Mélanie Faure 9:50 a.m., May 22, 2022
Jean-François Copé expressed his concern after the appointment of Pap Ndiaye to National Education, after the announcement of the first government of Elisabeth Borne this Friday.
The former minister and current mayor of Meaux deplored an "ambiguity" in the face of the principles of secularism and universality, believing at the microphone of Europe 1 that the position taken by the historian borders on Islamo-leftism.
The arrival of Pap Ndiaye at National Education divides.
Since his appointment to the government, the historian of ethnic minorities and immigration has indeed been the subject of virulent attacks from the far right.
The reason ?
His ideas and his journey.
Pap Ndiaye is a man very marked on the left, who had called to vote for François Hollande in 2012. "I am obviously worried about this ambiguity which surrounds the new Minister of National Education", pleaded Jean-François Copé.
He added: "If there is one area in which the Minister of National Education in France must be completely unambiguous, it is everything related to secularism and universality. very values that are the DNA of the French educational mode."
The former minister underlined the dangers of "communitarianism".
“What opposes the term Enlightenment? It is the term obscurantism. And what is manifested today in obscurantism? communitarianism."
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A "certain complacency" of far-left ideas
Jean-François Copé recalled his fight against extremes in France.
"As soon as one is ambiguous on subjects which are in fact driving forces in the discourse of the far left... Islamo-leftism, the fact of showing interest in movements of which one knows that they are driven by objectives of destabilization, say, the woke movement. Behind that, what is there? There is the reality of a discourse that is carried by the far left. However, I claim that we must fight with the same force the ideas of the extreme right as the ideas of the extreme left and that there is a tendency in France to consider that on the ideas of the extreme left, we can afford a certain complacency.
The mayor of Meaux explains himself at the microphone of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach: "The new Minister of National Education is someone who, moreover, is perhaps quite respectable, but there have been ambiguous speeches on these subjects. To challenge, for example, the Islamo-leftist movements in the university."
>> READ ALSO - Critics against Pap Ndiaye are "insanities", denounces Jacques Toubon
The far right is stepping up
Since the appointment of Pap Ndiaye to the government, critics have fused.
Eric Zemmour called him an "indigenous intellectual, wokist, obsessed with race".
For the leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, he "defends indigenism, racialism at the head of National Education, is a terrifying choice".
Pap Ndiaye can however count on the support of the government of Elisabeth Borne.
"He is someone who believes in the values of the Republic," said the new Prime Minister in her interview at 8 p.m. on TF1 on Friday evening.