A few weeks ago, Cyril Hédoin responded insightfully and constructively (here) to an essay I recently published @Liberal Currents. Subsequently, he did a follow up piece in which he assimilated my stance on what I call the ‘platonic skepticism’ (more on that below) of liberalism into a larger framework about different kinds of skepticism exhibited by liberals.
In the piece that triggered Hédoin’s response, I argued that so-called public reason liberalism (made influential by Rawls) and French Laïcité, or radical secularism, share three features: (i) they transcend the right/left opposition, (ii) they demand considerable public censorship, and (iii) they are both grounded in a Platonic skepticism about the ability of truth to dominate mere opinion in a democratic context.* My own alternative (liberal) position, accepts a version of (iii), but rejects (i-ii) as inimical to healthy liberal political life. So far so good.
Hédoin does not object to my characterization of French radical secularism. In fact, he reinforces my claim about (ii) in a striking fashion when he notes,
there is the big elephant in the room here, which in France is close to being an absolute taboo (in part because we don’t have the data to easily address this issue): what are the effects in terms of social exclusion and education of France’s radical secularism? French politicians from the right and part of the left have stuck to the same principles for decades. The public space should be immune from religious manifestations. But what are the consequences of the strict application of these principles for teenagers (especially girls) who, at least for some of them, end up in private religious schools where it is absolutely not clear that they are taught the values of the République. In Weberian terms, politicians who remain committed to the principles of laïcité display an “ethics of conviction.” But the “ethics of responsibility” would demand to confront the likely negative consequences (for individuals and for society in general) of, as a matter of fact, forbidding young people from benefiting from public schooling. This may justify loosening one’s commitment to principles.
French intellectuals often assume that anglophone critics have little understanding of French Laïcité, or radical secularism. They suspect, not without justification, that anglophone critics project their own concerns onto a political scene of which American and British media provide a very limited and distorted picture. Fair enough. That’s how imperialism works.
But in mainland Europe (and perhaps Quebec), Laïcité or radical secularism, has significant pull on right leaning politicians and intellectuals. So in Europe we cannot allow ourselves to be wholly ignorant of it. Such right leaning politicians and intelligentsia see it is as a political strategy to politicize and defeat what they call “political Islam.” Because French (radical) republicanism, rooted in Enlightenment radicalism, has enduring appeal on left-leaning thought in Europe it also means that arguments about radical secularism — often packaged in terms of democratic citizenship — help shape the Overton window in these matters without much friction. In particular, left and right intellectuals view political Islam as a threat to freedom(s), including the freedom of speech. The brutal attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Salman Rushdie fit this narrative.
Yet, the practice of Laïcité, or radical secularism, is itself incompatible with freedom of speech in fundamental ways. As I noted in my original post, all kinds of religious expressions, including what clothes one might wish to wear in public, are policed by government. Radical secularism is also not imposed and enforced in fully impartial fashion. In addition, as Hédoin himself implies, but doesn’t state explicitly, for decades now the French government understands the constitution as preventing the gathering of ethnic/race and religious data. This impacts all kinds of European data and the study of comparative political science/behavior. (That’s how I learned about it. My empirical colleagues have to find clever ways around such legal restrictions.)
As Hédoin notes the refusal to collect such data makes informed debate about the effects of policy very difficult. It leaves the grounds of repeated expressions of social anger in the form of street protests and militancy as a complete mystery, and vacates public debate about such protests to victim blamers and those with authoritarian instincts.
Be that as it may, it is also very peculiar that friends of radical secularism, who often present themselves as partisans of nearly absolute free speech, fail to see that they defend no such thing. In order to immunize Laïcité one must infringe on speech and research in structural fashion. That’s not a hypothetical or conceptual claim; it describes empirical reality. Repeat after me: Laïcité is incompatible with freedom of speech. It’s also bizarre that self-proclaimed proponents of the Enlightenment, who often proclaim their willingness to examine all controversial ideas, end up defending systematic restrictions on possible knowledge. (Again, scientific data gathering is very curtailed.)
To be sure, I have argued (in another essay at Liberalcurrents) that states should not be in the business of fixing population categories of its citizenry (including sex, ethnicity, race, etc.) in exclusive and exclusionary fashion. So I have some sympathy with the impulse behind the French legal taboo on certain data. But that’s not an effect of my endorsement of a kind of skeptical Platonism, but because I think the state has no business in fixing social categories; the state should not be in the business of fixing social truths that can leave no room for compromise and individual fluidity or inconsistency. I view that as incompatible with two very fundamental commitments of liberalism: (a) to leave citizens as free as possible to pursue their own meaningful individual and collective choices; (b) to prevent, where possible, the state itself from generating zero-sum political situations. However, I also noted that this should be made compatible with using inclusive data to tackle particular policy challenges.
Now, while developing his response, Hédoin adds that [iv] “If you think that, in a democratic context, opinions will systematically overcome truth (or reasonableness), then you’ll be prone to consider that there are strict limits to toleration and that non-regulated diversity is not synonymous with mutual benefits.” This is an astute psychological remark in two ways.
