Presence, commitment and denial of fear

Current political engagement, based on the denial of fear rather than authentic presence, creates fertile ground for figures like Trump and perpetuates the very system he claims to oppose.

Reality and Fantasy of Political Engagement

At the start of 2025, at a time in history when many so-called progressive forces use Donald Trump as a scarecrow, suddenly, progressive engagement is reduced to fighting against Donald Trump and his malicious ideas. Yes, in my view too, Donald Trump is a character—above all, a persona and a performance—who spreads harmful ideas. But in my opinion, the struggle to be waged is not against this character, who is primarily a fantasy and an imaginary construct, but against what paved the way for him.

He is, therefore, a character, a fantasy above all, who frightens us. This time, he’s the yellow-haired boogeyman. And this “engagement” to fight him is fueled by the fear he instills in us. We must never forget, I believe, that fear is always a bad advisor. There is a denial of fear in the figure of engagement. Suddenly, Democrats from all countries find themselves united in a kind of common struggle. They believe in their commitment to noble values, when in reality, they are simply steeped in fear and seek reassurance by convincing themselves they are engaged politically, that by fighting Trump, they are advocating for a fairer society, to return to a potential “pre-Trump” era that was better. But was it really? Was the pre-Trump era truly better than the post-Trump one?

We lack sufficient critical distance to judge Trump’s policies. The only thing we can judge is the performance of the character Trump. The concept I’m developing here—of presence and the denial of fear—is not limited to a pseudo-analysis of the current situation as I write, but aims to document part of its construction, to offer a more lucid and constructive philosophical perspective, I hope, on the postures we adopt as citizens, politically and in our relationship to the reality of the world. This way, we might avoid, unintentionally, cultivating precisely what a politician like Donald Trump wants us to cultivate.

Perhaps we can also anchor contemporary political philosophy more firmly in what would constitute the foundation of a democratic society—the one Trump’s opponents claim to desire, but which, as I will explain, in my opinion, they unconsciously embody the very opposite of.

Greetings to You, Citizen

So, I address the reader of this text, especially those who, at this stage, might already feel like putting it down, as it could challenge too many fundamental certainties about citizenship. I address you, the reader engaged in the fight against Trumpism. I offer you a vision perhaps slightly broader than the one you hold today, without pretension. I don’t claim to know better, but I know I have a different knowledge, which may—and this is my wish—offer you a finer understanding of things, enriching your engagement and making it more effective. Perhaps this text can help you better understand yourself, situate your political engagement, and maybe go further in what you advocate. And this is never, ever a comfortable path: the work—that is, the transformation of oneself and the world—is often very uncomfortable, as it deconstructs certainties we once held. But with a magnificent result: the ability to be even more of an actor in the political and social changes we call for.

So welcome to you, who may fear reading things you disagree with. Your free will, your singular thought, what we call critical thinking, are welcome here. I will never tell you what to think. Instead, I will share philosophical and political tools with you—also contingent—that I sincerely hope will help you forge your own thought—not your community’s, but yours. Precisely, a democratic space, by definition, is a space of deliberation between radically opposing thoughts, all of which have their place. And it is through these confrontations that the diverse society we call for is built.

The first element I’ve highlighted is thus a belief in engagement against Trumpism—or against other things, like conspiracy theories—which is in reality based on fear. Since the late 19^th century, for example, anarchist groups, though not very dangerous, have all been repressed by states with the greatest violence. The very word “anarchism” has been associated with catastrophic disorder or completely unrealistic utopia. Why have these gentle dreamers—if we see them as such—always been and still are so severely repressed? Because they frighten states. Why do they frighten? Because they carry radical and functional democratic proposals that must be constantly nipped in the bud to maintain existing economic, patriarchal, and political structures of domination. They are not dangerous to others; they are dangerous to the system because their alternative is better than the existing one. Of course, this can be debated, and I won’t delve into the debate on the relevance of anarchist thought—everyone has their opinion. But it’s important to form one’s own opinion, not just hold a view—that is, to research before formulating an opinion.

There is thus an engagement, both by states and even by citizens, who have a very negative view of anarchism, an engagement in the systematic discrediting of these ideas. This engagement is not formulated as fear; we don’t realize we’re afraid of them. It’s formulated as engagement for an organized, democratic society—certainly not anarchic, which would be a kind of law of the jungle. So we believe we’re politically engaged for equality, when in reality, we’re in denial of a deeply rooted fear: the fear of the disorder of the established order. That’s why I speak of denial. It’s this fear of the unknown, this unknown that worries us so much. But we don’t see ourselves this way; we see ourselves as sensible people making useful political choices for the collective.

