The Concept of Confusionism: A Tool for Thinking About the Links Between the Crisis of the Left and the Success of the Far Right in France And… Elsewhere?, by Philippe Corcuff – 11 May 2025

Presentation at a Left Renewal network webinar on confusionism.

1 – Introduction

I would like to introduce the concept of confusionism, which I formulated for the case of France in a big book of almost 700 pages published in 2021 under the title La grande confusion. Comment l’extrême droite gagne la bataille des idées [The Great Confusion. How the Far Right Is Winning the Battle of Ideas, Textuel Publishing]. The concept is not common in the English-speaking world. It is even sometimes mistakenly translated as “confucianism”, after the Chinese philosopher Confucius. No, Confucius has nothing to do with it, but it does refer to the more ordinary notion of confusion. But not all confusion: it’s a politico-historical concept adapted to a specific context, namely, France from the mid-2000s onwards.

My presentation will be divided into three main sections: 1) a brief overview of my approach; 2) my use of ideas drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, and the main concepts associated with confusionism; 3) the competition between the fight against antisemitism and the fight against Islamophobia in France, and its shifts in the post-October 7 period (one of the many fields of empirical analysis I propose).

2 – A few brief points of reference

I didn’t invent the concept of confusionism, but I transformed it. Confusionism emerged as a political concept in France, with echoes in the French-speaking world, within the anti-fascist milieu in the early 2010s. This is particularly true of the website confusionnisme.info, emerging from the antifascist movement and presented as an “Observatory of Political Confusionism”, which was created in October 2014 and ceased to exist around June 2016. In my book, I have endeavoured to give the concept academic rigour by detaching it from certain tendencies of its militant antifascist origins. In particular, I’ve tried to rid it of the conspiratorial overtones (as expressed in the often favoured themes of “infiltration” and “manipulation” of left groups by the far right) that marked the beginnings of its activist evolution. At the same time, I endeavoured to take as my starting point the core concerns that had helped give birth to the notion among French-speaking antifascists: the observation of the progression of itineraries of “personalities”, but also of discourses that mixed left-wing and far-right components.

In the English-speaking world, it is the notion of “diagonalism”, in the sense of ideological diagonals linking the far right and the left, that has begun to take on similar issues. See the article by William Callison and Quinn Slobodian, “Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol” in Boston Review, January 12, 2021. It may be noted that conspiracism has rhetorical significance for both the concept of confusionism and that of diagonalism.

Let me give you an initial definition of confusionism.

Confusionism refers to the development of interference and hybridisation between the postures and themes of the far right, the classical right, “Macronism”, the moderate “republican” left or the radical left, but it also affects ecologist and anarchist circles.

A word of clarification about “Macronism”: in France, the current President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, comes from the Socialist Party, and in creating his own movement initially claimed a centrist position with the slogan “both right and left”; today he has clearly moved to the right.

Confusionist interference in postures:

For example, the replacement of the structural social critique of inequality and domination, historically carried by the left and critical thought, by the superficial questioning of “political correctness” and conspiracy theories.

Confusionist interference in themes:

The valorisation of the national and the devaluation of the global and the European;
An amalgam which denounces as being part of the same logic the dynamics of individual rights carried by political liberalism and the domination of the market proper to economic neoliberalism; which will make it possible, for example, to call into question the recognition of homosexual marriage in the name of the fight against neoliberalism;
Positive fixation (as with “national identity”) or negative fixation (as with “Muslims”) on supposedly homogeneous and closed identities, etc.

It’s a cross-cutting theme, distinct from the media cliché that “extremes meet”. This transversal aspect is not often seen in its entirety, but is frequently grasped in a partial manner. For example, from the perspective of the radical left, we are able to see Islamophobic prejudices present in the so-called “republican” left, and from the perspective of the so-called “republican” left we are able to see ambiguities regarding conspiracism and antisemitism present in the radical left. This is what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “the law of reciprocal blindnesses and lucidities”. The notion of confusionism presents itself as an instrument of globalisation (in the sense of attaining a more encompassing view), making it possible to break away from this tendency.

The development of confusionism comes at a time when the left/right divide is in sharp decline. Confusionism is therefore not synonymous with confusion; it does not refer to all confusion, but to a more precise politico-ideological dynamic characteristic of a particular era. In this sense, it is a politico-historical concept. But, as a derivative of the word “confusion”, the concept of confusionism carries a critical disquiet, is directly critical, unlike that of “diagonalism”. This critical concern appears attached to the left/right divide, without prejudging the content of this divide. It is therefore a primarily analytical concept, but with a normative component. In this sense, it is a concept of political theory – I shall return shortly to what that means.

