This editorial opens the winter 2025-2026 issue of têtu·, with Camille Cottin on the cover, available at your newsstands or delivered to you by subscription.
There is something rotten in the state of our democracies. The assessment is not new, but 2025 has offered us that little extra brownish soul that could well mark a turning point…
The year, we must not forget, began under the sign of a gesture we hoped never to see again, especially at the summit of American democracy: Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, which set the tone for Donald Trump’s second inauguration. “How many things have changed in such a short time”, marvelled in the wake of it their great friend Javier Milei, president of Argentina, before laying out, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the program of the reactionary international: “It is our moral duty and our historical responsibility to dismantle the ideological edifice of maladaptive wokism. It is the great epidemic of our time that must be treated, it is the cancer that must be eliminated.”
As for the method to achieve this, following the purest tradition of Orwellian language inversion (“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”), Javier Milei dared: “If we really want to defend citizens’ rights, we must start by telling them the truth.” The proof: in his mouth, the LGBT are “pedophiles”, and Elon Musk’s provocation, “an innocent gesture that only signifies his gratitude toward the people”.
Facing the already widely documented triumph of post-truth, the worry comes not only from the electoral victories racked up by its boosters. It also comes, and perhaps more so, from the way the emancipation from facts is becoming banal everywhere. In France, Sarkozy-era right-wing and the Le Penist far-right are giving themselves full rein in their crusade against justice, the first victim of illiberal regimes.
“The Media”…
Second target very in vogue in this year turned upside down: the press. Attacks against journalists cross far beyond the borders of the hard right. Do the test, and start listening when a political figure begins a sentence with “the media…”: you will find that these quips are becoming more numerous, and do not always come from where you would expect. To name just têtu· as an example, the price of fame: depending on the attacker’s ideological leaning, the magazine has this year been described as either a “woke rag” (a classic) or a “collaborator” (by the far right: ever more). A character in Virginie Despentes’s gleeful Cher Connard sums up the problem quite well: “You cannot use the enemy’s methods and expect to achieve different results.”
But where does this cross-partisan consensus to attack journalists come from? In some activist circles, this aggression is justified by the need to break our chains. Thus, in defense of a middle finger directed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon at a France Inter interviewer, a Radio Nova comedian recently proclaimed: “Fuck you! Dialogue, respect, politeness, it works in a real democracy, not in front of an oligarchy that has power, money, the media…” Oh, rest assured, we have leather tough enough to withstand these outrages, and even a little finger raised. The syllogism used is no less toxic: true violence being capitalist, and a growing number of media being concentrated in the hands of billionaires, it is permissible to use violence (symbolic) toward “the media”, as well as toward anyone who practices that profession there. On that basis, don’t set us free; we’ll take care of it.
The Press Is the Bedrock of a Shared Reality
Worse yet, in bad faith, the authors of these repetitive attacks feign to ignore that the outcome of this cycle has been known in advance, for at least Hannah Arendt. Indeed, the manufacture of a fictitious reality, a totalitarian passion, requires erasing in advance all collective memory, all consensus on the facts, and all contradiction. Without truth, no common life; without history, no democratic referent; without critique, no revolt. And the press is the bedrock of a shared reality. Its weakening is a structural technique for undermining democracy.
Moreover, the independence of the media has never rested on the identity of their owners. First and foremost, it is indeed us, the foot soldiers, on whom it rests. Thus, when we sign our articles, it’s less out of egotistical delirium than to commit ourselves to our readers, by name, to uphold the principles imposed by journalistic ethics. Transparency and ethical codes: two conditions of the profession that anonymous “media” and other self-proclaimed journalists flout.
So, if one claims to halt the march of democracy’s arsonists, one must return to a societal understanding of the press’s role. In view of the evolution of our digital environment, this media literacy education no longer seems optional. For who still understands, in the age of all-opinion, that journalism, even when engaged, cannot submit to ideological dictates? “To draw a line between activism and journalism“, was the goal of Jean Le Bitoux when he participated, in 1979, in the creation of Gai Pied, the title that preceded têtu· on newsstands. Not out of contempt for militant struggle, of which he himself was a part, but precisely because he was well placed to know the difference: when the journalist seeks to ask the right questions, the activist wants to impose his answer. And while the two have proven indispensable to the advancement of LGBT rights, their association remains oxymoronic: how can one think against oneself, as demanded by the journalist’s craft, when one locks into an in-crowd that cannot tolerate nuances?
Your Move
Producing rigorous information, which costs considerably more than slogans, means the press must relentlessly seek ways to finance itself, or face disappearance. And this is where our civic responsibility comes into play: in the face of anti-media delirium from populists of all stripes, are we really acting?
Since its birth, thirty years ago, your newspaper has already disappeared twice. A catastrophe: without a queer media, our voices are unheard, and our rights unprotected. Fortunately, some understood, allowing the relaunch of têtu·, which has managed to become, over these three decades, a media brand recognized, respected, and sought after far beyond the LGBTQI+ community. It does not merely preach to the convinced, but works to build bridges. To illuminate queer culture as the treasure it is for society at large. To assert our expertise on numerous social issues: health, family, education, politics, etc. To advocate, again and always, for the margins before those in power, to whom we demand accountability. To persevere, come what may, in our historic commitment to a more inclusive world.
This queer journalism needs you. In these stormy times for our freedoms, let’s mobilize! A range of ways makes it possible to support your media very concretely: subscribe to a subscription, give them as gifts to your loved ones, make a donation (it’s now possible and tax-deductible), spread the word about it… The stakes are crucial: more than ever, our struggles deserve quality journalism.
