Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (2/2): Why "Cults" Became France's Scapegoat

Raphaël Liogier is a French political scientist and sociologist of religion. At the time of this talk he directed the Observatoire du religieux and taught at the Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence. In this second half of his talk at the CICNS colloquium « Sectes : fléau social ou bouc émissaire ? » (“Cults: social scourge or scapegoat?”), he sets out his three-level explanation of how “cults” were constructed as a total social scourge in France: the structural heritage of a liberty defined from above, its consequences in education and medicine, and the political payoff of a scapegoat that costs nothing to fight.

CICNS colloquium talk, part 2 of 2. (English translation of the talk as published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 19 April 2011; the French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation. Spans the machine could not render reliably are marked [inaudible ?].)

[Liogier]: The real question, for a sociologist, is to ask oneself: what is going on? Why is there this sort of construction of a total social scourge? I did not say there are no dangerous movements — I said: of a social scourge. Social scourge — that is, a truly general movement. Now, to my mind, there are three types of reasons. There are structural and historical reasons, which Jean Baubérot has touched on. There are recent consequences of those structural and historical reasons, which appear as recent reasons but are in reality attached to that structure. And then there are reasons of conjunctural, politicking politics, very specific ones, which can be identified rather well.

So — the structural and historical reasons. We have evoked this Catholic heritage — a heritage also of absolute monarchy, of the definition… I shall not go back over all that — even in the cultural domain. Fumaroli’s work has shown clearly how, in France, one adored democracy, but one defined the principles of democracy — that is, of liberty itself — from above. And if you did not correspond to the idea that had been formed, from above, of what liberty and democracy are, then some liberty was taken away from you, because it was, after all, not normal. And that goes back — to be, finally, very schematic — to that theoretical opposition between someone like Rousseau and someone like Locke, to do a little philosophy, which is very clear. If we take it: both have this idea of the social contract. Except that, in the idea of the social contract in Locke, if you are a minority that does not agree with the general social contract, you are told: listen, old chap, it so happens that you are nevertheless fewer in number, so you will have to bend — possibly we shall perhaps find a way of negotiating, but you will have to bend, since we are, after all, in the majority. You can either try to negotiate with us, in a relation of conviviality, and then, if you do not manage it, never mind: you have only to go elsewhere; you can then found another social contract — in the United States, for example. You see, you can always… There is a very pragmatic relation, as we would say today. In the social contract à la Rousseau, it is a little different. That is to say, the social contract is the theoretical result of general sovereignty. That is to say: everyone, in abstracto — it is the general interest; it is in everyone’s interest to live in this social contract. And those who find that their interest is different, who are differentialists, have, at bottom, simply not seen that it was their interest. That is it: that is to say, they have not seen it. And since they have not seen it, we are going to explain it to them, and so we are going to educate them, and when they see that it is their interest, they will finally understand that it is much more agreeable to live thus. That is to say, it does not proceed from a bad sentiment: it is that the majority becomes, by a sort of process of ideological transfer, the whole of society. And from the moment you say “I do not agree”: it is not your fault; it is that you have not understood something; there is something in your vision that is not clear — so we are going to clarify it.

And that tradition, you find it again — I pass now quickly to the consequences — you find it again in the problem of the veil. The problem of the veil: one goes and questions a certain number of young women; one tells them directly — without asking them why do you wear the veil —: we know why you wear it, even if we do not say so. We know very well why you wear it — but we are going to liberate you, and in spite of yourself; at bottom, it is a veil you also have over your eyes; we are going to liberate you in spite of yourself, without listening to your reasons — we shall nevertheless pretend to listen to them a little, because otherwise it would not be completely… And that, one finds it more or less everywhere; one finds it in two domains, as Jean Baubérot said: education and health. On education, it is quite clear. Why? Because, indeed, the reversal of 1789 is a reversal in which the horizon of legitimacy changes: it is science, knowledge, that must supply the markers, that must be the justification of action in every domain — political action, of course, but in all the other domains. Now, it so happens, indeed — education is what? Education is knowledge — hence science —, that is, the generational transfer of knowledge. And so a State that wants to be the holder of knowledge wants it to be the right knowledge that is now transferred. So — naturally: education becomes the privileged domain.