One of the book’s main hypotheses is that the development of confusionism from the early 2000s on would have favoured the shift towards the far right of public debates – of public debates, not of French society as a whole, which is more composite and shifting.

Thus, in the context of the receding left/right divide, confusionism would mainly further a shift towards the far right, because:

it contributes to the soft legitimisation of far-right postures and themes;
it further weakens the left, disarming it in the face of ultraconservative dynamics.

From the point of view of academic disciplines, my investigation is part of political theory, as a branch of political science. More specifically, I understand political theory as a space for dialogue between the analysis of reality proposed by political sociology and the ethical and political dimensions worked on by political philosophy. This political theory is critical, in the sense of the early Frankfurt School, because it links the social critique of forms of domination to a horizon of emancipation. As I said, confusionism is a critical concept, primarily analytical, but with a normative component.

3 – Methodology and main concepts

My approach is inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s dual relational and historical methodology:

Bourdieu’s first axis: thinking about relations in spaces made up of oppositions and differentiations, but also of proximities not necessarily perceived (in my book, for example, the spaces of ultraconservatism and confusionism in the process of consolidation, endowed with intersections and interactions); spaces whose very existence is beyond the consciousness of those who nevertheless participate in them.

It was with this in mind that I borrowed the notion of “discursive formation” from Michel Foucault’s 1969 book The Archaeology of Knowledge, as it fits in with such a relational methodology.

Bourdieu’s second axis: to put the palpitations of the present into historical perspective, so as to avoid remaining glued to the immediate, by resituating it in a broader historical context (in the case of La grande confusion: a context ideologically marked by the retreat of the left/right opposition and by the dissociation of social critique and emancipation).

Three main conceptual threads, to which I’ll return later, run through my investigation: ultraconservatism, identitarianism and confusionism. These are “discursive formations”, in Foucault’s sense. I also refer to them as ideological formations.

The notion of “discursive formation” refers to a composite rhetorical and ideological space, filled with contradictions and conflicts, but which, without anyone controlling it, attain partial coherence. What we might call “orchestration without a conductor”, to borrow a phrase from Bourdieu. What’s special about such “discursive formations” is that:

the speakers taking part are unequally aware of what they’re participating in;
the overall dynamic largely eludes them.

A discursive formation is a way of analysing discourse that doesn’t start with the authors. And yet, starting with “authors” is the most obvious way to analyse discourse today, in both the academic and activist worlds. But it’s not necessarily the best way to account for movements in discourse and ideas. What’s more, the same author may participate in a confusionist discursive formation in one situation and an emancipatory discursive formation in another.

This is, for example, the case, as I explain in detail in my book, with radical left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon or radical economist and philosopher Frédéric Lordon. Nor is it a coherent intellectual and/or political positioning. It’s not an ideological “current” or “orientation”. And yet, the division into “orientation” or “current” is also an obvious division, for example in militant circles, for journalists or for the academic history of ideas.

The notion of discursive formation thus opens up a type of division in discourses and ideas that profoundly destabilises our most habitual ways of seeing and dividing up discourses and ideas. A “discursive formation” constitutes a moving composite space of ideas and discourses which, unintentionally, will be the site of partial convergences and shared evidences between diverse speakers with sometimes opposing ideological and political orientations. Within a “discursive formation”, therefore, diverse and opposing ideological orientations cohabit. But, in the end, partially shared evidences tend to stabilise in public spaces, such as the fact of considering “immigration” and “Islam” as “problems” (even if political solutions opposed to these “problems” are proposed); or of seeing “the nation” as the main solution; or of giving more and more space in critical postures to “politically incorrect” or conspiracy theories.

This approach to a “discursive formation” as part of a globally unintentional dynamic, and yet fuelled by a diversity of intentions moving in different directions, constitutes a break with the conspiratorial tendencies of early militant uses of the notion of “confusionism”.

Within this methodological framework, my book is intended as a compass and cartography in a minefield. My aim is not to denounce individuals, but to put at a distance the impersonal dynamics that constrain people, who often have little or only fragmentary awareness of them.

The three autonomous discursive formations – with only intersections and interactions between them – that I’m analysing here are ultraconservatism, identitarianism and confusionism. It is important to see them together, in their dynamic connections.

