RUSES ET MASQUES DU POUVOIR. Terrorisme d’Etat et stratégies de manipulation des masses dans La guerre est une ruse de Frédéric Paulin

Document Type : Original Article

Abstract

War studies are more and more in vogue in the American and English cultures than in the French culture. This study, which aims at bridging this research gap, focuses on the contemporary form of the so-called “asymmetric” warfare and its representation through Frédéric Paulin's novel The War a Hoax (2018), which falls under the so-called black novels, spy novels, and police novels. The author proposes a very moving theory concerning the genesis of terrorism in France which started with the chaotic disturbances caused by the civil war of the “black decades” of Algeria. Throughout this thriller, the author pledges to prove the Algerian authority's involvement in several terrorist operations within France during that period and, thus, implicitly accusing it of state terrorism. The purpose of this study aims at shedding light on the strategies adopted by the writer to demystify the tricks and masks of the Algerian authority in escalating its war on terrorism outside its regional borders, specifically in France. It focuses in particular on the Algerian authority’s strategies of manipulating the masses and their arts of mystification and concealment of the truth, which is more than a form of state terrorism, and which the writer tries to refer to through other strategies. To carry out this work, this article relies on several methodological approaches related to geopolitics, the rhetoric of argumentation, the history of ideas, and the mechanisms of tricks and traps. Based on the first opus of Paulin's trilogy, the originality of this study is to revive the discourse on war neglected by studies in France; to reflect on strategies neglected by war theorists and to re-emphasize them as they have become imposed by force in contemporary wars, namely, the strategy of deception as opposed to the strategy of force. However, above all, it is achieved through relying on recent theories which call into question the previous ones, namely the theories of the political scientist Jean-Vincent Holeindre (2017), and on theories which deserve to be more valued such as those of the history of ideas of Marc Angenot or even on old theories updated in line with this research due to their universal validity, such as that of the index of tricks of Claude Bremond, which this study hopefully presents in an unprecedented light, especially since the work analyzed, to our knowledge, has not yet been the subject of previous studies.
 
 
 

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