For an Anti-Capitalist Political Prevention

It’s somewhat the same phenomenon with Donald Trump, whom one might even call an “anarchist of the far right.” We feel mobilized against him. The subject of this article is to work on the causes, on the ground that produces Donald Trump. It’s always much more useful and constructive, in the long term, to work on causes rather than effects. But this isn’t the widespread habit. In medicine, for example, almost all official Western medicine is focused on effects—that is, on the disease, on the symptoms to be treated. But the causes—that is, prevention—are very underdeveloped, even though we have all the knowledge. Just look at our modern societies and the deep economic collusion between the agri-food and pharmaceutical industries to understand that the capitalist system—that is, the increase of shareholders’ capital—benefits far more from the development of diseases via the agri-food industry, which then must be treated via the pharmaceutical industry. This is far more profitable for shareholders than a virtuous system with prevention, meaning fewer diseases and thus fewer drug sales. It’s basic economic logic, but it’s important to be aware of it. I’m not oversimplifying, but what I’m describing is quite obvious upon closer inspection. Of course, proponents of healthcare systems would protest, saying we live much longer today than in the past, thanks precisely to the development of this pharmaceutical industry. Thankfully, we live longer due to scientific advances, but we could live even longer if these same advances were used differently. And that, they don’t say.

Here too, there’s an underlying fear: the fear of death, the fear of illness, which industries leverage to sell us engagement for health—for example, via mass vaccinations, via the bundling of mandatory and non-mandatory vaccines in injectable cocktails, the latter sold at higher prices because they contain more products. We’re made to believe this is prevention, when it’s primarily sales. I’m not saying all vaccines are useless. Some are entirely justified, thanks to scientific advances, not the development of pharmaceutical labs. There’s a carefully maintained confusion between commerce and health, just as the agri-food industry maintains the myth of miracle yogurts that will make us healthy. We know it’s just marketing, with no connection to reality. We can convince ourselves it’s real because we feel good after eating the yogurt—there’s always the placebo effect. And when, due to excessive yogurt consumption, we need medication to treat the ailments caused by this excess, of course no connection will be made—except by a few discredited whistleblowers—between the yogurts and the illness to be treated.

So fear is set aside even though it’s deeply present. We convince ourselves we’re working for health, we communicate about it, when in reality, we’re leveraging the fear of illness and death. We give our child yogurt, for example, believing it’s for their good health, in denial of the fear.

Why Our Blindness During Covid Supported Donald Trump

Let’s return to the denied fear of Donald Trump. One might object that there’s no denial of fear toward Trump, that we’re precisely very afraid of him and that’s why we’re engaged. Yes, but what makes us identify as virtuous citizens is our engagement. We’re fighting for democracy, against Donald Trump, against the far right. And I argue—finally reaching the heart of my argument—that we are the ones who fully and unconditionally authorized the development of Trump’s thinking and the harmful effects he produces, and that even in our current engagement, we’re still supporting him while sincerely believing we oppose him. And this is due to a lack of presence and a denial of fear.

Five years ago, the Covid period began, lasting two years—2020 and 2021. I’ll comment on this period, which may seem unrelated to Trump’s recent rise but is, in my view, a key political moment to understand what supported the current far-right surge. I know some readers might want to stop here, considering the Covid moment as primarily a health crisis, a time of global solidarity against a deadly virus. I invite you to read on, not to change anyone’s mind, but to offer a more precise political vision of this period, as Barbara Stiegler did so well during and after the pandemic.

A contagious, highly contagious virus began circulating. Policymakers didn’t know what to do. Some denied its existence; others gradually acknowledged it. The WHO initially proposed its standard protocol—test, isolate, treat—implemented successfully in some countries but not at all in others, like France. In 2020, no one was tested, no one was isolated, and no one received preventive treatment based on testing. There was only a pseudo-curative hospital approach for those already in severe respiratory distress, elderly, or with comorbidities, treated late in deliberately understaffed hospitals, with no access to private clinics. This caused some emergency room overcrowding, highlighted by the media, though many hospitals were also completely empty at the time. Of course, this wasn’t the message sent. Official figures later showed that during the two Covid years, only 2% of all hospitalizations were for Covid.

Thus, a choice was made in France and many other countries to impose population lockdowns, organized via a defense council, with a warlike government discourse—“We are at war,” repeated 17 times by Emmanuel Macron in his first speech the night before the first lockdown in 2020. The virus became a common enemy, a civic engagement to fight it. It leveraged fear—fear of death, illness, transmission, of being a danger to others—but was immediately reframed as engagement for public health, a duty for all.