* Ultraconservatism is an ideological mix of xenophobia (including anti-migrant xenophobia, Islamophobia and/or antisemitism), sexism and homophobia within a nationalist framework that fantasises about a culturally homogeneous “people”, a nation-people.

* Postfascism is the most radicalised pole in the ultraconservative space. I use the term “postfascism” to situate myself in relation to the current debates on the far right in French academic and activist circles, which revolve around the terms “fascism” and “populism”. For those who speak of “fascism” for today’s far right do not take sufficient account of the current transformations of the far right. As for those who speak of “populism”, they erase the elements of continuity between historical fascism and today’s far right, in particular xenophobia and nationalism. In “postfascism”, “fascism” refers to elements of continuity and “post” to changes. The notion of “postfascism” was proposed by the Hungarian left-wing philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás in connection with the first government under Viktor Orbán (July 1998-May 2002).

* Identitarianism means reducing people and groups to a main, homogeneous, closed identity, such as a national identity or a religious identity; a positive identity that is valued or a negative identity that is denounced. We need to distinguish identitarianism from identity; identitarianism is a kind of identity pathology. It refers to a locked-in identity. There are a variety of identitarianisms. Far-right nationalism is identitarianism. The nationalism of Putin’s regime is an identitarianism. Islamo-conservatism, in both its legalist and murderous jihadist poles, is politico-religious identitarianism, and so on and so forth. There are also forms of inverted identitarianism in critical social movements.

* Confusionism thus refers to the development of interference and hybridisation between the postures and themes of the far right, the right, the centre, the moderate left and the radical left.

4 – A field for analysis: the competition between the fight against antisemitism and the fight against Islamophobia, and its shifts in the post-October 7 era

I’m going to focus on one of the many areas covered in La grande confusion, updating the data for the post-October 7 period: the competition between the fight against antisemitism and the fight against Islamophobia in France.

A risk of rivalry between anti-racisms emerged in the nascent divisions of the anti-racist movement in France in the early 2000s, as the anti-racist convergences of the 1980s-1990s in the fight against the Front National began to unravel.

Two key events in this broad consensus were the demonstrations in May 1990 following the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, and those that accompanied the second round of the presidential elections in April-May 2002, which saw a face-off between Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen. After its peak in 2002, the relative consensus between the anti-racist and anti-Front National movements began to recede. One pole continued to make antisemitism one of their main themes, while hesitating to take on the recently problematised issue of Islamophobia. Others were active on the new terrain of Islamophobia, a notion new to the French public landscape, without deserting that of antisemitism. This was reflected in the refusal of some anti-racist associations to take part in a demonstration against all forms of racism (which included Islamophobia) in Paris on November 7, 2004.

Secondly, the polarisation between the fight against antisemitism and the fight against Islamophobia was accentuated by two opposing political sectors: a left-wing pole that increasingly defined itself as “republican”, whereas the qualifier “republican” had previously been used by a large part of the left and the right, and a pole known as “political anti-racism”, then “decolonial”, in reference to a current of critical thought born in Latin America. Thus, the so-called “republican” left opposed the very notion of Islamophobia, while part of the radical left and the “decolonials” gradually tended to withdraw from the fight against antisemitism.

For the decolonial pole, an appeal entitled “Nous sommes les indigènes de la République” (We are the Natives of the Republic) was launched in January 2005, but it did not yet use the term “islamophobia”, which would only come later, nor indeed the term “decolonial”. The Mouvement des Indigènes de la République was created in December 2005. It refused to take part in the demonstrations that followed the torture and antisemitic murder of Ilan Halimi in February 2006. This was a key turning point. The Parti des Indigènes de la République was created in February 2010. In March 2015, PIR spokeswoman Houria Bouteldja launched the theme of “state philosemitism”, which helped to reactivate the old antisemitic stereotype of “the Jewish lobby”, though she did not fully assume this kinship in a logic of ambiguity characteristic of her work. In March 2012, both the Indigènes de la République and the New Anticapitalist Party did not demonstrate after Mohamed Merah murdered seven people in Toulouse and Montauban, including three children in a Jewish school.

