for another decade or more — perhaps forever. That’s why the battle that currently rages for control of the party, between its liberal and radical wings, is the proverbial two bald men fighting over a comb. If either side wins, it will find that the instrument over which it had struggled for possession turns out to be of little practical use — at least as far as forming a government is concerned.

That is because Labour’s problems are structural, cultural and elemental. They run far deeper than questions of party management and whether or not free broadband is a vote winner. If the objective is to win back the Red Wall, then neither the liberal nor radical Left has the correct prescription.

In fact, the war between the two camps is, in many respects, a phoney one. There is far more that unites them than either would care to admit — or even seem to comprehend. Both are imbued with the same bourgeois, metropolitan, globalist worldview. Both aim their pitch at the student, the social activist, the fellow middle-class progressive, at Twitter. Both obsess about identity politics and “diversity”. Both hitch their wagon to every minority crusade and then afford to it an undue level of prominence. Both are largely ignorant — and often contemptuous — of the lives and priorities of those in small-town Britain, of their communitarian impulse, traditional values, desire for belonging and sense of national pride.

For these reasons, changing the face at the top would be pointless. In fact, given that Sir Keir has personally shown signs of understanding what needs to be done to win back the Red Wall — focusing much of his language since ascending to the leadership on the themes of family, community and nation — his defenestration would, if anything, prove counter-productive. What Labour needs is a root and branch ideological overhaul, not regicide. As matters currently lie, any leader attempting to take the party in the right direction would find himself or herself shackled by a membership and activist base — as well as the greater part of a parliamentary cohort — which simply has no intention of going there.

In the more fashionable cities and the university towns, Labour continues to thrive. Witness, for example, Sadiq Khan’s predicted comfortable victory in London. And therein lies the party’s dilemma. Any organisation seeking to hold together a coalition of interest groups must be wary about indulging one part of it to such a degree that its other elements begin to feel neglected. The greater the success of Labour in the citadels of cosmopolitan liberalism, the more likely it is that the old industrial heartlands will become fretful. That is precisely what has happened.

In the way that the working-class component of Labour’s coalition was expected to — and did — make concessions in the 1990s to enable the party to broaden its appeal among the upwardly mobile middle classes, so the obligation falls today on the latter to compromise so that the party stands at least a chance of recovering the support of the former. That doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning any commitment to a radical (but nonetheless credible) economic programme: there are deep wells of support in working-class communities for a more egalitarian economy, a higher minimum wage, investment in public services, reductions in income and wealth inequality, and so on. But it does mean understanding the small-“c” conservatism and proclivity for social solidarity and cultural attachment that exists across large parts of provincial and post-industrial Britain.

It also means being prepared to put front and centre the doorstep issues — law and order, immigration, national security — which Labour activists are usually uncomfortable discussing. If that means that topics such as LGBT rights, climate change, gender identity, Palestine and the next woke cause that comes along must take more of a back seat, so be it. The party must begin to look and sound again like those who have abandoned it and reflect their priorities. Until that happens, it will be relegated to the status of a middle-class pressure group.

I have heard some inside Labour’s ranks argue that the old blue-collar vote has gone for good, and the party must now throw everything at consolidating and widening its new young, liberal, metropolitan, university-educated, pro-EU base. But so far as such a strategy would be electorally viable — and that is doubtful — what would be the point of it? If Labour could not bring itself to speak for its old working-class base living in some of the country’s most disadvantaged communities, it would have betrayed its very reason for existing. The objective — and it may never be realised — must be to win back the hearts and minds of those whose votes it must recover if it is to win power and fulfil its historical mission once more — not to write those voters off as a lost cause.

While polls are rarely useful as tools for predicting the outcome of general elections three years into the future, these latest results will prove valuable for revealing just how bad things have become for Labour. The party’s banishment from large swathes of its former strongholds, and the dogged resistance of voters in those places to all attempts at reconciliation, cannot be attributed to the standard ups and downs of electoral fortune or a desire on the part of those voters to deliver a well-deserved warning shot across Labour’s bows before returning to its fold in due course.

This is much more. The entire axis of British politics has moved. Even in 1983, when under Michael Foot it suffered a crushing election defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher, Labour managed to retain much of its working-class base. What we are witnessing today, by contrast, is a paradigm shift. Thursday’s elections were the latest evidence of it. The rules have been rewritten, the landscape has changed utterly. For Labour, this may yet prove terminal — only most of the party still doesn’t realise it.