The problem is that this engagement wasn’t based on scientific knowledge or listening to independent scientists—few in number, as most are funded by pharmaceutical companies and thus entirely biased. And given pharmaceutical logic, the industry immediately saw a rare opportunity: a widely shared fear—not globally, but in the wealthy West. So, via a denial of fear—yes, people were afraid, but fear was converted into engagement—those who denounced their neighbors during the first lockdown, young people partying, rebelling against this infringement on their freedom, felt they upheld democratic values while stigmatizing others, restricting freedoms without personal inquiry into the actual danger posed by their neighbors or the youth.

One might object that the times were extremely turbulent, that people were paralyzed by fear. Precisely—this was the subject of sociologist Laurent Mucchielli’s brilliant September 2020 text (with many scientists), We No Longer Want to Be Governed by Fear, which explained how fear is a bad advisor for public health and how empowering people, fostering true critical thinking, would have had—and could have—far better health outcomes.

The engagement was all the stronger, the collaboration with state orders all the firmer, because the denied fear was great. Fear was sustained by the media system, validating the engagement. Yes, initially, during the first lockdown, there was a state of shock carefully maintained in our country—far less so elsewhere. Some countries didn’t lockdown and had no more deaths than France, I remind you. But later, with population control systems—health passes, testing—we must also recall that at first, there was an epidemic of sick people, then it became an epidemic of positive tests, with tests that inherently produced many false positives. So there was a shift from an epidemic of cases to an epidemic of tests, then the near-imposition of a vaccination whose manufacturers knew from the start didn’t prevent transmission.

So one might say, “But isn’t this better?” The vaccination didn’t prevent transmission, period. There was also the ban on early treatments, even prohibiting doctors from prescribing vitamin D or zinc, the two most effective preventive approaches against Covid. Why? And of course, the ban on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments, whose efficacy was proven early and repeatedly, though some still claim otherwise. Why? The discrediting of existing effective treatments and prevention, for the simple reason that the vaccines, distributed by the billions, doubled the fortunes of shareholders during Covid—no small feat: the nine richest billionaires and pharma shareholders doubled their wealth in two years. So the wealthiest were further enriched. Don’t forget this—it’s not a detail. You don’t double your fortune without strategy; it doesn’t happen without work and communication strategies.

Via the Order of Physicians, a doctor who prescribed anything other than Doliprane for Covid was barred from practice. This was the first time in history—in France, at least—that the state dictated treatment. It’s a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, which most doctors accepted. This ban allowed the sale, distribution, and inoculation of experimental-stage vaccines—something normally illegal unless no existing treatment is available. The commercial opportunity was so great that it was essential to defend the absence of treatment, block treatments, prevent doctors from treating. The few who did were struck off or worked under the table, pretending to treat other conditions. For example, ivermectin was widely prescribed and helped many, but never admitted as a Covid treatment.

And the absolute lie—“All vaccinated, all protected”—the slogan, was a lie from the start. The labs never told governments these vaccines prevented transmission. They always knew. They didn’t even test this aspect, and it was never the vaccine’s effect. Real transmission protection would have been preventive care. One might say, “But thanks to the vaccine, fewer people got sick, so less transmission?” Not at all. The vaccine didn’t stop carrying, receiving, or transmitting the virus. It merely lessened symptoms for some—and sadly, these vaccines also had enormous side effects, still almost state secrets today. It only prevented severe symptoms in the vaccinated, nothing more. But it didn’t stop carrying, developing, or transmitting the virus.

Yet being vaccinated, forcing vaccination or constant testing—knowing tests were largely false—was perceived by those complying as engagement for public health. “We did this, followed state instructions for everyone’s health,” all while denying that what drove this engagement was fear. And again, fear is always a bad advisor.

And in doing so, what did we do? We manufactured exclusion. We accepted halted activities. We accepted massive national debt. We accepted the militarization of public life, with unprecedented freedom restrictions in France—stronger than under German occupation in WWII, politically speaking, in terms of democratic exceptions. France had never gone so far. Of course, there were darker periods, like the Paris Commune, where anarchist Parisians were massacred. But in terms of freedom restrictions, it had never gone as far as during Covid, at least in France.

