When the monopoly on narrative disappears

 

Brivael Le Pogam

@brivael

Translated from French

For decades, many believed that the left had won because its ideas were inherently superior. In reality, it mainly won because it controlled the main arenas of narrative production. The school. A large part of the media. Part of the academic world. Part of the senior administration. A large part of the cultural apparatus. By repeating the same interpretive frameworks for forty or fifty years, they eventually came to appear as self-evident truths rather than as political choices. We were told that more state was necessarily more moral. That more redistribution was necessarily more just. That control was a form of protection. That bureaucracy was synonymous with progress. And, gradually, any questioning of this model became suspect. Then social media arrived. For the first time in a long while, the monopoly on narrative began to crack. Anyone can now publish an idea, challenge a statistic, share an experience, or dismantle propaganda without going through traditional filters. This doesn’t mean that everything circulating is true. It simply means that the power to define what can be said no longer belongs to a handful of institutions. That’s precisely why some see this evolution as a threat. When the monopoly on narrative disappears, debate reemerges. We then observe an interesting phenomenon: many ideologies that seemed inseparable from modernity are increasingly contested. Globalism, wokism, certain forms of identity-based activism or neofeminism are no longer perceived as self-evident by a growing portion of the population, but as political projects among others, which it is legitimate to criticize. The result is visible in several democracies. In South America, in North America, movements more favorable to market economics, to sovereignty, or to reducing the role of the state have gained influence. What seemed impossible a few years ago has become an electoral reality. Europe is probably not immune to this dynamic. Ideas often take years to cross borders, but they generally end up doing so. For a long time, we were presented with one camp as naturally that of the good, of morality, and of progress, while any opposition was caricatured as retrograde or dangerous. Today, more and more citizens are challenging this representation. They no longer see only the promises; they also look at the results: an ever-heavier bureaucracy, stagnant growth, massive public debt, a loss of confidence in institutions, and permanent polarization of public debate. The paradox is that many people sincerely convinced of defending the weakest sometimes end up, unwittingly, defending structures that thrive on this permanent fragmentation of society. The more citizens are divided into opposing groups, the more those who administer, regulate, and arbitrate concentrate power. Yet a prosperous society is not built on permanent competition between population categories. It is built on the creation of value, individual responsibility, freedom to enterprise, trust, and cooperation. History is never written in advance. But it seems to me that we are witnessing a change of cycle. And this time, the monopoly on narrative is disappearing.