It’s hard to believe now, but in the early days of the public internet, the greatest worry of some of its most high-powered advocates was that it would be empty. As the Clinton administration prepared to transition the internet from its academic and military origins to the heart of the promised “national information infrastructure” (NII), the government’s advisors fretted that the United States entertainment and information industries would have no commercial reason to switch from TV, radio, and recorded music. And without Hollywood and the record labels on board, the new digital environment would end up as a ghost mall, devoid of businesses or users.

 “All the computers, telephones, fax machines, scanners, cameras, keyboards, televisions, monitors, printers, switches, routers, wires, cables, networks and satellites in the world will not create a successful NII, if there is not content”, former Patent Office head Bruce Lehman’s notorious 1994 government green paper on intellectual property on the Net warned. The fear was that without the presence of the pre-packaged material of America’s entertainment industry, the nation would simply refuse to go online. As law professor Jessica Litman describes it, these experts’ vision of the Internet was “a collection of empty pipes, waiting to be filled with content.” 

Even as the politicians were drafting new, more punitive copyright laws intended to reassure Hollywood and the record labels (and tempt them into new, uncharted waters), the Internet’s first users were moving in and building anyway. Even with its tiny audience of technologists, first-adopters, and university students, the early net quickly filled with compelling “content,” a  free-wheeling, participatory online media that drew ever larger crowds as it evolved.

Even in the absence of music and movies, the first net users built towers of information about them anyway. In rec.arts.movies, the Usenet discussion forum devoted to all things Hollywood, posters had been compiling and sharing lists of their favourite motion picture actors, directors, and trivia since the 1980s. By the time of the Lehman report, the collective knowledge of the newsgroup had outgrown its textual FAQs, and expanded first to a collectively-managed database on Colorado University’s file site, and then onward to one of the very first database-driven websites, hosted on a spare server at Wales’ Cardiff University.

Built in the same barn-raising spirit of the early net, the public interest internet exploits the low cost of organizing online to provide stable, free repositories of user-contributed information. They have escaped an exploited fate as proprietary services owned by a handful of tech giants.

These days, you’ll know that Cardiff Movie Database by another name – the IMDb. The database that had grown out of the rec.arts.movies contributions was turned into a commercial company in 1996 and sold to Amazon in 1998 for around $55 million dollars (equivalent to $88 million today). The Cardiff volunteers, led by one of its original moderators, Col Needham, continued to run the service as salaried employees of an Amazon subsidiary.

The IMDB shows how the original assumptions of Internet growth were turned on their head. Instead of movie production companies leading the way, their own audience had successfully built and monetised the elusive “content” of the information superhighway by themselves—for themselves.  The data of the rec.arts.movie databases was used by Amazon as the seed to build an exclusive subscriptions service, IMDbpro, for movie business professionals, and to augment their Amazon Prime video streaming service with quick-access film facts. Rather than needing the movie moguls’ permission to fill the Internet, the Internet ended up supplying information that those moguls themselves happily paid a new, digital mogul for.

But what about those volunteers who gave their time and labor to the collective effort of building this database for everyone? Apart from the few who became employees and shareholders of the commercial IMDb, they didn’t get a cut of the service’s profits. They also lost access to the full fruits of that comprehensive movie database. While you can still download the updated core of the Cardiff Database for free, it only covers the most basic fields of the IMDb. It is licensed under a strictly non-commercial license, fenced off with limitations and restrictions. No matter how much you might contribute to the IMDb, you can’t profit from your labor. The deeper info that was originally built by the user-contributions  and supplemented by Amazon has been enclosed: shut away, in a proprietary paywalled property, gated off from the super-highway it rode in on.

It’s a story as old as the net is, and echoes historic stories of the enclosure of the commons. A pessimist would say that this has been the fate of much of the early net and its aspirations. Digital natives built, as volunteers, free resources for everyone. Then, struggling to keep them online in the face of the burdens of unexpected growth, they ended up selling up to commercial interests. Big Tech grew to its monopoly position by harvesting this public commons, and then locking it away.

But it’s not the only story from the early net. Everyone knows, too, the large public projects that somehow managed to steer away from this path. Wikipedia is the archetype, still updated by casual contributors and defiantly unpaid editors across the world, with the maintenance costs of its website comfortably funded by regular appeals from its attached non-profit. Less known, but just as unique, is Open Street Map (OSM), a user-built, freely-licensed alternative to Google Maps, which has compiled from public domain sources and the hard work of its volunteer cartographers one of the most comprehensive maps of the entire earth. 