First, [iv] helps explain why, in practice, radical secularism (left and right) is so intolerant in the name of protecting freedom. Second, [iv] points to the error of treating society and political life in terms of mutual benefits or a harmony of interests. That’s an impossible dream. I have explained why I think of it as an error here (also @LiberalCurrents). The better liberal position is to treat (irreconcilable) conflicting interests as a means to be made serviceable to a public interest. This requires domesticating and redirecting political conflict, in part, through fracturing representation (by, say, introducing bicameralism, federalism, and temporally and geographically non-overlapping constituencies).
At this point one might fear I am not really addressing the underlying insight that drives [iv]. I quote Hédoin one final time:
The…objection is less serious, at first sight at least, but it is nonetheless based on a fear that is part of the collective imagination, as witnessed by the fact that it has served as the background for a novel by the French author Michel Houellbecq [sic]. Is there not a risk that if we let unreasonable beliefs and practices develop in our society, they become so widespread they grant political power to “unreasonable” (religious) individuals in the capacity to alter the constitutional design? This may be pure fantasy and in itself an unreasonable view. But this is precisely the kind of unreasonable view that should be tolerated in a liberal society that is not too much elitist and sectarian. Then, the question is: how do you deal with people who hold it?
In the accompanying footnote Hédoin makes clear he has Houellebecq’s Soumission in mind. In my view this book is systematically misunderstood as a warning against the take-over of political Islam. I view it, rather, as a satire of French academics, and more importantly — and this chimes in with Houellebecq’s wider oeuvre —, also a diagnosis of a kind of spiritual malaise of modern life. In fact, it is not unnatural to read the novel as itself rejecting French radical secularism which facilitates this malaise.
My reading of the novel is not idiosyncratic. As I have noted, it is also proposed by the Dutch far right politician and intellectual, Thierry Baudet, who thinks the novel even invites us “to preserve traditional European culture or indeed to reestablish it: a world in which the family is once again at the center, in which nations are restored, maybe even a form of Christianity is reinstated.” (This overlooks some of the novel’s satirical targets.) Baudet’s stance converges with the more sophisticated (and humane) diagnosis of the failures of French Laïcité in Pierre Manent’s (2016) Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge that I have discussed (here.)
I mention Baudet because I view Hédoin’s question as more than mere rhetorical or philosophical in character. The “unreasonable view” he posits is an intrinsic part of active political movement building not just in my native Netherlands, but across Europe.
Obviously, a detailed response would be quite lengthy, but a few things are worth stating at once: first, as practiced, with its taboos on certain kind of data collection, Laïcité makes it harder to combat such unreasonable views with appeal to fine-grained empirical knowledge of social reality. So, I view this as another reason to reject it.
Second, because of French cultural and political centralization, it is especially vulnerable to well organized movements that manage to attract protest voters against the status quo with true believers in a kulturkampf to restore the nation and western civilization to glory, and the fellow-travelers who think they can profit from it. And since European federalism is weak, it cannot be counted on to be a powerful countervailing bulwark. So, France requires constitutional and political reform such that when unreasonable views are ascendant they can be contained and made less threatening, or forced into compromises. This is especially needed because the invasive policing of clothes and bodies in name of protecting the republic has also allowed deeply illiberal practices become part and parcel of French political life.
Third, I view it as inevitable that at least some “unreasonable views” will be felt to be vital in any given political society. (That’s an implication of my Platonic skepticism.) But the liberal should not shy away from engaging with them, first, in the spirit of curiosity about what these views reveal about possible experiments in living and the passionately held commitments of our fellow citizens. This confrontation with such views is, thus, also a mechanism to keep liberalism itself from growing stale; I view it as a disaster that academic moral egalitarians are mostly talking to each other, and many right liberals are still refuting Statism. Finally, it is an invitation to continue to articulate a renewed liberal faith (for those who have that taste) as well as think soberly about the strategic allies we will need to survive a confrontation with the political movements bent on a war with political Islam in the service of establishing a closed society.
- An earlier version of this post appeared at Digressionsnimpressions (here).
*There is some controversy over to what degree my general presentation of these issues is entirely fair to right public reason thinkers like Gauss and Vallier. Hédoin (and Vallier) have rightly objected to some of my claims. I fully grant that I did not do justice the nuances of Vallier’s position (especially), but I think the spirit of my underlying argument actually can be vindicated when the details of Vallier’s position are examined. About that some other time.
{ 39 comments }
Sashas 09.29.23 at 6:03 pm
@Eric
“Free Speech” is never an absolute. Even the most ardent Free Speech Absolutists would agree that some restrictions on, say, Black Canary would not violate the principle. Most would, I think, extend that exception into real world instances where speech and action overlap. (An order by a military commander, for example, would carry a similar weight and bear similar restrictions to the act that was ordered.) Many people, albeit certainly not all, would argue that following someone around and shouting over them every time they opened their mouth should not be protected under Free Speech. US law at least tries to dodge that question by noting that I’m already in the wrong if I follow someone around everywhere they go, but if we face the Free Speech issue head-on I think we must concede that there is a valid interpretation of Free Speech under which the shouter is the one violating the free speech rights of the shoutee, and that under this interpretation it would be entirely compatible with the principle of Free Speech for a government to step in and force the shouter to shut up for a minute.
