As the American elections approached, the life of ideas devotes a file to this event whose issues are more important than usual. This time it is the fate of democracy itself.
Presentation of the file ▾
In 1980, Howard Zinn, former civil rights activist who has become one of the main actors in the renewal of social history, wrote in the conclusion of his Popular history of the United Statesbestseller translated in many languages:
All these American history books that focus on the founding fathers and successive presidents weigh heavily on the capacity for action of the ordinary citizen. They suggest that in time of crisis, we must seek a Savior (…) Classical history books still teach us that the supreme act of the citizen is to designate his Savior by going to vote every four years to choose between two relatively rich whites, Anglo-Saxon in addition and males above all, with dull personality and perfectly orthodox opinions.
He thus questioned in a salutary way the classic, excessively political reading of American democracy, which considers presidential alternations as key moments in the life of the American. Eside electoral deadlines, it is crossed by longer, more structuring dynamics, which are anchored in the territories in which they and they live, in their ethnoracial identity and privileges or privileges or privileges or privileges or privileges discrimination associated with it. The fact remains that the electoral cycle in which we are today is of paramount importance. Not only because this year again, it is not between two Anglo-Saxon whites that American voters have to choose, but between a man and a woman, between an Anglo-Saxon white and a representative of the new Multi -thnic America. The issue of this election goes far beyond a confrontation between two personalities so contrasting. What is played out is the ability of a people to reject a candidate that is both unfit and dangerous.
When he occupied the White House from 2016 to 2020, the former president and current republican candidate revealed his instability, his inconsistency, his verbal and physical violence, his inability to be guided, in his political decisions by the search for the common good. Trump is implicated today in many legal proceedings, in particular because he refused the outcome of the previous presidential election by contesting it by force. We learn these days that in 2020, three days before the elections, his advisor Steve Bannon said in private to a narrow circle of supporters that regardless of the ballot, Trump would announce his victory. This episode reveals all Donald Trump’s contempt for the fundamental mechanisms of representative democracy. A man ready to manipulate opinion, to instill in the spirits the roots of doubt for his own ends, and above all ready to pass, literally, in force. If the American people decide to renew this man in the White House, it is the future and integrity of the American institutions that will be at stake. Despite what Howard Zinn has been able to write in 1980, the need for a Savior – a Saviper in this case – is crying this year, with the support of ordinary citizens, as many as possible.
This file proposes to understand why this extremist candidate, guilty of major violations of law, can represent a danger for American democracy. In “ Trump facing his judges “, Julien Jeanneney presents all the legal proceedings involving the former president for violation of the law – fraud, defamation, attempt to overthrow the 2020 elections, conservation of classified documents. Françoise Coste exhibits the internal dynamics of a republican party which has made its candidate today. Thomas Charraye presented in January 2024 in “ Conservative right anatomy The foundations for its ideological renewal: anti-modernity and democracy, religion and capitalism.
In the form of chronicles, we will go to Arizona, one of the pivotal states, where the outcome of the elections could be played. Key questions are deployed there: the closing of the country and the control of immigration, the defense or not of the environment, the renewal of the republican electorate. In “ Bitcoin for the end of the world. Trumpists, survivalists, anti-staters “, Anthropologist Sébastien Roux takes us alongside the survivalists, emblematic of the Trumpist electorate today. Following the Jaguar track, Thomas Grillot offers, from the city of Tucson, a portrait of America behind its wall, this barrier with Mexico affecting both animal migrations as well, polarizing environmentalists, Amerindians, migrants, pro- or anti-top breeders.
The renewal of American conservatism seems to have to never stop. We had also made it the central problem of our special election file in 2012. However, he must not hide the momentum of certain progressive movements. Thus Clément Petitjean shows that the very long strike in the automobile can be read as an ecological victory. Australian sociologist Melinda Cooper supports the hope that conservative counter-revolution and neo-liberalism finally decline. However, structuring privileges, especially in racial matters, are still not called into question. Esther Cyna thus shows that in the field of public education, as in many others, taxation is racially biased and structurally promotes whites compared to Africans-Americans.