The Impossible Debate — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (3/4)

Raphaël Liogier is a French political scientist and sociologist of religion — at the time of this interview, director of the Observatoire du religieux and professor at the Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence. In this third part of the 2013 CICNS interview — under a minute in the source video — he explains why the “sects” debate is impossible on television: anti-sect positioning is a cost-free political resource, and the thirty-second format forbids any nuance.

CICNS video interview, part 3 of 4. (English translation of the interview transcript, machine-transcribed from the CICNS YouTube channel, where the video was published on 1 July 2013, and cleaned before translation.)

[Liogier]: Since it can so easily be a political resource — that is, it is entirely beneficial, from the political point of view, to say that one is fighting the sects —, why make it complicated when it can be simple? That is: why complicate your life explaining — when in any case you would not have the time to explain it on television in thirty seconds — that it is more complicated than that, that there may certainly be people who are manipulated? But, on our side, at that point, as soon as you begin to put in coordinating conjunctions, two or three elements, you are cut off at once — and you will no doubt be cut off perhaps even at the wrong moment, just when you will merely look suspect and will not have had the time to explain yourself on the substance.