I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I’ve always understood France’s position of radical secularism to be directly rooted in the belief that religion in public spaces is inevitably the “shouter” in my hypothetical. In other words, a proponent of radical secularism might agree with your point (ii) but argue that this version of censorship is the minimum or practically close to the minimum amount of censorship possible in the real world. They might include a slippery slope argument and a comparison to, say, Saudi Arabia, but even then I don’t think you have offered a compelling case for radical secularism being incompatible with a desire for a principle of Free Speech. You would still need to show that they are unjustified in believing that abandoning radical secularism would lead to decreased access to Free Speech.
I also think your (iv) (Hedoin’s iv?) is wildly off base, but I’m not sure I can offer a constructive critique just yet. I think the kernel of my objection is that most places where I see censorship as present and relevant are places where “truth” is not applicable. (Example: Germany’s ban on speech promoting a certain genocidal political position. “I want to…” does not admit truth or falsehood.)
Eric Schliesser 09.29.23 at 6:12 pm
Sashas you conveniently (and surprisingly) jump over the really critical part of my argument, which Hedoin nicely calls “the elephant in the room.” The state is also preventing scientific research that might help us evaluate the effects of policy in the name of secularism.
John Q 09.29.23 at 8:20 pm
“skepticism about the ability of truth to dominate mere opinion in a democratic context”
Even for people who are confident about this in general, religious belief stands out as an exception. Logic suggests that the number of true religions is either 0 or 1, but lots of different religious beliefs persist indefinitely.
The starting point for liberalism was a set of societies in which the vast majority of people were Christians, with fierce, often deadly, disagreements among themselves.
So, there needs to be some way of fencing off religion as a special category. Laicite is one solution, and seemed to work well enough in the context of a gradual shift from a Christian majority to a combination of unbelief and indifference.
But things get much more difficult when religion-based political ideologies like Islamism and US-style Christianism come into the picture.
I don’t have a good answer.
Sashas 09.29.23 at 11:33 pm
@Eric (2)
Fair point! I did skip over the research ban. I find it somewhat difficult to justify the research ban, myself. The best argument for it that I’m aware of is an argument that the government cannot be trusted to collect information on religion. i.e. “If we let the government collect it, the government will use it to discriminate. Therefore better the government not be able to collect it.” This is reasonably compelling to me as far as it goes, but does not explain why non-government public entities should not be able to collect religion information either.
In my defense, you did only mention the word “research” once in the whole post. I did not think it was a significant part of your argument. ;-)
Based on the quotes in your post, I think Hedoin is not focused on the research ban. I have some difficulty interpreting the long quote beginning with “there is the big elephant in the room”. While he asks about the effects of the policy initially, he immediately pivots to the impact of the policy on the education of young girls. He’s claiming that the radical secularist policy in practice denies access to public education to Muslim girls, and that proponents of radical secularism need to grapple with that fact.
I think Hedoin has a good point here, but in my opinion it has nothing to do with the principle of Free Speech at all. For myself, I value the peaceful mixing of diverse communities within universal public education over the principle of free speech, so it’s very easy for me to say that I don’t support France’s hijab ban (the example Hedoin is alluding to) over precisely the concern he raises… but here I’m just saying that the hijab ban has a not-related-to-free-speech downside I’m not prepared to tolerate.
MisterMr 09.30.23 at 8:37 am
”, for decades now the French government understands the constitution as preventing”
This isn’t actually true, in a comment on a thread some time ago I posted three links to researchs on ethnicity made in France and used by the french public sector. I think this claim is strongly exaggerated and I would like some examples of researches that were actually stopped or prevented by the french government.
Also, about freedom of speech, suppose that I’m a catholic primary school teacher, and I say to the kids that the non baptized ones will all go to hell (still part of catholic dogma AFAIK, even though most catholics nowadays don’t believe it).
Is this ok? Or is this a form of traumatising non catholic children and limiting other people’s freedom of religion?
Obviously it wouldn’t be ok, but it is hard to point exactly where is the limit between my freedom of religion/expression and other people’s freedom.
So what happens is that there are “liberal” approaches to religion, and liberal christians, liberal muslims etc., and they are OK and the state shouldn’t limit them.
But there are also illiberal approaches to christianity, islam etc. and the state has no choice other than block them, also because they would go at war one against the other in five minutes.
The problem is that it is very difficult to say where is the limit while remaining neutral (what about creationism? Infibulation?), however it seems to me that the OP takes an excessively optimist view and assumes that all the cases of religious expression are liberal ones.
Also I didn’t read the book but if a book came out in Italy titled “sottomissione” about liberal professors who facilitate immigration of manlier african dudes, I wouldn’t take it as a parody. Are you one of that guys who think Macchiavelli’s Prince was a parody? Because it wasn’t.
MisterMr 09.30.23 at 8:53 am
Addition to my previous comment: I’ve a friend that is quite right leaning, he also is quite conspiracy minded, and coincidentally lived some years in France, even though he’s italian.
Some months ago I was walking with him and other friends and we crossed a woman who weared one of that face covering garments (chador?).
