You were heard at the end of last year by the Paris Assize Court which is judging the case of the attacks of November 13, 2015 and published “European Jihadism. What challenges for the future? (Gallimard, Tracts collection, March 7, 2022). According to you, faced with jihadism, the challenge for States is to adapt their responses without falling into two pitfalls: “excessive hysteria and extreme relativization”. Faced with the war waged by Russia, is the issue similar?
Hugo Micheron. There is a parallelism between the two events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine manifests itself in such violence that it instantly makes you realize how much European democracies can be threatened. This very idea seemed hitherto excluded from the field of our reflections. This aggression produces an electric shock. This unthinkable crisis is leading our democracies to develop exceptional measures in record time, particularly in the unity of a political Europe and, for Germany for example, strong budgetary decisions in favor of the constitution of a military defence. It must be realized that it will have taken thirty years to come to this realization when Vladimir Putin’s speeches were perfectly clear for a very long time and that he never hid during this period his contempt for Western democracies. .
At the November 13 trial: “You can destroy all the organizations in the world, there will remain the ideol –