These are flagships of what we at EFF call the public interest internet. They produce and constantly replenish priceless public goods, available for everyone, while remaining separate from government, those traditional maintainers of public goods. Neither are they commercial enterprises, creating private wealth and (one hopes) public benefit through the incentive of profit. Built in the same barn-raising spirit of the early net, the public interest internet exploits the low cost of organizing online to provide stable, free repositories of user-contributed information. Through careful stewardship, or unique advantages, they have somehow escaped an enclosed and exploited fate as a proprietary service owned by a handful of tech giants.

That said, while Wikipedia and OSM are easy, go-to examples of the public interest internet, they are not necessarily representative of it. Wikipedia and OSM, in their own way, are tech giants too. They run at the same global scale. They struggle with some of the same issues of accountability and market dominance. It’s hard to imagine a true competitor to Wikipedia or OSM emerging now, for instance—even though many have tried and failed. Their very uniqueness means that their influence is outsized. The remote, in-house politics at these institutions has real effects on the rest of society. Both Wikipedia and OSM have complex, often carefully negotiated, large-scale interactions with the tech giants. Google integrates Wikipedia into its searches, cementing the encyclopedia’s position. OSM is used by, and receives contributions from, Facebook and Apple. It can be hard to know how individual contributors or users can affect the governance of these mega-projects or change the course of them. And there’s a recurring fear that the tech giants have more influence than the builders of these projects.

Besides, if there’s really only a handful of popular examples of public good production by the public interest internet, is that really a healthy alternative to the rest of the net? Are these just crocodiles and alligators, a few visible survivors from a previous age of out-evolved dinosaurs, doomed to be ultimately outpaced by sprightlier commercial rivals?

At EFF, we don’t think so. We think there’s a thriving economy of smaller public interest internet projects, which have worked out their own ways to survive on the modern internet. We think they deserve a role and representation in the discussions governments are having about the future of the net. Going further, we’d say that the real dinosaurs are our current tech giants. The small, sprightly, and public-minded public interest internet has always been where the benefits of the internet have been concentrated. They’re the internet’s mammalian survivors, hiding out in the nooks of the net, waiting to take back control when the tech giants are history.

In our next installment, we take a look at one of the most notorious examples of early digital enclosure, its (somewhat) happier ending, and what it says about the survival skills of the public interest internet when a free database of compact discs outlasts the compact disc boom itself.

Governor DeSantis is expected to sign it into law, as he called for laws like this. He cited social media de-platforming Donald Trump as  examples of the political bias of what he called “oligarchs in Silicon Valley.” The law is not just about candidates, it also bans “shadow-banning” and cancels cancel culture by prohibiting censoring “journalistic enterprises,” with “censorship” including things like posting “an addendum” to the content, i.e. fact checks.

This law, like similar previous efforts, is mostly performative, as it almost certainly will be found unconstitutional. Indeed, the parallels with a nearly 50 years old compelled speech precedent are uncanny. In 1974, in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, the Supreme Court struck down another Florida statute that attempted to compel the publication of candidate speech. 

50 Years Ago, Florida's Similar "Right of Reply" Law Was Found Unconstitutional

At the time, Florida had a dusty "right of reply" law on the books, which had not really been used, giving candidates the right to demand that any newspaper who criticized them print a reply to the newspaper's charges, at no cost. The Miami Herald had criticized Florida House candidate Pat Tornillo, and refused to carry Tornillo’s reply. Tornillo sued.

Tornillo lost at the trial court, but found some solace on appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.  The Florida high court held that the law was constitutional, writing that the “statute enhances rather than abridges freedom of speech and press protected by the First Amendment,” much like the proponents of today’s new law argue. 

So off the case went to the US Supreme Court. Proponents of the right of reply raised the same arguments used today—that government action was needed to ensure fairness and accuracy, because “the 'marketplace of ideas' is today a monopoly controlled by the owners of the market.”  

Like today, the proponents argued new technology changed everything. As the Court acknowledged in 1974, “[i]n the past half century a communications revolution has seen the introduction of radio and television into our lives, the promise of a global community through the use of communications satellites, and the specter of a ‘wired’ nation by means of an expanding cable television network with two-way capabilities.”  Today, you might say that a wired nation with two-way communications had arrived in the global community, but you can’t say the Court didn’t consider this concern.

You might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure. Politics, of course.

The Court also accepted that the consolidation of major media meant “the dominant features of a press that has become noncompetitive and enormously powerful and influential in its capacity to manipulate popular opinion and change the course of events,” and acknowledged the development of what the court called “advocacy journalism,” eerily similar to the arguments raised today. 