He was quite upset and asked another of the group, a policeman, if it wasn’t forbidden to wear that stuff in public in Italy; the policeman told him that it was legal, he was incredulous.
But this has nothing to do with “laicitè”, it is just my friend, and many other like him, who are quite illiberal, and uses the concepts of laicitè as an excuse to behave illiberally against others. Laicitè is in fact exactly the opposite and its purpose is to prevent this kind of things.
So be careful of not throwing the kid with the bathwater.
Eric Schliesser 09.30.23 at 9:25 am
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI000037090124/2019-03-18
DoruC 09.30.23 at 4:42 pm
Both the ban on some kind of garments and the prohibition against gathering racial/religious data might be better understood as ad hoc ways of keeping the Muslim population out of public view, rather than deriving from a coherent political view of secularism.
J, not that one 09.30.23 at 7:11 pm
I’ve been reading a bunch of things lately that touch on this kind of issue, most notably a posthumous collection of Rorty’s more political and popular essays, but going back a while to a symposium that included Habermas and Taylor. I feel like this is an issue that often masquerades as an urgent political question but is actually a philosophical one.
Philosophically, the assumption is that everyone is supposed to believe the amount of religious considerations in the public sphere is zero, and the question is whether it should be more than zero. But politically the argument is a consistent claim that the level, whatever it is, is too low, or even that there are pressures to make it lower than it is. I get frustrated with the lack of specificity. But also, for political purposes I’d think it’s important to ask, at a minimum, are the facts the same now as they were 50 or more years ago when this discussion began?
Austin Loomis 10.01.23 at 2:27 am
I quite agree; the torture scene in Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters was gratuitous in parts for all. And I can no longer understand why, as a teenager in the mid-to-late 80s, I liked that jumpsuit they inflicted on her, unless that sub-clause answers itself. (If you’re talking about some other Black Canary besides the American costumed adventurer, I’m afraid my Google fu isn’t strong enough to find her.)
Sashas 10.01.23 at 1:46 pm
@Austin Loomis
I am indeed referring to the costumed adventurer Black Canary. My point is that for someone like her with sound-based powers, it’s not controversial to regulate speech as action.
nastywoman 10.01.23 at 7:20 pm
Ten years ago an American called Glenn Greenwald headlined in the British Guardian:
France’s censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than ‘hate speech’
because France’s women’s rights minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem wanted Twitter to reform[ing] the whole system by which Twitter operates”, including that the company “put in place alerts and security measures” to prevent hateful tweets -(then often against Muslims and Gays) and then the (gay) American compared this ‘idea’ of a French woman to protect Gays and Muslims ‘exactly to the one invoked by Arab tyrants to punish and imprison regime opponents.
And on top of it the Fans of the American called Najat Vallaud-Belkacem a ‘Tyrant’
And then a commenter who went by the name ‘pardonemoi’ wrote:
This post and most of the comments show very little understanding of the French law. It is first of all a law to protect minorities from the dangerous hate of dangerous people and to present this law as a tyrannical measure by the government to opress people is wrong.
And Glenn Greewald wrote:
“French law is tyrannical on this topic, as is this minister’s attempt to coerce Twitter to cooperate with its criminalization of speech. That’s the point.”
And pardonemoi wrote:
Non!
It is very problematic that Americans have this misguided and very agressive opinion.
And Glenn Greenwald wrote:
‘Totally. You should ask your minister to have people with such opinions banned from Twitter, and maybe even prosecuted at the Hague.
After all, such an “aggressive opinion” may make people in France feel bad – and may even incite hatred against some French citizens – and this should be a crime to do.
I do hope Minister Vallaud-Belkacem decides that I should be allowed to say this. Maybe you can put in a good word with her for me? I’ll be over here, politely waiting and hoping that the French ministry marks the PERMITTED stamp on my political views’.
And pardonemoi wrote:
‘Your political views are American political views and you don’t need a stamp from the French ministery as Europeans don’t need a stamp from any Americans for their political views’.
And I wonder if such a… ‘settlement’ (if it could be called like that?) isn’t much more to the heart of the issue and thusly ‘practical’ -(if it could be called like that) and much less confused than any religous-philosophical treatments about the beautiful simple French wisdom of ‘Autre pays, autres mœurs’ – as another commenter mentioned the German law against another type of hate Speech – as the Germans definitely didn’t do that out of ‘religious – philosophical reasoning’ -(or ‘nur im weitesten Sinne’)
NO!
They (and now more or less the EU altogether now) does that to protect it’s weakest people from the worst Right Wing Racists Science Denying Propaganda.
As (most) Europeans haven’t forgotten yet – that it is as easy to talk the people into electing a ‘Ttrump’ for President as an Adolf for Führer.
hix 10.01.23 at 10:38 pm
A little bit of laicité would be nice in Germany – applied to the big christian churches and their institutinal priviledges. I grew up with a school prayer every morning, a cross in every room and 2 hours of catholic religious education every week, all at a public school. Nevermind the privileged financing of catholic private schools.
Now i got to deal with mental health support almost exclusivly run by big church organizations with government money. No crosses, but all employes got to be formal christians and spread the gospel, or more realistic they got to pretend.