Another important chronological landmark: a call to demonstrate on February 19, 2019 “against antisemitic acts” and “against their instrumentalisation” initiated by the French Jewish Union for Peace (heir to a Jewish left-wing “anti-Zionism”) and the Indigènes de la République, heralded a new phase of development in sectors of the radical left and in decolonial anti-racism. They claim to be fighting antisemitism, but are mainly concerned with its “instrumentalisation”, thereby downplaying antisemitism itself. Thus, in the name of the fight against antisemitism, they tend above all to disqualify a significant proportion of criticism of antisemitism, except when antisemitism can be clearly attributed to the traditional far right. This would appear to be one of the axes of the so-called “anti-Zionist” currents on the left and in French-style “decolonialism” after October 7. For example, a collective book entitled Contre l’antisémitisme et ses instrumentalisations (Against antisemitism and its instrumentalisation) was published in October 2024 by La Fabrique Publishing, with co-authors Judith Butler, Houria Bouteldja and Frédéric Lordon. In fact, “contre l’antisémitisme” (against antisemitism) doesn’t feature much in the book, even though it appears first in the title, whereas the main point is to denounce the “instrumentalisation” of antisemitism.

In another indication of the undermining of the question of antisemitism on the radical left, one of the leading intellectual figures in this political galaxy thanks to his blog on the website of the monthly journal Le Monde diplomatique, Frédéric Lordon, in an article published in October 2017 in Le Monde diplomatique and entitled “Le complot des anticomplotistes” (The conspiracy of the anticonspiracists), does two things, in an associated manner. Firstly, he delegitimises criticism of antisemitism, which is said to have mainly become a weapon against “any criticism of capitalism or the media”. And secondly, he denounces “the anticonspiracism crusade” as a tool for “disqualifying” “any radical critique” of “the social order”.

On the so-called “republican” left, polarisation was also on the rise. As early as 2003, Caroline Fourest and Fiammetta Venner put forward a piece of fake news in the magazine ProChoix, which was later debunked by specialists, but has been regularly activated in public debate ever since: that the term “Islamophobia” supposedly appeared for the first time in 1979 as a creation of the “Iranian Mullahs”. Today, this fake news associates the creation of the word “Islamophobia” with “Islamism” in general, and its dissemination with “Islamist lobbying”. For both Islamophobia and antisemitism, “lobby” and “lobbying” appear to be euphemistic and more acceptable forms of conspiracy rhetoric.

In February 2010, in an article published in the journal Le Monde, Caroline Fourest condemned the candidacy of a young veiled woman from Avignon on the New Anticapitalist Party list for the regional elections, associating the wearing of the veil with “Islamist” politics. What we have here is a soft Islamophobia, reinterpreting and essentialising a common Muslim practice as necessarily part of an Islamoconservative political orientation. In March 2016, Laurent Bouvet, a political scientist coming from the Socialist Party, launched the movement Printemps républicain (Republican Spring movement). This movement would become the media embodiment of the so-called “republican” left, conflating common Muslim practices with “Islamism”, with significant echoes within the Socialist Party and in governments under François Hollande.

Then, December 2018 appears as another important moment. This is the time of Emmanuel Macron’s identitarian turn. His campaign for the 2017 presidential election had still revolved around a multicultural vision of French society and distanced itself from identitarian themes. Now, the vocabulary of “communitarianism”, followed by that of “Islamist separatism”, took root in his speeches. In November 2021, under the auspices of Raphaël Enthoven and Caroline Fourest, the weekly journal Franc-Tireur was born, expressing the themes of a so-called “republican” left that had largely gone over to Macron’s side, and was increasingly detached from the political, trade union and associative left.

In this journey from the 2000s to the time before October 7, 2023, we have seen confusion on the left, facilitating a societal shift towards the far right. How can this development be characterised as confusionist?

On several associated levels:

we see intersections with the identitarianisation of public debates driven by the ultraconservative galaxy: antisemitic identitarianism, with Dieudonné and Alain Soral, and Islamophobic identitarianism, with Éric Zemmour or in Renaud Camus’ “theory of the great replacement”;
this has contributed to the crystallisation of competing identities, fuelling them through victim-based competition and socio-affective logics;
this has contributed to the normalisation of conspiracy theories;
this has hampered possible left-wing responses to the shift towards the far right, based on anti-racist convergence and, beyond that, on a renewed vision of social emancipation.

It should be noted that during this process, which largely eludes its protagonists, on the side of the downplaying, or even denial, of antisemitism, the support of so-called “anti-Zionist” Jews was mobilised, and that on the side of the downplaying, or even denial, of Islamophobia, the support of so-called «secular» (and often atheist) Muslims was mobilised.