Paraphrasing the arguments made in favor of the law, the Court wrote “The abuses of bias and manipulative reportage are, likewise, said to be the result of the vast accumulations of unreviewable power in the modern media empires. In effect, it is claimed, the public has lost any ability to respond or to contribute in a meaningful way to the debate on issues,” just like today’s proponents of the Transparency in Technology Act.

The Court was not swayed, not because this was dismissed as an issue, but because government coercion could not be the answer. “However much validity may be found in these arguments, at each point the implementation of a remedy such as an enforceable right of access necessarily calls for some mechanism, either governmental or consensual. If it is governmental coercion, this at once brings about a confrontation with the express provisions of the First Amendment.” There is much to dislike about content moderation practices, but giving the government more control is not the answer.

Even if one should decry the lack of responsibility of the media, the Court recognized “press responsibility is not mandated by the Constitution and like many other virtues it cannot be legislated.”  Accordingly, Miami Herald v. Tornillo reversed the Florida Supreme Court, and held the Florida statute compelling publication of candidates' replies unconstitutional.

Since Tornillo, courts have consistently applied it as binding precedent, including applying Tornillo to social media and internet search engines, the very targets of the Transparency in Technology Act (unless they own a theme park). Indeed, the compelled speech doctrine has even been used to strike down other attempts to counter perceived censorship of conservative speakers. 

With the strong parallels with Tornillo, you might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure, costing the state the time and expense of defending it in court. Politics, of course. The legislators who passed this bill probably knew it was unconstitutional, but may have seen political value in passing the base-pleasing statute, and blaming the courts when it gets struck down. 

Politics is also the reason for the much-ridiculed exception for theme park owners. It’s actually a problem for the law itself. As the Supreme Court explained in Florida Star v BJF, carve-outs like this make the bill even more susceptible to a First Amendment challenge as under-inclusive.  Theme parks are big business in Florida, and the law’s definition of social media platform would otherwise fit Comcast (which owns Universal Studios' theme parks), Disney, and even Legoland.  Performative legislation is less politically useful if it attacks a key employer and economic driver of your state. The theme park exception has also raised all sorts of amusing possibilities for the big internet companies to address this law by simply purchasing a theme park, which could easily be less expensive than compliance, even with the minimum 25 acres and 1 million visitors/year. Much as Section 230 Land would be high on my own must-visit list, striking the law down is the better solution.

The Control that Large Internet Companies Have on our Public Conversations Is An Important Policy Issue

The law is bad, and the legislature should feel bad for passing it, but this does not mean that the control that the large internet companies have on our public conversations isn’t an important policy issue. As we have explained to courts considering the broader issue, if a candidate for office is suspended or banned from social media during an election, the public needs to know why, and and the candidate needs a process to appeal the decision. And this is not just for politicians - more often it is marginalized communities that bear the brunt of bad content moderation decisions. It is critical that the social platform companies provide transparency, accountability and meaningful due process to all impacted speakers, in the US and around the globe, and ensure that the enforcement of their content guidelines is fair, unbiased, proportional, and respectful of all users’ rights. 

This is why EFF and a wide range of non-profit organizations in the internet space worked together to develop the Santa Clara Principles, which call upon social media to (1) publish the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended due to violations of their content guidelines; (2) provide notice to each user whose content is taken down or account is suspended about the reason for the removal or suspension; and (3) provide a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of any content removal or account suspension. 

Introduit il y a quelques mois par Brave au sein de son logiciel, le protocole IPFS permet d'héberger ses propres pages web sur un réseau décentralisé, ou chaque élément est stocké dans plusieurs nœuds.

Avec IPFS nous retrouvons plusieurs avantages. D'une part ce dispositif permet de répartir la charge réseau et donc d'optimiser la bande passante. Par ailleurs, le contenu se charge plus rapidement, surtout si le nombre de nœuds pour ce dernier est conséquent. Il ne s'agit alors plus d'accéder à un serveur central classique mais de récupérer le contenu sur les nodes les plus proches. Enfin, et c'est une bonne nouvelle, puisque l'on passe outre le protocole HTTP cela permet d'accéder à des contenus censurés.

Au-delà des simples page Web, ce protocole permet également de partager des fichiers très simplement en peer-to-peer à plusieurs de ses proches en passant directement par le navigateur. En d'autres termes, c'est une peu comme si nous retrouvions une sorte de WeTransfer directement intégré au navigateur.