We still manage to ban burkinis in public bath or headscarfs of muslim teachers. Or realistically, headscarfs of muslim anywhere if you want to keep a job, no matter if it is client facing or not, theoretical antidscrimination laws be damned. No Laicité needed to be mean to the other in an as incoherent as possible way.
TM 10.02.23 at 8:42 am
“Both the ban on some kind of garments and the prohibition against gathering racial/religious data might be better understood as ad hoc ways of keeping the Muslim population out of public view, rather than deriving from a coherent political view of secularism.”
An alternative explanation would be that the ban on certain kinds of garments that empirically are associated with a religious and/or ethnic minority (the differenciation isn’t clear-cut) derives from ethnic/religious intoerance, aka racism.
As an aside, the interpretation of the headscarf as associated with the Muslim religion is quite arbitrary. In the rural, very conservative (and Catholic) village where I grew up, back in the 1970s, the women of my mother’s generation were all wearing headscarves. This was a very common cultural, not religious custom (comon in France as well).
The French state’s animosity towards Muslim immigrants has gone to absurd lengths to interfere with private clothing habits that prima facie have no religious or political content (but once you ban something, it becomes loaded with political content). In my opinion, a liberal state can reasonably ban two kinds of clothing choices: going naked in public, and covering one’s face in public. Both bans can be justified on universalist grounds. But what the French state is doing now undermines universalism by de facto making the fashion choices of the majority mandatory.
TM 10.02.23 at 8:53 am
Further to MisterMr’s comment at 5, I would really appreciate the author to provide a reference for the claim that about the gathering of ethnic/race and religious data being illegal in France, or to retract the claim.
MisterMr 10.02.23 at 10:24 am
@Eric Schliesser 7
I google-translated the article you linked and it doesn’t justify the claim that french laws forbids sociological research.
In particular, in I it states that there is a proibition to register data to uniquely identify one person (e.g. Jaques Pomefrites is a muslim), not generical statistical data (30% of people in this city are muslims), and then, in II, there are various exemptions to I, and in particular:
II,1: says that if the subject gives express content you can actually store this data;
II,7: exempts “Statistical processing carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies or one of the ministerial statistical services”.
so on the whole I don’t see how this article prevents statistical research, unless you want to keep non-anonimized data on people without their consent, which is not in the EU anyways thanks to the GDPR (and is also a bit of an asshole move).
Here is the google-translation:
I. – It is prohibited to process personal data which reveal the alleged racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership of a natural person or to process genetic data , biometric data for the purposes of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning the sex life or sexual orientation of a natural person.
II. – To the extent that the purpose of the processing requires it for certain categories of data, the following are not subject to the prohibition provided for in I:
1° Processing for which the data subject has given express consent, except in the case where the law provides that the prohibition referred to in I cannot be lifted by the consent of the data subject;
2° Processing necessary to protect human life, but to which the person concerned cannot give consent due to legal incapacity or material impossibility;
3° Processing implemented by an association or any other non-profit organization of a religious, philosophical, political or trade union nature:
for only the data mentioned in I corresponding to the purpose of said association or said organization;
provided that they only concern the members of this association or this organization and, where applicable, the people who maintain regular contact with it in the context of its activity;
and that they only relate to data not communicated to third parties, unless the persons concerned expressly consent thereto;
4° Processing of personal data made public by the data subject;
5° Processing operations necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of a legal right;
6° Treatments necessary for the purposes of preventive medicine, medical diagnoses, the administration of care or treatment, or the management of health services and implemented by a member of a health profession, or by another person to whom, because of their functions, the obligation of professional secrecy provided for by article 226-13 of the penal code is imposed;
7° Statistical processing carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies or one of the ministerial statistical services in compliance with Law No. 51-711 of June 7, 1951 on obligation, coordination and secrecy in matters of statistics, after advice from the National Council for Statistical Information;
8° Processing involving data concerning health justified by the public interest and in accordance with the provisions of Chapter IX of this law;
9° Processing in accordance with the standard regulations mentioned in b of 2° of I of Article 11 implemented by employers or administrations which relate to biometric data strictly necessary for the control of access to workplaces as well as ‘devices and applications used as part of the missions entrusted to employees, agents, interns or service providers;
10° Processing operations relating to the reuse of public information appearing in judgments and decisions mentioned, respectively, in Article L. 10 of the Administrative Justice Code and Article L. 111-13 of the Judicial Organization Code , provided that these processing operations have neither the purpose nor the effect of allowing the reidentification of the persons concerned;
11° Processing operations necessary for public research within the meaning of Article L. 112-1 of the Research Code, implemented under the conditions provided for in 2 of Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of Parliament European Commission and the Council of April 27, 2016 cited above, after a reasoned and published opinion from the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties delivered in accordance with the procedures provided for in Article 28 of this law.
III. – The scope of the prohibition provided for in I does not include personal data mentioned in the same I which are required to be subject, promptly, to a previously recognized anonymization process in accordance with the provisions of this law by the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties.