Then health — why? Medicine — why? Medicine — there are quite a few hypotheses. Recently I read — I no longer remember the reference of the article… I had read the works of Michel Foucault, obviously, on biopower, and on the idea that, to a certain extent, the village doctor replaced — not replaced completely, but a little — the village priest. That is to say, the management of souls became a management of bodies; and when there was a crumbling — a certain crumbling of a certain type of transcendent belief —, there was a passage, a power given to the one who is supposed to maintain our life, who guarantees our lifespan for as long as possible, when one loses hope of… That is perhaps it — a vision which is, to my mind, a little schematic, but which has its interest all the same: this development of biopower. And I read recently, as I was telling you, a hypothesis that seems to me rather interesting. It is that, on the one hand, medicine is the most palpable, the most proximal vision, if you will, of science, among the citizens. Because theoretical physics, even applied physics, is after all a bit remote — the atom, etc. Whereas there, it is, you know, the famous “they” of the common run of mortals: “they’ve done it”, “they can do that now”, “they can”, etc. It is in medicine — it’s incredible. It’s like: well, they can now, and… And on the other hand — second reason —, it is that the political revolution of 1789, it must be acknowledged, to a large extent failed socially, translating itself into the Terror. As a result — according to that article I read recently, which is a rather convincing analysis —, as a result there was a reorientation of hopes, away from the political — which was not able to supply, to answer, all the social hopes — towards a science which, for its part, was more promising than what, if you will, the social could not supply: that is, medicine. Happiness no longer through politics — since that translated into the Terror, in France — but happiness through medicine. It is merely a hypothesis I submit to you [inaudible ?], but in any case it is certain that minority movements, when they have a medical project — that is, when they have ideas about alternative medicine — or an educational project, are in general almost systematically in the crosshairs. There, it is Soka Gakkai within Buddhism. But what is stronger — and this is to show the force of inertia of these two essential domains — is that when you have ideas and want to apply them in these two domains, in these two particular domains, even if you are not a religious movement, you will be suspected of being religious. Because, precisely, you want to make schools. That is what is, after all, even funnier in the French system. I am thinking of a movement like the Longo Maï movement, which is a neo-anarchist, agrarian, communitarian movement, etc., whatever you like — but which is very far from being a religious movement, almost even fiercely atheist; which is very far from being a religious movement, which is not at all in that perspective — but which nevertheless found itself qualified, in a number [inaudible ?], as a cult — that is, assimilated to a cultish religious movement. Why? Because they had schools. Because they had schools. So, when you have a school, when you are an association, it is so assimilated to the idea not only of the dangerous religious movement but of the religious movement plain and simple, that as a result you are even suspected not only of being dangerous but of necessarily being religious. That is, after all, rather interesting. It is interesting in terms of boundaries.

The last reason — to my mind more conjunctural: it is also a political problem. It must be seen that if, in the 1980s, people began to speak of the cults, when there was this problem with Islam, it is the international context, right? — as far as Islam and all that is concerned. There are conditions that are multiple, complex, as always when one tries to do a sociological analysis. But it is, after all, the crisis, with the exit from the Trente Glorieuses, where there is the search for scapegoats. One must try to settle problems that have the great advantage of being able to be settled easily — without being settled —, all the while maintaining a sort of anguish, problems which turn us away from the deeper problems, the ones that are completely insoluble: unemployment and the rest. You go on television and you say: I have statistical information; I know that unemployment has receded by 0.00000000001%, 0.000000000000001%, between the 1st of February and the 3rd of February, and therefore my policy is working. If you say that on television — well, there are two possible reactions: either people laugh, or people weep, depending on their implication in that relation. Because, broadly, everyone knows it is an extremely grave problem, that it is not solved — even if the figures have been fiddled a little; it goes up, it goes down, etc. Everyone also knows — from having, in their own family, people who are in that distress, who have difficulty finding a job, problems, who are excluded, who are whatever you like — so it convinces nobody. And it is therefore, if you will, politically perilous. So it is a little awkward to discuss. Whereas the cults — that is a royal problem, from that point of view. Because you can arrive and say: the cults are a major problem for the French Republic. At once, everyone agrees, because there is such a generalized anguish on this subject. Nobody tries to check that in their own family, statistically… — me, I do it every time: in a class of forty students, I find almost never anyone. Once or twice a year, I find one or two people. You arrive with your law, saying: I am going to solve the problem of the cults. Now, the great advantage of this law is that it gets voted. It belongs to what the Conseil d’État, in a recent report, called the declamatory function of the law — an aberration, there, for a real one: the declamatory function. That is to say, the law of the mountain [inaudible ?]: things about which everyone knows very well that they will not be applied — but the deputies are thinking of you; they cannot be paid for nothing. So this declamatory aberration took place in the domain of the so-called cults, because it touches practically nobody, statistically. Everyone finds it horrible; people see cults everywhere [inaudible ?] — indeed, there are Mormons, people who are with, etc., somewhat odd people walking about in the street — indeed, one sees them; some waiting for flying saucers, others doing this; there are the Scientologists — they are odd; there is the star system getting involved; there is the public, the general public, which maintains a relation at once of fascination but also — this is less often said — of suspicion: who are they, what do they do, how, etc. You arrive four or five years later and you say: all the same, things are better. Everyone agrees — since, in reality, there was practically zero: there has been no evolution, since it is only an evolution of the imaginary. So it suffices to make the imaginary evolve in order to say: good, we have achieved something important. It is a political victory, and it has a great advantage: it is, so to speak, transpolitical, that victory. That commands unanimity. It is a rather easy unanimism, since it is already constructed — one does not have to go to the trouble of constructing the unanimism; in terms of programme, everyone more or less agrees. After all — do you want your child to fall into a… a cult, and be carried far away by a…? No, of course not. Right then…

