Étienne Chouard (born 21 December 1956)
[Ariane Chemin]
"Étienne Chouard, Don Quichotte du non" (paying archive)
(archived copy of the article o
scribd
, ''Le Monde
(; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', 12 May 2005. is a French high school teacher, blogger, and political activist.
Biography
During the 2005 French referendum campaign on the
European Constitution
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European ...
he gained public attention by advocating against it, notably for his discussion with
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn (; born 25 April 1949), also known as DSK, is a French economist and politician who served as the tenth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was a member of the French Socialist P ...
.
Since then Chouard – who defines himself as a "seeker of the original cause of social injustices" – has been working on different
democratic systems and
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
s. He is a supporter of the idea of
sortition
In governance, sortition is the selection of public officer, officials or jurors at random, i.e. by Lottery (probability), lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample.
In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and pr ...
[Jérôme Bouin]
"Que devient Étienne Chouard ?"
''Le Figaro
() is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It was named after Figaro, a character in several plays by polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, Beaumarchais (1732–1799): ''Le Barbier de Séville'', ''The Guilty Mother, La Mère coupable'', ...
'', 9 April 2007. which could also be applied to
constitutional conventions.
[Mathieu Deslandes]
"Etienne Chouard n’est pas mort, il soigne les orphelins du « non »"
'' Rue 89'', 26 March 2012. In 2013, Chouard wrote and put on a play entitled "Debt Explained to My Banker".
In 2018–2019, during the
Yellow vests movement
The yellow vests protests or yellow-jacket protests (, ) were a series of Populism, populist, grassroots weekly protests in France that began on 17 November 2018 and ended on 28 June 2020. Some minor protests started again after the restriction ...
, Chouard was frequently mentioned at the roundabouts and became a genuine thought leader for many yellow vests. This increasing popularity led to a re-examination of his long advocacy for direct democracy, and also of positive statements he had made about several right-wing conspiracy theorists, such as
Alain Soral,
Antony Sutton,
Jacques Cheminade
Jacques Guy Cheminade (; born 20 August 1941) is a French politician, activist and former diplomat. He is the head of the Solidarity and Progress (SP) party, the French arm of the LaRouche movement. He has thrice run for President of France (199 ...
,
Eustace Mullins
Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr. (March 9, 1923 – February 2, 2010) was an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, propagandist, Holocaust denier, and writer. A disciple of the poet Ezra Pound,
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h ...
, or
Thierry Meyssan
Thierry Meyssan () is a French journalist, left-wing and political activist.
He is the author of investigations into the extreme right-wing, particularly France's National Front militias, as well as into the Catholic church.
Meyssan's boo ...
, and the relationship he has maintained with them.
Antisemitism
In 2011, Étienne Chouard declared that Rothschild, "the discreet master of bankers", would "objectively have a powerful personal interest in anti-Semitism being virulent, almost everywhere in the world", adding: "This need for anti-Semitism -like-armor-anti-criticism could explain (but then, if it is true, what cynicism!) the mountains of money put at the service of the policy (objectively detestable) of Israel. Conspiracy Watch calls these remarks "the most banal anti-Semitic rhetoric".
In April 2019, he declared on
Sud Radio, in a debate with
Elisabeth Lévy: “You find that the freedom not to love a religion is very important. But when
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Bernard-Henri Georges Lévy (; ; born 5 November 1948) is a French public intellectual. Often referred to in France simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the " Nouveaux Philosophes" (New Philosophers) movement in 1976. His opinions, politi ...
calls me an anti-Semite – even if I was an anti-Semite, which of course I am not… But even if I was an anti-Semite, I should have the right to be an anti-Semite. In the same way that I should have the right to be Islamophobic, or Christianophobic...” He goes on to affirm that “nobody has any hatred of the Jews”, evoking in support that it has “been 35 years”. that he is a teacher and that he has not seen any “hatred of Jews”. France-Soir reacts by emphasizing that "after two years of decline, anti-Semitic acts in France have risen very sharply (+69%) in the first nine months of 2018".
Asked in June 2019 on Le Média about the existence of the gas chambers during the Second World War, he replied that "it's not
issubject", that he "knows nothing about it" and has “never read anything about it”. These remarks triggered accusations of Holocaust denial against him and the cessation of his weekly program on Sud Radio. The Union of Jewish Students of France (
UEJF) and the
LICRA announced their intention to file a complaint. Faced with the controversy, he said he "regrets" his remarks, admits having "said a huge bullshit", affirming "not to be a Holocaust denier, and not to be anti-Semitic", and ensuring that "the gas chambers are an absolute horror".
[.] In L'Humanité, Olivier Morin considers that "even after having retracted his remarks, Chouard and his remarks contribute to minimizing the horror of the Nazi camps": presenting him as "accustomed to confusionist theses and holder of many names of notorious Holocaust deniers in his address book", he points out that "a denial never succeeds in counterbalancing the information to which it refers. All the more so if it appears on another medium, even more confidential, as is the case here”.
[.]
References
External links
Official website about democracy(French)
le-message.org website offering a synthetic view of the work, videos and documents of Étienne Chouard
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chouard, Etienne
1956 births
Living people
French male bloggers
French male writers
French activists