IV. – Likewise, processing, whether automated or not, justified by the public interest and authorized under the conditions provided for in II of Article 26, is not subject to the prohibition provided for in I.
MisterMr 10.02.23 at 10:39 am
I think that in the EU, in general, the “left” is still more atached to a vision of “color blindness”, “gender blindness” etc., while in the USA the left is more about a policy of “affirmative action” or “reverse discrimination” (by which I mean the idea that people from disadvantaged backgrounds should be treated better than others, to make up for the initial disadvantage).
This difference in views is what is at stake in the argument about “laicité”.
But it seems to me that various american intellectuals somehow got an exaggerated impression of the proibitions in place in Europe/France, so they see legal proibitions where there is, IMHO, just a different approach (that they disagree with) but not an actual prohibition.
Moz in Oz 10.03.23 at 2:34 am
they see legal proibitions where there is, IMHO, just a different approach
“separate but equal” isn’t a different approach, it’s just racism. Or religious intolerance, either explanation works. In many ways it’s easier to look at written laws rather than social pressure, because the latter being unwritten makes it easier to dismiss anecdotes.
A quick search suggests that this compulsory secularity doesn’t extend to taxing religious groups as profit-making enterprises, suggesting that “being religious” is seen as a charitable purpose. Which in a secular society it shouldn’t be… so hopefully I’m wrong about the tax-exempt status of French churches (that status exists but is slightly controversial in Australia).
What’s at stake is the same issue that Australia faces with our official state religion. Its existance is a restriction on the freedom of citizens to disrespect it. The state subsidy of it offends many. France appears to have more severe restrictions flowing from their choice than Australia does, but “other places are worse” is a terrible excuse. “it works for most of us” and the No True
ScotsmanFrenchman argument are variations that are also unworkable. Thus the question: what justifies these restrictions?J-D 10.03.23 at 5:29 am
I’m not clear on the sense in which it’s correct to say that Australia has an official state religion. Section 116 of the Constitution says:
John Q 10.03.23 at 7:02 am
Not quite sure, but I think that religious groups in Australia, considered strictly in that capacity have the same formal tax treatment as other non-profit associations. Churches are not Deductible Gift Recipients so donations are not tax deductible
https://adelaideanglicans.com/support-portal/tax-deductible-donations/
However, churches have lots of associated entities (schools, charitable agencies etc) for which donations are tax-deductible. Some observe a separation between charitable work and religious proselytising, others not so much.
TM 10.03.23 at 7:53 am
Eric @7: As MisterMr points out, you are misinterpreting the law. It’s a data protection law that specifies special protections for certain classes of personal data. It specifically includes health and genetic data, besides ethnic, religious and political affiliation. That obviously doesn’t mean that there is no health research in France! The law has an exception for research (II 11: “Les traitements nécessaires à la recherche publique au sens de …”) and most importantly doesn’t apply to anonymzed data at all (III).
The law is in line with EU data protection law, which defines the exact same categories of personal data as “sensitive”, thus subject to special protections:
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/legal-grounds-processing-data/sensitive-data/what-personal-data-considered-sensitive_en
Eric Schliesser 10.03.23 at 9:32 am
Sorry, but the law hinders research in France, and researchers tend to have to work with proxies and clever statistical analysis. It also hinders the government itself. What I do grant is that when a government wants it can use the clause you cite to make such research much easier. I would love to see data on how often that happens.
The EU directive is not entirely identical to the French law because it creates a framework in which it can/may be collected. (I should say that in my view in the age of enormous computer power what counts as anonymous data is itself fragile.)
TM 10.03.23 at 9:40 am
It’s a data protection law. Similar laws exist throughout the EU and they don’t hinder research. This kind of research is always based on anonymized data.
Do you have evidence for the claim that French researchers are hindered by data protection laws?
TM 10.03.23 at 10:08 am
P. S. A big issue for social researchers is the availability of census data. The US is great for researchers because very detailed census data including “race” self-attribution is available. France doesn’t collect such data and this indeed makes certain research designs more difficult compared to the US. But this again isn’t a French specialty. My understanding is that most European countries do not collect ethnic data as part of their census (the UK is an exception).
You are based in the Netherlands. Do you believe that research involving ethnic data is easier there than in France?
Eric Schliesser 10.03.23 at 10:10 am
Data protection laws are different in kind from what the French law does.
For a useful overview (that also explains how researchers manage to work around the law): See Simon, Patrick. “The choice of ignorance: The debate on ethnic and racial statistics in France.” Social Statistics and Ethnic Diversity: Cross-National Perspectives in Classifications and Identity Politics (2015): 65-87.
Moz in Oz 10.03.23 at 10:25 am
We open most of our parliaments with a prayer to the god chosen by our king:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2223/Chronologies/PrayersinParliament It’s not an official relgion in the “state mandates that you must believe” sense, just in the “Christian religious holidays are public holidays, other religious holidays are not” sense. Very much the de jure end of “technically de facto”.
Spreading approved religions is a charitable purpose as far as the tax office is concerned. There are quirks and politics there, though, with religious groups who criticise conservative governments subject to the same threats and defunding as other rabble. More generally chosen religions are subsidised via schools and hospitals which are exempt from many of the regulations that require other government-funded services to treat citizens more or less equally.
