At the initiative of our Members of the European Parliament, Philippe Olivier and Patricia Chagnon, the theme addressed, analyzed, and debated at the conference held on April 21, 2023, was woke ideology.

Inclusive writing, gender theory, the destruction of works of art, and hatred incited in the name of imagined oppressions woke ideology is infiltrating the entire cultural sphere, gradually embedding itself in our legal, cultural, and societal frameworks.

Although largely unknown or poorly defined by most of our fellow citizens, this insidious phenomenon is progressively encroaching on increasingly visible aspects of our daily lives.

As a Member of Parliament, but also as a mother and a woman, I am deeply concerned about this growing phenomenon, whose primary vectors of dissemination appear to be organizations responsible for shaping the youth.

Organizing this event in Paris is particularly meaningful, as it was in this very capital that the French Revolution was born a political and institutional upheaval that was merely the logical outcome of a cultural battle waged beforehand by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that, in that instance as well, played out on a European scale.

Cultural wars always precede political upheavals. However, the contemporary cultural struggle led by woke ideology runs counter to the Enlightenment movement. In France, one of the major intellectual tools of the Revolution was the Encyclopédie, a compilation of definitions and classifications that helped reinforce the scientific spirit and pave the way for progress.

Here, however, the objective of deconstruction is clear, yet it operates in a realm of vagueness, ambiguity, and indefiniteness. The spontaneous and innate categories of belonging whether to a sex or an ethnicity are vanishing, replaced by an individual self-definition that recognizes only its own judgments and often its own identity-driven anxieties.

Both the science of language and the hard sciences are being dismantled, leaving room for a self-centered individual-king, withdrawn rather than oriented toward others. The era of undifferentiation often goes hand in hand with malaise and anxiety tragically, it is our young people who suffer its consequences first.

This era of undifferentiation also marks the death of politics, for under the diktat of hyper-individualism, the social bond deteriorates. That fragile bond of solidarity which is only strong when individuals transcend their singularity in favor of exchange, sharing, and co-construction is progressively weakened.

In response to this deliberate vagueness, and to equip ourselves intellectually, I pose this fundamental question to our speakers, both French and foreign:

How should we define woke ideology? And above all, should we even use this term, which is being imposed on us by those who promote it?