La Societe Ouverte Et Ses Nouveaux Ennemis

All Western democracies are now confronted with the communitarianist challenges posed by a partially non-integrated immigration and by traditionalist Islam (radical, yet sometimes also “moderate”). The problem which arises is therefore not so much one of a political organisation as it is – in a more global sense – of “open societies” running the risk of an unprecedented destabilisation due to their very openness.In echoing the work The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper (1902–1994) and supporting the views of Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) described in his La Nouvelle censure [The New Censorship], Alain Laurent shows that this critical situation has come about primarily because of a moral, and occasionally legal, abuse of authority and because of policies which failed to enforce the Rule of Common Law or accurately measure the cultural issues at stake. On a deeper level, the growing influence of a predominantly pseudo-anti-racist and “without borders” ideology, and the profession of a multicultural relativism, have perverted the values of tolerance and openness and become the key “new enemies” of the open society.By highlighting the emergence of a traditionalist anti-totalitarian and anti-xenophobic intellectual resistance and of the “conventional thinking” which currently threatens not only freedom of expression but also the emancipation struggle being waged by “free Muslims,” this work reveals the masochistic basis for the crisis which is causing the open society to defeat its own aims, while also exploring the reasoning behind an open approach to “otherness.” Who are the new enemies ? They can sometimes be found among liberal ranks and often among multiculturalists who, by abusing the values of tolerance, are undermining the Rule of Law safeguarding gender equality and freedom of speech.