• The head of state pointed Wednesday, in the Council of Ministers, a "process of decivilization" at work to qualify and encompass the superposition of several recent events.
  • An expression that has leaked and provoked the anger of the left, since Decivilization is the title of a book by Renaud Camus, the theorist of the "great replacement".
  • Where does this term really come from? What does it cover? 20 Minutes takes stock.

After having said of Marshal Pétain that he was a "great soldier" in 2018 and seeing his minister Gérald Darmanin mobilize the concept of "intellectual terrorism", Emmanuel Macron once again used controversial terms, Wednesday in the Council of Ministers. Linking the attack that claimed the life of a nurse at Reims University Hospital to the road accident in which three police officers died, the head of state denounced a "process of decivilization". A word far from trivial. 20 Minutes takes stock.

Where does the term "decivilization" come from?

Originally, the term is associated with the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias, who speaks of "process of civilization" and worked on the causes of the rise of Nazism. With other thinkers of the twentieth century, he shows that "the de-civilization of the years 1930-1940 consisted in destroying the individual to melt him into the mass," explains historian Hamit Bozarslan in Le Figaro. In Norbert Elias' Civilization, there is a "self-control exercised by individuals over their spontaneous violence," quotes France Culture, which is no longer current in the barbaric society of Nazi Germany.

But in the political sphere, Décivilisation is above all the title of a book by the far-right thinker Renaud Camus, published in 2011. The same year, the essayist developed his racist and conspiracy theory of "great replacement", which was seized by members of the RN, Eric Zemmour or Valeurs actuelles. At the crossroads of the two concepts, the writer also published The Great Deculturation, presented as a "teaching of forgetting" of Western culture, essential to carry out the "great replacement".

What do politicians put behind this term?

From there, the term spread to the right and the extreme right to denounce the violence crossing society. Xavier Bertrand uses it on Europe 1 during the campaign of the primary on the right, in 2021, highlighting "every day, aggressions against the State" without "retaliation". At LR, the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard signed a platform "Can we stop decivilization?" in Le Figaro after the assault of an octogenarian, and Bruno Retailleau regularly employs him in the Senate. "The France is going wild with a phenomenon of decivilization," he said in September 2022.

"Savagery", another term dear to the far right, closely follows "decivilization". "The president does not take up a concept," defends the Elysee, "it is a reality", in which Emmanuel Macron includes the assault of a caregiver by a man with psychiatric disorders, the traffic accident that claimed the lives of three police officers and the death of a little girl, hit by a car leaving its parking lot in Trappes. But serious incidents "are not the daily life of the French," sociologist Renée Zuberman relativizes on France Info, even if "we can convey the idea that France is an increasingly violent country" with the media treatment of limited news items combined with an increase in "violence without contact" such as insults or threats.

What were the political reactions?

The use of the term, the title of a far-right book, has not gone unnoticed by the political class. "To consider that this would be pure coincidence is either a farce or distressing," LFI MP Alexis Corbière said on Twitter. "I'm tired of Emmanuel Macron's complacency with the far right!" said Sandrine Rousseau on BFMTV, estimating that "every time (he) is faced with a difficulty, he launches a kind of pole on the far right".



An accusation that Olivier Véran returned on Europe 1, explaining that this term was "not the prerogative of the extreme right", and highlighting its use in Norbert Elias, "a Jewish sociologist". This "is not a phenomenon that corresponds to a political party or that corresponds to a political idea" but a situation that "harms the well-being of everyone," he argued. Nevertheless, at the RN, we rub our hands. "I have been talking about savagery for years and I am accused of all evils," says Marine Le Pen. "Decivilization is barbarism," continues the president of the RN group in the Assembly on CNews, believing that Emmanuel Macron "gives us reason".

  • Politics
  • Marine Le Pen
  • Eric Zemmour
  • Emmanuel Macron
  • Far right