This French system of laïcité is magnificent: it has allowed a certain number of social advances; it has allowed marvellous things. But its practical functioning has ended up, how to say, synthesizing itself in what I call, in the book you referred to, a laïcité « légitime » — with “légitime” in quotation marks —: a theoretical denegation of practical behaviour. And I do say a denegation, because it is psychoanalytic; it is not merely a negation, moreover: one really has the feeling of not doing what one is doing, of going to help the people one is helping [as machine-heard]. And this denegation has a great advantage: it allows more action upon the religious than in other countries where, in theory, one is less laïc. Let me take the example of the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, in theory, from the French point of view, one is less laïc; but in reality things are clearer, if only from the associative point of view. Whereas in France, if you want to have an association — for it to be a cultual (worship) association —, you then have to give a definition of what the practice of worship is. And one may well — I remember a Conseiller d’État who said to me: “Yes, but the practice of worship is not the definition of the religious. It is different; we really thought it through; we sweated over it, believe me.” The practice of worship: is it worship, is it not, etc. There is the status of congregation — equivalent to, how to say, an association almost of general interest, with advantages of that type, etc. In the United Kingdom, to my knowledge, there is none of that. There are normal associations, and then there are associations of another type, which correspond roughly to the general interest. And even if there are religions among them, those religions are considered able to take part in that — by reason of the religion… by reason of the general interest. Because it has been demonstrated — whether one is mistaken or not mistaken. There was no need to demonstrate that one is a religion. Whereas in France, in laïcité — because we are in laïcité —, one must demonstrate that one is a religion in order to be able to benefit from this… Which is, after all… It must be said: it is, after all, rather funny. It is a complete inversion. There, we are no longer even in a practical denegation. There is a reversal that one cannot avoid studying. I know we are forbidden to study it — because it is so obvious that the obviousness has ended up blinding us. Those who forbid us to study say: “It’s horrible — you are in the process of saying…”

And then there is a second thing. It is that one cannot avoid, when one is a sociologist, I believe, studying the new religious movements. Because the new religious movements — those that are usually called, in France, globally… — they are, after all, characteristic. Perhaps caricaturally — but precisely: caricaturally means that one sees the features appear — the features of what today are, constitute, the evolution of beliefs. The evolution of beliefs, which touches — less strongly, but which touches — even the so-called normal religious movements, and which touches even completely secularized activities. And me, I cannot help — even if we are told we have no right to do it, that there is a sort of suspicion — studying these new religious movements. Because it gives us a vision of what society is becoming, in terms of the evolution of values and beliefs. Now, that is not today’s subject, but it has helped me enormously, studying the new religious movements, for working afterwards even on completely distant subjects. Let me give you an example: studying the evolution of the ideology that justifies the enterprise today — and the notion of sustainable development, of ethical behaviour, etc., of personal development — of the executive who at the same time must allow his company to democratize itself, to evolve — to evolve individually and to evolve globally: what I have called individuo-globalism. Individuo-globalism is something I began to find in the new religious movements, but which is developing in the whole of society in a more diffuse — hence less visible — way. There it is; that is all I believe I can tell you on the question. Thank you.