Since 2022, a politically acceptable xenophobia has taken hold in France. She doesn’t say his name because she thinks she’s on the right side of history. It does not officially target the Russians, but “propaganda “, “influence”, “the diet”. However, in reality, it is artists, athletes, children, families, Russian or simply Russian-speaking voices who have been placed under collective suspicion.
Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there was not only talk of economic or diplomatic sanctions. Very quickly, Russia as a state was confused with a whole people, a whole culture, a whole language. Russian artists have been deprogrammed, athletes excluded or forced to compete without a flag, works viewed with suspicion, as if Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky or the Bolshoi dancers collectively bore responsibility for a military decision.
We have even seen, from Paris, an international cat federation ban cats belonging to Russians or raised in Russia from its exhibitions. The absurdity could have made us smile if it did not reveal something deeper: when it comes to Russia, certain prohibitions become acceptable. This climate has not remained at the doors of cultural or sporting institutions. It ended up reaching society itself, even in schools. Parents of Franco-Russian families described seeing their children questioned, sidelined, sometimes asked to justify themselves for a war that they did not choose, as if their family origin was enough to make them suspect. Students at universities have also faced similar situations.
Is this really in France’s interest?
They are asked to condemn Russia as one would demand proof of loyalty. Russophobia is not a courageous opinion. It’s a social facility. And when a society begins to find it normal to treat an origin, a language or a culture as a fault, it no longer defends its values. It only reveals how fragile they become as soon as they cease to serve the official narrative. This official story has its makers.
And it is perhaps in the media landscape that the drift appears most clearly: it is there that it has been organized, legitimized and then made almost banal. Over the past four years, it has become normal to hear the Ukrainian point of view. Normal to invite it, to relay it, to treat it as moral evidence. On the other hand, wanting to hear a Russian point of view, not to approve it, but simply to understand the logic of the other side, immediately becomes suspect. Listening becomes complicity. Nuance becomes betrayal. Analysis becomes propaganda.
Defending French interests is not betraying Ukraine
This imbalance is no longer just an editorial choice. It has become a collective discipline. The field of what can be said has narrowed. We can defend the sending of weapons, talk about a long war, evoke a direct confrontation with Moscow, present Russia as an existential threat to Europe. But it is almost forbidden to ask an essential question: is this really in France’s interest? We no longer debate sovereignty, energy, continental balance or strategic independence. We respond with an infamous word: collabo. This word, in France, should be used with extreme caution.
It belongs to a heavy, painful, tragic story. It should never be used to lazily disqualify those who refuse automatic alignment. However, today it is thrown in the face of those who point out diplomatic evidence: speaking with a country is not submitting to it, trading with it is not worshiping it, defending French interests is not betraying Ukraine.