In the post-October 7 era, those active on the ground of the fight against Islamophobia, deserting the fight against antisemitism, have increasingly defined themselves as “anti-Zionist”, quickly forgetting the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, or being indifferent to them, or even, in some cases, approving of them. Those denying Islamophobia have increasingly been seen as “republican” and “anti-Islamist”, often proclaim themselves “universalist”, tend to turn a blind eye to the massacres perpetrated by the Israeli army in Gaza, or even justify them.

A decolonial TV show on the Internet, Paroles d’Honneur (Words of Honour), was created in February 2017. Paroles d’Honneur remained relatively insignificant in its early days, but saw an important increase in its audience, particularly among militant and sympathising circles of the radical left and student youth, after 7 October. It will play an important role in the echo given to the association between the referents «decolonial» and «anti-Zionist».

In the feminist and queer movement, some sectors, under the effect of the power quickly acquired by the referent «anti-Zionist», will express a certain indifference to the massacres of October 7. An important part of feminist and queer associations did not mobilise after the “anti-Zionist” and antisemitic rape of a 12-year-old girl in the Paris region on June 15, 2024.

On the side of a so-called «republican» moderate left, the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven and Caroline Fourest tend to erase the responsibility of the Israeli government in the bombing of Gaza and relativise the Palestinian deaths, in a hemiplegic humanism, via the theme of “collateral damage”. On the far right, on the right and in the so-called “republican” sectors of the left, there will be more or less: a certain silence about the massacres in Gaza, sometimes a justification, in the name of the fight against Islamism and Hamas, and a demonisation, even criminalisation, of solidarity with Palestine. While forms of antisemitism are indeed present in sectors of the Pro-Palestinian movement (and often denied by the radical left), this is about, as in Trumpism in the US, stigmatising almost all solidarity with Gaza as «antisemitic».

The effects of this polarisation concern more the pole of the radical left, which becomes more sensitive to the demonisation of the category «Zionist» and to the related valorisation of the category «anti-Zionist». Before 7 October, it is the so-called «republican» left with an Islamophobic tendency that has the most effect in public debates on the left. And, before October 7, on the Internet and social networks, the name «anti-Zionist» had been mainly utilised on the far right, with an antisemitic orientation, notably by Dieudonné and Alain Soral from the early 2000s. Jewish left-wing anti-Zionism had become marginal, carried by aging generations. In a reversal, after October 7, the «anti-Zionist» label becomes more attractive and associated with a younger generation of leftists. However, this renewed “left-wing anti-Zionism”, affecting new generations, retains ambiguous affiliations with the old “anti-Zionism” of Dieudonné and Alain Soral: in particular in the demonisation of the “Zionist” referent, used very vaguely and in ways often unconsciously reproducing antisemitic stereotypes of hidden Jewish power, embodied in this case by the small state of Israel, transformed into the global heart of Western Evil.

5 – Conclusion

The concept of confusionism, in combination with the concepts of ultraconservatism and identitarianism, seeks to account for aspects of ideological and political reality that were previously misunderstood. On the activist left, there was often a vague feeling of ideological fog and blurring of landmarks, but rarely were concepts developed to grasp this new situation. And, on the academic side, the logic of ultra-specialisation of knowledge made it less and less possible to have global views of the situation.

It has been my task to make facts scattered in our successive and partial experiences of the world intelligible, in two ways:

putting the present in historical perspective;
locating elements that are usually separated within a larger space (“globalisation”).

This is an attempt to counter the tendency towards “reciprocal blindness and lucidities” that Pierre Bourdieu spoke of. For example, those who perceive the denigration of the fight against Islamophobia and solidarity with Gaza are not the same people as those who perceive indifference to antisemitism and the demonisation of «Zionism».

This reasoned and globalising approach has been confronted, in its reception in France, with the Manichean polarisations of public debates, reinforced through continuous news channels and social networks. And faced with the mixture of affectivity and identity that fuels Manichean polarisations, the exercise of critical reason appears to have many weaknesses.

Philippe Corcuff is professor of political science at Sciences Po Lyon. He is active on the anti-authoritarian left and in RAAR (Réseau d’Actions contre l’Antisémitisme et tous les Racismes – Action Network Against Antisemitism and All Racisms).

Anti-Muslim Racism, Antisemitism, Confusionism, France, Philippe Corcuff, Reactions to 7 October 2023, Syncretic Politics, The Far Right, The Far Right in Europe, The Left in Europe