De la même manière qu'un client BitTorrent , plus il y a de contacts partageant le même fichier, plus la vitesse de téléchargement sera importante.

Comment créer un serveur de fichiers avec Brave ?
1. Ouvrez une fenêtre du navigateur Brave et tapez l'adresse brave://ipfs-internals/ dans la barre d'adresses.

2. Cliquer sur Démarrer.

3. Cliquer sur « Mon nœud »

4. Vous arrivez sur l'interface de gestion. Pour envoyer un fichier, cliquez maintenant sur « Fichiers », dans le menu situé à gauche de l'interface.

5. Pour importer un fichier, cliquez sur le bouton "+Import", puis sur « Fichier ». Vous pouvez également envoyer un dossier entier en cliquant sur « Folder ».

6. Choisissez sur votre ordinateur le fichier à importer.

7. Pour partager votre fichier avec un ou plusieurs contacts, cliquez sur le menu d'options, symbolisé par les trois petits points à droite du fichier importé puis sur « Partager ».

8. Cliquer sur « Copy » pour copier le lien de partage.

Il ne reste plus qu'à l'envoyer à vos contacts pour qu'ils puissent commencer le téléchargement.

Ses élèves ont "quatre ou cinq ans", précise-t-elle. Mais ce n'est pas une raison pour ne pas les mettre à la page. "Par défaut, la langue française prévoit que le masculin l'emporte sur le féminin, or dans ma classe, je m'efforce de toujours utiliser les deux en même temps lorsque je m'adresse à toute ma classe". Pour illustrer son propos, elle donne un exemple : "Voyons qui sont les absentes et les absents aujourd'hui". Une initiative insignifiante ? "Certes cette utilisation de la langue est très binaire, se justifie-t-elle. Mais il est à mon sens compliqué et peu pertinent de faire plus complexe à l'âge de mes élèves". Pourtant, à lire la centaine de commentaires d'enseignants, comme ils se présentent, certains vont bien plus loin, jusqu'à faire de l'écriture inclusive une matière (presque) à part entière.

Faire "avancer" les mentalités

Comme elle, Anne, qui se présente sur son compte comme "enseignante qui dénonce les discriminations à l'école", fait son "petit pas inclusif" en classe. Pour sa part, c'est en écrivant au tableau "les listes d'adjectifs à apprendre avec le point de séparation : content.e ; intelligent.e. Ça ne coûte rien, ça ne les choque pas, et je me dis qu'ils seront habitués à cette façon d'écrire quand ils la verront". Alison, maîtresse en moyenne section, explique de son côté simplement rebondir sur leurs "remarques" pour œuvrer en faveur d'une "société plus inclusive". Même si, "comme ils sont encore petits", il est "difficile de parler de non-binaire, de transgenre"…

Autre écueil, soulevé cette fois par une certaine Hellauw : il est compliqué d'employer l'écriture inclusive à l'oral en classe car "impossible à prononcer sans prendre ça pour du féminin (ex : heureux.se)". Heureusement, Sasha vient à sa rescousse : "Pour heureux-se, il y a heureuxe qui se dit heureukse". Ouf ! Un autre internaute abonde : "Quand je m'exprime au neutre, je mets le X après le mot. Par exemple, "je suis content.x". Il y a aussi des articles neutres comme Lo, ael, celleux, ellui etc".

Contactés, ces enseignants n'ont pas souhaité nous répondre. Ne s'estimant pas assez "légitimes" ou "représentatifs", pour la plupart, pour s'exprimer, quand d'autres n'ont tout simplement pas donné suite à nos sollicitations. Mais ils ne sont pas les seuls à, désormais, vouloir faire entrer l'écriture inclusive dans la tête des élèves dès le plus jeune âge. Rencontrée sur un groupe Facebook de profs, Agnès*, 32 ans, enseignante d'une classe de CE2 dans le Val d'Oise, tente elle aussi de faire "avancer les mœurs et les esprits" en distillant des petites touches "d'inclusion". "Il n'y a pas d'âge pour prendre conscience du principal défi de notre génération et des générations futures, l'égalité", nous précise-t-elle, par téléphone.

Des mots épicènes pour inclure

Agnès a un modèle, répète-t-elle à plusieurs reprises : Paulo Freire, pédagogue brésilien décédé en 1997 connu pour sa méthode d'alphabétisation des "opprimés". Elle n'applique pas vraiment ses vues, "trop complexes à ce niveau", qui sont censées pousser les enseignants à se saisir de l'expérience sociale des élèves pour les amener à la problématiser, dans le but de leur faire prendre conscience des rapports sociaux inégalitaires qui organisent la société. Simplement, elle suit cette volonté de tourner la pédagogie vers l'engagement politique, donc vers l'égalité.

