Against far-right obscurantism, in the USA and elsewhere, we defend inclusive science for the common good

Scientifiques en rébellion (France) affirms its solidarity with the “Stand Up for Science” campaign launched in the USA, and condemns the violent attacks on academics and researchers and on several federal scientific, medical, humanitarian and environmental agencies led by the Donald Trump – Elon Musk tandem in the United States. History reminds us that obscurantism is a strategic tool of far-right regimes, muzzling the expression of critical thinking and curbing the autonomy of scientific and intellectual communities (journalism, teaching, art, activism, trade unionism...). It was the danger posed by these regimes that had already led our collective to mobilize during the 2024 legislative campaign in France.

In the United States, the powers that be are showing their determination to wipe out whole swathes of knowledge, muzzle certain scientific fields and distort facts to the point of rewriting them. This includes the deletion of data, a lexicon of forbidden terms for all applications for research project funding, prohibiting colleagues from accessing their offices and communicating with colleagues from other countries and with the media, and encouraging the denunciation of colleagues who do not comply with the diktats. In short, research, teaching, healthcare and other public bodies are being brought to heel.

Also in France, attacks against researchers and scientific institutions, often fuelled by the government itself, are multiplying. They are less spectacular at this stage, but follow a similar logic and are being deployed with a violence that is all the more destabilizing because it is more insidious: threats against the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) and the National Agency for Food Safety (ANSES) to name but two, multiple setbacks on environmental and health standards, disqualification of universities, banning of academic events intended to shed light on the context of the war in Gaza... Like all forms of violence, these attacks distance us from a calm and lucid society, capable of constructive and enlightened debate, and able to mobilize to meet the challenges of maintaining a livable planet for all.

Unfortunately, the obscurantist narrative of the far-right today manages to seduce many with a nauseating recipe, already tried and tested in history: 1. encouraging submission to authoritarian power, 2. discriminating against minorities and rejecting all movements of mutual aid, solidarity and inclusion, 3. scientific negationism and criminalization of whistle-blowers – environmentalists, scientists, feminists, etc., 4. denial of anthropogenic action in climate change and the collapse of biodiversity, combined with a dystopian techno-solutionism designed to preserve the short-term economic interests of an oligarchy.

Scientifiques en rébellion asserts the need for our societies to mobilize pluralistic scientific knowledge, to understand and accompany with prudence, precaution and humility the major and unprecedented transformations that we must now undertake. We strongly defend the dialogue between science and society, and refuse to be reduced to the caricature of a caste of scientists clinging to a threatened symbolic and material privilege. To achieve this mobilization, as scientists, we need to interact more and better with civil society, to combine social justice with respect for planetary limits and the living world, resolutely distancing ourselves from the misanthropic and ecocidal interests of a few billionaires in tech, agribusiness or luxury goods...

They have names. In the United States, Elon Musk and other GAFAM bosses are lining up behind Donald Trump. In France, the more subdued atmosphere cannot conceal the threat. It is carried by a Vincent Bolloré or a Pierre-Édouard Stérin, and by their political backers, from the far-right opposition like Jordan Bardella to what can be described as the government far-right like Bruno Retailleau, or to the authoritarian free-market right like Emmanuel Macron.

In solidarity with USA scientists and all those attacked by a neo-fascist order, we call on all scientific communities and those around them (unions, public scientific establishments, etc.) to enter resistance together, to guarantee our ability to produce knowledge, for and as a common good, and stem the obscurantist plague.