This is what engagement for health produced. It produced no better health—the numbers show this terribly: each vaccination campaign caused more deaths because it was sold on a lie. I’m not saying the vaccines were useless to all recipients, but for public health, the campaigns were catastrophic. For capitalist shareholders, however, they were profitable on an unprecedented scale. Again, this is unique in capitalist history. We served this while believing we were engaged for health, when our “engagement” was based on fear. That’s why there was so much dissent, so much opposition within families, workplaces—lingering today—so much stigmatization of others as dangerous, the “Screw the unvaccinated”—Emmanuel Macron’s infamous words. And at some point, we all went through it, knowing that if we didn’t get vaccinated, we’d be socially downgraded, maybe lose our jobs, etc. So many who had doubts, who didn’t necessarily want to, were convinced not for health but to avoid social exclusion. It was an infantilizing, dishonest pressure tactic, obvious at the time. But we’re in a system, a society, and if excluded, how do we live in it?

Cognitive Dissonance, Breeding Ground for Extremism and Creator of Post-Truth

During this period, there was much cognitive dissonance. Some were convinced and felt engaged—the biggest denouncers, for example, felt they upheld health engagement. Others complied under duress, sensing it wasn’t right. In deep cognitive dissonance, many of them—some who suffered vaccine side effects—died or are now permanently very ill, and others will fall ill in the future—a boon for Big Pharma, as these illnesses will need treatment. In fact, Pfizer itself markets a drug to treat its own Covid vaccine’s side effects, sold as a magnificent, major scientific advance.

Why does all this pave the way for Trumpism? Because engagement based on denied fear—not real political engagement for a better world—is false engagement. Like Winnicott’s “true self” and “false self,” there’s true engagement and false engagement. It’s false: we think it’s real, but it’s based on lies, and we know it deep down. We thought we defended democracy, but we sense it’s not democracy but defense of the worst capitalism, disregarding public health, while we’re told we’re engaged for health. We’re in a post-truth regime. Post-truth didn’t come from Trump. Trump’s post-truth exists because we supported a post-truth regime. We made choices based on easily debunked lies. But since we made these choices and are “engaged,” we remain in denial of the fear driving them. We think we’re truly engaged, but our engagement is false, creating cognitive dissonance.

How to escape this dissonance? Several resonances clash—that’s dissonance. There’s something utterly anarchic, in the negative sense, in our mental and psychic state after such a situation. It’s thus extremely easy for someone like Trump to resonate with parts of this dissonance, to rally opponents of the Covid health policies—like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or even Elon Musk, who were never believers but opposed these practices. So Trump resonates with them, with opponents, even with those who fully supported health policies. He even resonates with Bill Gates, a major WHO funder and vaccine promoter. This pre-Trump cognitive dissonance is simply amplified by Trump. Without it, there’d be no dissonant ground—just clear political terrain, denying him power. Instead, there’s no political terrain, just false engagement based on denied fear. And tragically, “engagement” against Trump worsens the dissonance, as it creates more. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most coherent voices on public health during Covid, is now discredited simply for being associated with Trump. Before Covid, people watched his documentaries and agreed with him.

So the post-truth regime, creating massive cognitive dissonance based on denied fear, predates Trump. It presents as coherent engagement but is built on lies. Some sense it, some don’t, some sense it but comply. Trump is simply less hypocritical: he owns the lies. We know he lies. He admits it often. He doesn’t hide it.

Presence as the Only Real Political Engagement

And so I arrive at my proposal: what I suggest is working on presence, our presence. Instead of engaging against Trump, let’s try to understand how we were manipulated before him, how our manipulation left the door open to absolute conceptual and political disorder, presented as coherent engagement when it was just capitalism sowing chaos, deepening inequality, enriching itself while making us believe we were engaged for health. In France, for example, a trillion dollars was borrowed from the same shareholders who sold drugs and vaccines during Covid, to whom the state is now indebted. Total profit for them.

What we must face is this. We must deconstruct our engagement based on denied fear, realize it was built on lies—just as those engaged in Soviet communism had to accept that their utopia was the worst dictatorship. Some never could—it challenged their sincere engagement too deeply. It’s the same process.

To build an enlightened political future, we mustn’t engage against Trump for democracy. We must search within ourselves for what we allowed, believing we were engaged, when we were utterly manipulated. If we understand these processes, we’ll be far better equipped to engage without fear denial, in presence—with ourselves, our humanity, with others. Presence lets us evaluate our actions: Am I stigmatizing someone? Am I creating a scapegoat, as during Covid, in the name of collective good? If I’m present to myself, my ethics, I must question this. This will distinguish true defenders of freedom, human sovereignty, from those who favor totalitarianism, who truly believe some should be stigmatized, that humanity has tiers, some more human than others. That’s their choice. Not mine.

Let’s be present, and thus truly engaged.