But the legal exemptions are broader than that, most egriously the stolen generations and other organised child abuse where the religious component is seen as a mitigating factor rather than an exacerbating one. Pell’s state funeral being a recent example of a controversial celebration of criminal activity.
Note that the constitution does not provide for personal freedom of religion, let alone the freedom to be nonreligious, nor does it prevent the government from making laws that favour rather than mandate a particular religion. You definitely can’t challenge a law based on it favouring or implementing a religious belief (we have Easter trading restrictions, for example).
https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-and-anti-discrimination/human-rights-scrutiny/public-sector-guidance-sheets/right-freedom-thought-conscience-and-religion-or-belief
J-D 10.03.23 at 11:07 am
If what you mean by ‘Australia has an official state religion’ is ‘Christmas and Easter are public holidays, while the holy days of other religions are not’, then I accept that’s true. That’s less than what it means in other countries which have official state religions, though, which is what confused me.
I’m not sure what you mean by that, though. I am aware that non-government schools are eligible for government subsidies, and that most of them are run by Christian organisations, although some of them are run by organisations of other religions, and some have no religious affiliation. Again, that’s less than what ‘state religion’ means in other countries which have official state religions.
MisterMr 10.03.23 at 2:53 pm
So perhaps the problem is this: the article cited @25 is from 2015, but it cites “article 8”.
Said article 8 (linked @7) was amended in 2018, wich included these additions/modifications:
“1° The I is worded as follows:
“I.-It is prohibited to process personal data which reveal the alleged racial origin or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership of a natural person or to process data genetic data, biometric data for the purposes of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning the sex life or sexual orientation of a natural person. » ;”
“III.-The scope of the prohibition provided for in I does not include personal data mentioned in the same I which are required to be subject, promptly, to an anonymization process previously recognized as compliant to the provisions of this law by the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties. » ;
(these modification are readable from a link in the article itself).
so perhaps the article had a stronger case against the article as it was before 2018.
And with this I think I reached the extent of my french-law-fu.
The choice of ignorance:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20095-8_4
The amendments from 2018:
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000037085952/#JORFARTI000037085983
Eric Schliesser 10.03.23 at 3:56 pm
The 2018 changes, while non-trivial, did not resolve the problem, and remains occasional subject of public debate.
nastywoman 10.03.23 at 4:45 pm
and about the decision
NOT to release data on the Internet ‘describing the situation of minorities in France -(or other European countries) which could be compared with those produced in the United States’ has a lot to do with the confusion of Americans what
‘FREE SPEECH’
or
‘FREEDOM’
really means
as it might mean for a German to drive as fast as he wants on a FREEWAY
OR
for a Brit to walk on a Sunday morning –
wearing just a bowler –
and otherwise naked
through Kensington –
while the poor American just has the FREEDOM to wear a Burka
BUT NOT
a Trump Mask if he wants to rob a Bank.
or as the French like to say:
Ne crachez pas de chewing-gum sur le trottoir à Singapour!
Moz in Oz 10.03.23 at 8:21 pm
J-D: you skipped over the part where the King of Australia has a personal church and it’s those holidays etc that are state-imposed. Even countries that I’m pretty sure you would say have official state religions (Saudi Arabia and Israel perhaps?) don’t mandate that everyone present believe (vocal minorities want it, thiough), and even the sort-of-state of the Vatican doesn’t go that far. IIRC there’s a monastry in Greece (Mt Athos) that does and they’re controversial because only men are allowed there. The monastry is not a state, though.
So we’re back to: what exactly is an official state religion? I say being forced to observe religious holidays and sit through religious ceremonies at work is enough, you don’t.
John Q 10.04.23 at 1:14 am
Moz @31 “the King of Australia has a personal church”
This is incorrect. The King of England is the head of the Church of England, but the King of Australia is not the head of the autocephalous Anglican* Church in Australia, any more than he is the head of the Episcopalian Church in the US. The fact that the two Kings are the same person is one of those mysteries, like the nature of the Trinity, that’s best left to theologians.
As for holidays, the most consistently religious element of Christmas and Easter is the ritual lament, required of all Christian leaders, that Australians are far more interested in presents and chocolate eggs than in going to church.
I agree with you about forced religious ceremonies, required of politicians. But that’s already on the way out.
https://theconversation.com/many-local-councils-still-officially-pray-to-god-heres-why-this-may-be-unlawful-and-should-be-abandoned-203192
Then there’s religious instruction and chaplains in public schools. That was once explicitly Christian, but is now theoretically open to all faiths, and again is on the way out.
Moz in Oz 10.04.23 at 2:22 am
JohnQ: I accept your expertise on Anglican matters.
But the complaint that I’m forced to change my behaviour because of a religious celebration is serious. The “most religious” aspect is that shops are forced to shut, businesses are forced to close, because of a religious event. The burbling about whose symbols matter at those times is irrelevant to me (I’m more perturbed by celebrating winter solstice in summer).
The specific religions allowed to instruct children in schools bothers me less than the idea that it happens at all. But the idea of the state being the arbiter of which religions are “real enough” to count is problematic here as well as everywhere else.
