Interview with Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette: Full Transcript

In this interview, he gives us his informed perspective on the anti-cult campaign and the role of the media.

Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette: “I have been a journalist since 1975, a graduate of the École Supérieure de Journalisme in Lille. I then worked in the local press, at a major regional daily, before coming to Paris to work in the trade press — at first for a magazine for local-government professionals, and then, at the time of its creation, I joined the magazine Décision-Environnement. After that I was a freelancer for ten years. All the while I also worked as a journalism trainer. Then I wrote a few books — practical guides and more philosophical works of reflection — and for the past two years I have been editor-in-chief of the online magazine Ouvertures, which is accompanied by a quarterly newsletter we send to our subscribers free of charge, and which is the portal of the honest man of the twenty-first century.

The fight against sectarian abuses seems to me indispensable. To my mind, it is legitimate for the government and for certain institutions to see to it that charlatans — on the question of natural or alternative therapies — do not run rampant and do not abuse the credulity of the public. Likewise, it is important that within the groups that may form, whatever they may be, there be no practices by which the most vulnerable people are prevented from flourishing freely and are steered toward being exploited. The idea seems excellent to me, and that France should have a policy in this area — I approve. I think that is very good. The problem is the way it is applied, because in fact, despite what is said, it is not at all a fight against sectarian abuses, but a fight against sects.

I would not say, like Emmanuelle Mignon — the famous phrase uttered by Mr Sarkozy’s adviser — that the problem of sects is a ‘non-problem’. I would say that the problem of sects is a very badly posed problem, and that it would be much simpler to solve if we were willing to look at things coolly and to be far more objective about the situation.

This whole story of sects is a construction that no longer has any reason to exist. These are clichés that prevent thought. So we must now reason with the understanding that, if we continue with this system, anyone can be labelled a sect — and that we all carry this schema in our heads. Even if you are not in a sect — and even if you are in one — you will think that the other person is in a sect and that the other is dangerous; and yes, it is true that there are risks, but never in my own house — it is always at the other’s. And from that, as the policy is currently conducted, it is impossible to escape.

The MIVILUDES is unconstitutional in its approach — I say so very clearly. The Constitution says that we cannot condemn someone without having heard them, without having offered them a fair trial, and without having first granted them the presumption of innocence. That is why France is singled out by many countries abroad; and what she does not understand — she says she is always at the forefront of an extraordinarily positive mission of fighting sects, and that she is the only country in the world to have understood everything — but in fact, what she is reproached for is not fighting sects: it is the way she goes about it; it is that she does not respect the constitutional rules, the sacred rules of our democracy. True experts — that is, people capable of weighing the parties against one another, of studying matters impartially and professionally — hardly exist in France.

Here I address my colleagues, the press: start by taking your information from a range of sources; do not settle for what the ADFI or the MIVILUDES tells you when sects are at issue, nor the Council of the Order of Physicians. It would already be enough for there to be neutral and objective reporting based on the available evidence — we would see journalists investigate, for example, the ADFI: find out who the ADFI’s members are, what its budget is, the exact number of victims. Give me precise statistics, so we know who the victims of sects are. Are the methods for determining who is a sect and who is not scientific? If we seek to understand — and, moreover, not to demonise those who do not deserve it — because as for the list of sects, all the political leaders who followed it closely — apart from a small clique of deputies who are genuinely fanatical against sects — apart from those, most acknowledge that the guide is full of movements that do not deserve to be in it.

When we think ‘sect’ — a terrorist or quasi-terrorist movement that lives only to exploit people — it is not true. There are plenty of people who could speak differently, who could say that things in France have reached a completely aberrant point in this anti-sect policy. But no — ease and laziness, the two principal failings that Kant highlighted in his famous essay, [passage incomplete in the archived source extraction]

So, who is right? The person who searches honestly does not find a calm environment in which he can make his choice in full knowledge of the facts, in which there could be a sort of marketplace of spiritualities where everyone stands equal and defends his vision with his own means. Here we are in France: there are the good and the bad; it is very Manichaean. There are the good — the great recognised religions — and then there are the bad: all the little newcomers.

In Le Figaro of 11 September 2009, « [passage incomplete in the archived source extraction] »

But I find that France, if she is not capable of talking with those of her children who live in somewhat different contexts, who have strange thoughts — if she is not capable of listening to them and wants only to exclude them, to demonise them — then not only will she fail to meet the challenge of the cohabitation of different ways of thinking but, what is more, she loses part of her soul: the soul of democracy, the soul of enlightenment, the soul of human rights, which says that every person has the right to be heard and to defend his case under fair conditions.”