Macon gave a speech on July 14th Bastille Day in France in which he directly touched on the issue of the protest and sort of passed the point where I'm disappointed by Macon.

But, you know, I think this moment in particular was striking to me and I think think to a lot of other people, because the way that he referred to the protest, to me, reflected such a disconnect from what the movements, what the protests were about and what the message was.

You know, Macron warned against during this speech.

He referenced, you know, statues. The Republic is not going to

take down statues like in the U.S. He also warned against, I'm trying to get the line here. I was looking

at this. Macon said that fighting for equality, you can sort of can become misguided when it descends

into quote-unquote communitarianism, which is this idea of this word.

You hear a lot in France, communitarism, this is idea that when you start supporting objectives,

goals that reflect your community interests, it's a bad thing because you're essentially

putting your own specific community interests above those of not just the nation,

but really everyone as a whole.

You see this constant tension in French politics.

And it's also a way really of decredibilizing, of really attacking movements,

not listening to what they have to say, this idea that, you know, these people are just basically,

and he said it more delicately than that.

He said, you know, this is a risk that it could descend into communitarianism, but this idea you hear a lot,

you know, in mainstream French political discourse, this idea that the movement,

and we tell us in particular with the Adama movement, this idea that they were just basically

supporting, you know, racialized interests. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is the way that this is the way the debate is in France. And I think, you know, it's obviously a ridiculous argument because even on other,

other people have made this point more eloquently than what I'm going to say. But, you know,

when you're fighting against anti-racism, that seems pretty universal to me when you're talking

about the fact that you don't think people should be beaten up by the cops in their neighborhood when they're coming home when they're coming home from school. That sounds pretty universal to me. That seems like an issue we should, I think, agree on that, you know, is unacceptable.

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