"Tous les cycles sont bons pour les amener à réfléchir à certains relents conservateurs de la société, explique-t-elle. Déconstruire certains clichés, ça peut se faire à tout âge. Par exemple en disant que le rose n'est pas forcément une couleur de fille, ou en expliquant que tout le monde a le droit d'être cité dans une phrase censée s'adresser à tous. Femmes, hommes, et même les autres. Et là, c'est le moment d'expliquer qui sont les non-binaires et pourquoi ils ont le droit d'être respectés". Pour Agnès, l'apprentissage de l'inclusion s'arrête là, même si elle avoue avoir déjà touché "un ou deux mots" à ses élèves à propos des "mots épicènes" (non-genrés). "Il existe des mots nouveaux, des articles comme des pronoms, pour inclure le maximum de personnes. C'est une démarche positive, je ne vois donc aucun problème à leur dire qu'un monde nouveau s'ouvre. Ensuite à eux de voir s'ils veulent en faire partie".

À LIRE AUSSI : Une "écriture excluante" qui "s’impose par la propagande" : 32 linguistes listent les défauts de l’écriture inclusive

Clarissa et Juliette, 29 et 34 ans, elles aussi enseignantes - et elles aussi anonymes pour s'éviter une éventuelle visite de l'inspection, consciente que leur démarche peut "déranger" - sont du même avis. "Il n'est jamais assez tôt pour former des citoyens éclairés", scande la première, enseignante d'une classe double niveau CM1-CM2 dans les Hauts-de-Seine. "Il y a quelque chose de ludique dans cette nouvelle langue française qui se dessine", sourit la seconde, qui exerce dans une école primaire bordelaise, à l'évocation de cette écriture inclusive qu'elle amène parfois à portée de regard de ses élèves.

"Mots mutants"

Toutes les deux assument : oui, elles ont animé des ateliers, à la fin d'un cycle ou avant de voir s'ouvrir des vacances scolaires, autour de cette "langue en mutation". "Simplement pour les ouvrir à autre chose, pas pour les endoctriner", balaie Clarissa. Au tableau, cette dernière a rédigé une liste de nouveautés à examiner. De nouveaux articles définis neutres (lo, lu, au lieu de le ou la), ou inclusifs (lia, li). Ce fameux pronom : iel, fusion de il et elle. Ou quelques déterminants possessifs inclusifs venus de loin : maon ou taon, fusion de mon et ton. La seconde, elle, après avoir distribué quelques polycopiés comprenant ces "mots mutants", comme s'en est amusé un élève, a lancé un exercice collectif : transformer des phrases du quotidien avec ces nouvelles données.

"C'était très amusant, rapporte-t-elle. Dans un premier temps, il ne voyait pas l'intérêt, ils trouvaient ça ridicule, puis ça les a amusés. Ils ont fini par me demander, il y a peu, que l'on fasse à nouveau ce genre d'activités. J'ai été très heureuse de cette réaction que je traduis par une volonté de se saisir d'outils nouveaux". Avant-gardistes les enfants ? Ou simplement clients de l'ubuesque ?

Surtout, est-ce vraiment rendre service à ces jeunes enfants que de les initier à ce langage dès l'école ? Dans une tribune publiée sur le site The Conversation, trois spécialistes du domaine s'interrogent (Anne Dister, linguiste, Dominique Lafontaine, professeur en sciences de l'éducation, et Marie-Louise Moreau, professeur de sociolinguistique) et concluent : "L’adoption de ces nouvelles normes se traduit par un plus grand écart entre l’oral et l’écrit. Cela engendre aussi une complexification évidente des règles orthographiques, alors que les modifications proposées sont loin d’être stabilisées et qu’elles entrent en conflit avec les normes ordinaires". Et d'ajouter : "Si on sait qu’une proportion importante d’enfants – plusieurs recherches sont là-dessus convergentes – maîtrisent mal les accords orthographiques en genre et nombre à l’entrée dans le secondaire, on peut pressentir que les nouvelles formes seront moins libératrices que génératrices de difficultés accrues, et donc d’exclusion".

Des mots au service d'une idéologie ?