My real complaint is about the “technically secular” claim when there’s a whole lot of law enforcing Christian beliefs. Less so over time is great, but sooner is better. And claims that we’re already secular enough are worrying.
J-D 10.04.23 at 3:09 am
You think that’s weird?
The King of the United Kingdom (which is, by law, a single kingdom), like his predecessors, at the time of his coronation took oaths to preserve the settlement by law of the Church of England (a member church of the Anglican Communion) and the settlement by law of the Church of Scotland (which, unlike the Scottish Episcopal Church, is not a member church of the Anglican Communion); thus (like his predecessors) he is committed to the position that episcopal (and not presbyterian) government of the church is right (in England) and that presbyterian (and not episcopal) government of the church is right (in Scotland).
Now, you might think the difference between episcopalianism and presbyterianism is of little or no importance; but those oaths were written by people who believed it mattered a great deal, and yet expected their monarch to swear to both of them.
Wikipedia conveniently provides a list of countries with state religions, with details in each case about why it’s considered to be a state religion. I don’t regard Wikipedia as the last word on the subject, but I do regard it as a convenient starting point. Australia doesn’t have an official state religion in the sense described in the Wikipedia article; that’s roughly what I meant by writing that having Easter and Christmas as public holidays (while the religious holidays of other religions are not public holidays) is less than what ‘state religion’ means in other countries which have official state religions. Again, if that’s what you mean by ‘official state religion’, I understand you now, but I think it should be understandable that I found it confusing before (and I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one).
JPL 10.04.23 at 5:29 am
@JQ (32) and J-D (34):
To add to the mysteries, it was Frege who first noticed this puzzle, although I don’t think he mentioned the following examples: 1. The King of Australia is as tall as the King of England. 2. The King of Australia is as religiously significant as the King of England.
The thought expressed by sentence 1. seems to be necessarily true; but the thought expressed by sentence 2., maybe not.
J-D 10.05.23 at 5:12 am
There’s nothing mysterious about one person functioning in multiple roles. Elizabeth II functioned in multiple roles: she lost one of them (Queen of Barbados) while keeping the others. Anthony Albanese currently functions both in the role of Prime Minister of Australia and in the role of Leader of the Australian Labor Party; he, too, might possibly lose one of those while keeping the other.
The mysterious (or, rather, gibberish) aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is explicitly denied that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are one person functioning in three different roles; to the contrary, it is affirmed that they are three persons even though they are one god.
J-D 10.05.23 at 5:14 am
The height is a property of the person; there’s only one person. The religious significance (if any) is a property of the role; the person functions in more than one role.
TM 10.05.23 at 8:34 am
Eric 25: As far as I can see, the “Choice of ignorance” is concerned with official statistics, i. e. census data gathered by the state. It states:
“Rejected as scientific and legal concepts, ‘race’ and ethnicity were never codified in France as categories in official statistics, save for just two exceptions related to special legal definitions: colonial statistics (which referred to the indigenous status of colonial subjects), and the ‘racial’ registration of Jewish people by the Vichy regime, inspired by the classification used by the Nazis.”
This confirms what I stated earlier: French census data do not nowadays include racial categories as is the case in the US. (But they did in earlier times, and these earlier uses – curiously referred to as “just two exceptions” – already explain why they were abolished).
Again, this is not a French specialty, it’s the status quo in most European countries. As evidence here is a German survey “Die Abfrage von “Ethnizität” in der international
vergleichenden Survey-Forschung”:
https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/5917/ssoar-2009-hoffmeyer-zlotnik_et_al-die_abfrage_von_ethnizitat_in.pdf
Table 1 on page 35 shows which countries use ethnic census categories. Apart from the UK and Ireland, only Eastern European countries use ethnic categories (e. g. Bulgaria diferentiates between Bulgarian, Turkish, Gypsies and Others).
The other point is that the absence of official statistics does not preclude research into the effects of racism per se. The decision of the Conseil d’etat from 2007 mentioned in the article concerns “the use of official files referring to, directly or indirectly, the origins of people”, not all kind of research.
I gather that the debate about racism in France is perhaps more politically salient than in some other European countries. On the one hand, the legacy of colonial racism is extremely obvious and present in France (you might have something to add about the Netherlands), on the other hand there has been a very active antiracist movement for decades. Perhaps this explains why the French debate about ethnic statistics is so intense.
A final point. Patrick Simon, the author of the paper, summarizes the controvery well and makes many good and interesting points. But it seems to me that he underestimates the inherent difficulty of the use of racial/ethnic categories. There are many good arguments on the other side of the debate which he seems to brush aside too easily. At one point he says about non-ethnic categories:
“Rather than collecting data on origin by asking a direct question, such data is deduced from indirect information: last and/or first name; country of birth and nationality of the individual, a person’s parents or even grandparents; native language or language spoken at home.” etc.
But what exactly does it mean to “directly” collect “data on origin”? When he’s referring to people who have been French citizens for generations, what is the meaning of origin?
J-D 10.06.23 at 11:50 pm
Of the countries surveyed (twenty-nine European countries and the USA).
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