<nettime> 2002-2012 Ten years after the electoral acclaim in France

[Aliette GC <guibertc@criticalsecret.com>]

2002-2012 Paul Voise, Minor Current Affair, Insecurity & Politics: ten
years after the electoral acclaim in France (editorial)



After a long silence of the publication over the the internet, here is
www.criticalsecret.com #16. So, what’s new since podcasts and 3G
phones ? At this point, the passe-partout of the digital world, in
synchronicity with the urban society, is the open sesame of internet
tablet devices : html5. The reason why this issue is digitally
relevant to the html5 version of an hour long movie is so that it can
be watched on any computer or tablet screen, without consideration for
the browser used to watch it.*

The subject of this current issue of criticalsecret is shedding a
peculiar diachronic light on the renewal of the french presidential
electoral campaign.

- It finds itself at the crossroads of the European supranational
orientation in a financial crisis that obliterates currencies. Thus,
after the signing of the stability pact that forces national economies
upon deserting economic growth, involving the ruin of societies to
ensure the hegemony of financial markets.

- April 2012 comes after the Lisbon treaty, a text that abused the
consulted people over the European constitution and that, among other
things, militarizes the police and binds Justice to the raison d’état.

To fully understand the current french presidential electoral
campaign, and the subversion of the civic consciousness by the opinion
and particularly by the press since the last decade, one needs to go
back to the infamous 2002 presidential campaign and the Paul Voise
case.

This episode inaugurated the end of the republican representation of
the chief of state as elected through ballots.

French citizens critical of the government, not having at their
disposal blank votes which are deducted from the ballots obtained,
(nor do they have proportional representation during legislative
elections) for the most part abstained from voting altogether, with
the remaining part casting a vote of defiance towards the socialist
government and the outgoing president by voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen,
particularly ironic, even comical and omnipresent in the medias at the
time. He crystallized the vote of people frightened by the Paul Voise
beating and house fire, widely publicized by the TV and radio during
the first turn of the electoral campaign.

The movie that deconstructs the 2002 elections point-by-point exists.
It is entitled ‘Paul Voise, […]’ and is directed by Simon Guibert,
Documentary Journalist and radio author, and Arthur Guibert, director,
cinematographer and editor with Alexandre Heraud, investigative
journalist, playing his own character.

Throughout a 57 minute prospective story, this piece presents the
conclusions of a two-year investigation and summarizes a deviance in
the electoral communication around the notion of security that
characterized the radical turn that brought democracy into an
oligarchic autocracy in France.

The movie, shot between 2002 and 2004 was edited in 2005, and then
published in four parts on dailymotion.com in 2006. Criticalsecret
published it in extenso for the first time exclusively on the web and
tablets.

It is now 2012. The country is mourning because of an event of blind
murderous violence that interrupted the current electoral campaign,
giving back its media omnipresence to the outgoing president and its
government. A president who has himself been elected in 2007 in
exceptional circumstances of mediatization of its autocratic character
and way of life, glorifying the reign of money.

Without any connection except in the timing, an isolated gunman, mass
serial killer, caused seven deaths over three different days: in
Toulouse, the murder of a soldier of West Indian origin, in Montauban
three soldiers of North African origin, all belonging to the same
paratrooper unit, the 17th, back from Afghanistan. Then several days
later, again in Toulouse, at the entrance to a Jewish religious
school, three school children and a rabbi. The young man, an
unemployed mechanic, "allegedly" guilty, will never be investigated,
tried or convicted, because he was shot down by the RAID, a special
task force of the French national police. Then the revelations made by
the highest official of the DCRI, French intelligence agency, imply
that the man could have been a rogue agent, with whom he had had
direct communication and a meeting - this would imply more than a
security watch, according to the former head of the DST, the French
security service agency. If Islamists recruit in prison, is it
possible that so can the DCRI? No one has seen the survey of his
arsenal, or his camera, after the attack, and everyone is wondering
how his films all edited into one film and put to music could reach
the offices of Al Jazeera in Paris after his death, when his mother,
his brother and his sister-in-law had been arrested. Besides, no one
will show this film. Once again it is a case of declarations made
without any proof, in the eyes of the public, which is consequently
more and more disinformed by the Press, with said Press not making
mention either of what it could have verified in terms of proof at
source. The Prosecutor only made an appearance after the events took
place. The Press on the scene before and during the attack was held at
a distance and exclusively and directly informed by the declarations
and comments of the Minister of the Interior, that it relayed without
raising any questions. Then it was informed by the heads of police who
were justifying the 300 shots the boy would have received, according
to the forensic specialist (without access to any sources). But the
amateur videos of inhabitants clearly reflect heavy gunfire several
times with the final round lasting nearly ten minutes (this does not
indicate where the target was, whether inside or outside). The news
releases made by Agence France Presse reporting the declarations made
by the ministers and the President are not the same in French as in
English in the foreign press, where the idea of a Jihad network is
driven home and the brother is incarcerated, whereas elsewhere the
attacker is described as a lone wolf. The visa that the Jihadist
murderer had for Israël, which we all know know has a particularly
efficient security service, and his passage with the Palestinians,
when legal representatives have so much difficulty getting in and
Palestinians getting out, will remain a mystery. So that we will not
know what is at the bottom of this affair, except a a racist and
xenophobic wave that will be lastingly used with a backdrop of murders
and terror, before the outcome of the Presidential election. We will
have to wait for the investigation conducted by journalists later on,
or in the case of an affair implicating the State, it will be years
later.

How will the French people react on April 22, 2012? Nobody can say,
whether, like the Spanish, after the otherwise deadly attacks in
Madrid in 2005 (200 dead, 1600 wounded), the French voters exercise
their historic role by voting to maintain freedom and the law, and an
economy vital for the country, or whether they fall into a kind of
dictatureship, that many signs are indicating could be the case.

The themed installation here proposed is comprised of the movie and
its annexes, texts and documents, with the addition of a
behind-the-scenes photographic gallery by award-winning photographer
Mat Jacob. This issue takes the form of an audiovisual publication by
Thomas Schmidt, himself an artist and photographer.

In 2005 the movie about a long-since past event didn’t retain
attention. There may have been a need to repress the trauma of
understanding such a climate of resignation, and that a culture of
revolt like ours had definitely lost both its constitution and
fundamental rights.

Suddenly, the upcoming 2012 presidential election has brought back
interest in the Paul Voise movie, screened in 2011 in numerous
documentary film festivals. The last time it was screened before
showing here was during the ATTAC film festival, under the theme of
“The manufacturing of fear”. And here we are.

Aliette G. Certhoux, Mars 2012


http://www.criticalsecret.com/n16/ out on April 2 2012
http://www.criticalsecret.com

* But androïd:(


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org