Si les enseignants interrogés se défendent en brandissant leur liberté pédagogique, Pierre Favre, vice-président du Syndicat national des écoles (SNE) s'en insurge : "La liberté, c'est celle d'utiliser tous les moyens pour transmettre des savoirs. Or, la langue est le premier des savoirs, c'est l'instrument essentiel, celui qui résume tout, c'est ce qui fait la France. La liberté pédagogique ne peut donc être celle de pouvoir intenter à la langue. C'est donc une démarche interdite et n'importe quel inspecteur au courant de telles pratiques mettrait le hola immédiatement".

S'il est convaincu qu'il faut faire de la langue "un objet de plaisir", il voit dans ces pratiques tout de même peu répandues une "déformation de la langue" au service d'une idéologie. "C'est penser que l'instrument va modeler les esprits, avance-t-il. Je sais bien l'intention qui se cache derrière cette démarche : 'Il faut créer les conditions pour que les gens n'aient pas d'autres idées que les nôtres et ça passe par le vocabulaire. En imposant les mots, nous imposons nos idées'".

À LIRE AUSSI : Les batailles perdues de Jean-Michel Blanquer

À partir du 19 mai, une exposition au château des ducs de Bretagne proposera deux regards africains, d'un artiste béninois et d'un historien ivoirien, sur les collections du musée d'Histoire de Nantes sur l'esclavage. «L'objectif est de porter un regard neuf sur nos collections en décolonisant notre pensée», a expliqué, lors d'une visite de presse, Krystel Gualdé, directrice scientifique du musée et commissaire de l'exposition «Expression(s) décoloniale(s) #2».

À lire aussi :Jean Pigozzi : «Je suis parti avec l'objectif de faire la plus grande collection d'art africain contemporain»

La première édition de l'exposition s'était tenue en 2018 avec l'artiste congolais Moridja Kitenge. Organiser cet événement dans cette ville, qui fut le premier port négrier français avant l'abolition - définitive - de l'esclavage en 1848, est un symbole fort. Jusqu'au 14 novembre prochain, la cour du château et les salles du musée accueilleront vingt pièces de l'artiste béninois contemporain Romuald Hazoumé, dont les oeuvres réalisées à partir de matériaux de récupération sont exposées dans le monde entier. «J'ai le devoir, comme artiste, de dire aux miens qu'il faut prendre notre part de responsabilité dans l'histoire de l'esclavage pour faire notre résilience et régler les problèmes d'aujourd'hui, a déclaré le plasticien à l'Agence France-Presse. Il faut arrêter de dire que les Occidentaux sont les seuls responsables, car pour qu'il y ait des acheteurs d'esclaves, il fallait des vendeurs.»

Des voix «peu entendues et acceptées»

L'historien ivoirien Gildas Bi Kakou a, pour sa part, été convié à commenter plusieurs pièces du musée à l'aune de ses recherches sur la traite négrière en Côte d'Ivoire, qui préexistait à l'arrivée des Européens. «Cette recherche n'est pas encouragée en Afrique car elle gêne pour des raisons politiques et d'harmonie sociale», a indiqué le chercheur, auteur d'une série de cartels intitulés Un autre regard historique.

À lire aussi :Gaël Faye: «L’Afrique n’est plus une colonie. Il y a une décolonisation des esprits à opérer»

L'historien souligne que les esclaves venaient des côtes mais aussi de l'intérieur du pays, via les cours d'eau, avec l'appui de populations locales qui prélevaient un droit de passage, enchérissant le «coût» de l'esclave au fil de son trajet. «Les voix de cet artiste et de cet historien sont encore peu entendues et acceptées sur le continent africain», s'est navrée Krystel Gualdé.

Plusieurs oeuvres monumentales sont réalisées à partir de bidons utilisés dans le trafic d'essence frelaté entre le Nigéria et le Bénin. Transportés par des hommes au péril de leur vie, ils alimentaient jusqu'à peu la majorité du pays en essence. Une autre pièce maîtresse, placée à l'entrée du musée, prend la forme d'un dé, formé par des tongs laissées par des migrants avant leur traversée mortifère en Méditerranée, et interroge sur le prix à payer pour obtenir une vie meilleure.

À VOIR AUSSI - Figaro Hors-Série: le rétablissement de l'esclavage est-il la preuve du racisme «systémique» de Napoléon ?

COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.

To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forum’s mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

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How can we collaborate to stop the spread of COVID-19?

Since its launch on 11 March, the Forum’s COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.

The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched – bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19. Having already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the pandemic represents one of the worst public-health crises in recent history. And, with casualties still mounting in many parts of the world, it is far from over.

This will have serious long-term consequences for economic growth, public debt, employment, and human wellbeing. According to the Financial Times, global government debt has already reached its highest level in peacetime. Moreover, unemployment is skyrocketing in many countries: in the US, for example, one in four workers have filed for unemployment since mid-March, with new weekly claims far above historic highs. The International Monetary Fund expects the world economy to shrink by 3% this year – a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points in just four months.

All of this will exacerbate the climate and social crises that were already underway. Some countries have already used the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and enforcement. And frustrations over social ills like rising inequality – US billionaires’ combined wealth has increased during the crisis – are intensifying.

Left unaddressed, these crises, together with COVID-19, will deepen and leave the world even less sustainable, less equal, and more fragile. Incremental measures and ad hoc fixes will not suffice to prevent this scenario. We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.

The level of cooperation and ambition this implies is unprecedented. But it is not some impossible dream. In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.

Likewise, populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of health-care and other essential workers and vulnerable populations, such as the elderly. And many companies have stepped up to support their workers, customers, and local communities, in a shift toward the kind of stakeholder capitalism to which they had previously paid lip service.

Clearly, the will to build a better society does exist. We must use it to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way.

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The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination (for example, in tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy), upgrade trade arrangements, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.” At a time of diminishing tax bases and soaring public debt, governments have a powerful incentive to pursue such action.

Moreover, governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.

The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. Here, the large-scale spending programs that many governments are implementing represent a major opportunity for progress. The European Commission, for one, has unveiled plans for a €750 billion ($826 billion) recovery fund. The US, China, and Japan also have ambitious economic-stimulus plans.

Rather than using these funds, as well as investments from private entities and pension funds, to fill cracks in the old system, we should use them to create a new one that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.

The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.

The COVID-19 crisis is affecting every facet of people’s lives in every corner of the world. But tragedy need not be its only legacy. On the contrary, the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.

Explore The Great Reset Transformation Map

Image: World Economic Forum

License and Republishing

Written by

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, is fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making. The inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems –from health and financial to energy and education – are more exposed than ever amidst a global context of concern for lives, livelihoods and the planet. Leaders find themselves at a historic crossroads, managing short-term pressures against medium- and long-term uncertainties.

The opportunity

As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.

Adolf Hitler having lunch (Image: businessinsider.com)

Adolf Hitler suffered from farting, which made most of his dinner parties intolerable. His farting was the worst right after dinner, therefore Hitler would often get up from the dinner table and leave to his private quarters, much to the surprise of his guests.

Hitler suffered from uncontrollable flatulence, stomach cramps, constipation, and diarrhea for most of his life. Usually, these symptoms exacerbated when he was under stress.

The flatulence convinced Hitler to switch to a vegetarian diet in 1931. He never considered that a high-fiber diet worsened his flatulence.

On other hand, Hitler loved sweets, which certainly didn’t help his health problems.

Dr. Theodor Morell (second from the left) followed Adolf Hitler everywhere (Image: alarab.qa)

Interestingly, Hitler’s farting contributed to his demise. Desperately suffering from overwhelming flatulence, Hitler turned to the services of Dr. Theodor Morell in 1936. Morell managed (at least temporarily) to calm Hitler’s farting problems and thus earned his blind trust.

Morell became Hitler’s personal physician and followed him everywhere. The new position made Morell a multi-millionaire.

For his problems with flatulence, Hitler received probiotic preparation Mutaflor and Dr. Koester’s Anti-Gas pills, which contained strychnine (rat poison).

Theodor Morell and Eukodal, Hitler’s favorite drug (Image of Theodor Morell:historyhit.com and image of Eukodal:theoutline.com)

Theodor Morell (1886-1948) was a quasi doctor who knew almost nothing about his medical profession. Hitler’s inner circle despised Morell for being a quack. Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, nicknamed Morell a “Reich Master of Injections.”

Remaining Hitler’s doctors saw how dangerous was Morell to Hitler’s health. They actually warned Hitler, however they were dismissed.

Hitler needed Morell, since Morell turned him into a drug addict.

Morell regularly injected Hitler with drugs, including barbiturates, opiates, and amphetamines. Altogether, severy-four substances were given to Hitler and contributed to his deteriorating health.

Among others, Morell gave Hitler heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, oxycodone (an opioid painkiller sold under brand name Eukodal), testosterone, and strychnine.

At the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler was a physical wreck. His hands were so riddled with injection marks that even Hitler’s passive mistress Eva Braun complained about Morell’s activities.

There is a saying that people get the politicians and the doctors they deserve. In the case of Adolf Hitler, he got the doctor he deserved.