Michel Taubmann

Michel Taubmann (* 1956 in Paris ) is a politically active French television journalist who heads the editorial department of Arte -Info in Paris and the program Ouverture des Télévision française juive (TFJ). In 2002 he founded the Cercle de l'Oratoire , a French think tank ( think tank ) and in 2006 from this circle, the magazine Le Meilleur des mondes . The Cercle sees itself as a transatlantic reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and to the "anti-Americanism" and "anti-Zionism" that allegedly increased in France afterwards.

The Guigouin affair

Michel Taubmann, in his attitude as a political publicist since the 1970s, was strongly impressed by the totalitarianism criticism of parts of the French left intelligentsia. This attitude determines his journalistic activity to this day. He was also shaped by George Guingouin (1913-2005), an icon of the Resistance and the Communist Party (PCF), who was instrumental in the liberation of Limoges in August 1944 and in 1945 became the first post-war mayor of the south-eastern French city. In 1994 Taubmann dedicated his book L'Affaire Guingouin to Guingouin . Based on many years of research, he was able to cover a dark chapter in the history of the PCF: Guigouin, who had allied himself with non-communists in the Resistance of the German occupation, was to be eliminated during the war because of this deviation from the Stalinist course. After the war he soon fell victim to a character assassination campaign by his own comrades, which endangered him legally and psychologically and ultimately robbed him of his political influence. This revelation was considered a political scandal in 1994. The PCF tried in vain to prevent publication. Thanks to his meticulous research and skillful journalistic commitment, Taubmann's book sparked a debate among historians and contemporary witnesses.

Founder of the Circle d'Oratoire think tank

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the media professional Michel Taubmann became an opinion leader and networker for French intellectuals who recognized Islamo-fascism as a new form of totalitarianism and spoke out in favor of intervention in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. It was from this group that he founded the transatlantic-pro-Zionist-oriented magazine Le Meilleur des mondes in 2006 . It has meanwhile become a highly respected organ of the sections of the French intelligentsia, which in the 1970s transferred totalitarianism criticism not only to National Socialism, but initially to the Soviet Union, and which today recognizes Islamo-Fascism as a threat to the Western community of values. These include the French human rights activists and media intellectuals who are also known in Germany, such as Pascal Bruckner and André Glucksmann , who chairs the Association of Friends of Le Meilleur des mondes .

About the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

One of Taubmann's merits is the education of the French public about the rise of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadineschad, which is still little known or little discussed in Germany . Trautmann documented La bombe et le Coran in his books . Première biographique du président iranien Mahmud Ahmadineschad (Editions du Moment 2008) and Histoire secrète de la révolution iranienne (Editions Denoël, together with the exiled Iranian Ramin Parham) describe Ahmadinejad's political career. From Taubmann's research, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current Iranian President has assumed leading positions in the Khomeini Revolutionary Garden since around 1980: Witness statements show that he was an instructor in the Basij-e Mostaz'afin , a mass paramilitary organization that defended itself recruited from fanatical volunteers and played a similar role in his advancement as the SA did for the NSDAP . The Basij-e Mostaz'afin was and is responsible for the repression and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities and the political opposition as well as the coordination and preparation of terrorist actions, especially by Hezbollah. According to Taubmann, Ahmadinejad's presidency since 2005 has meant the takeover of Iran by this eliminatory mass movement.

Positioning and Criticism

In contrast to Germany, think tanks in France such as the Cercle d'Oratoire are traditionally not only recruited from state or business initiatives, but often from independently acting intellectuals and human rights activists. The competition for the key words of the political discourse can, by German standards, at best be compared with the polemics of the journalist Henryk M. Broder . The Cercle d'oratoire operates with terms such as “Islamo-Fascism”, “Green Fascism” and “Islamic Totalitarianism”, claiming for itself a continuity of the Franco-Western Enlightenment. In return, critics accuse Taubmann and his circle of spreading neoconservative American positions in continental Europe. In his article of March 6, 2006 in the daily newspaper "Liberation", the journalist Eric Aeschimann described the friends of the magazine Le Meilleur des mondes around André Glucksmann polemically as "The best friends of America". Similar to the Bush administration, the Cercle tries to show Islam in the line of National Socialism and Communism in order to suggest that democracies are confronted with evil in general. Other commentators point to processes of political reorientation which, like France, are also occurring in Germany. This is how the renowned French historian Stéphane Courtois explains the harshness of the conflict resulting from political secession processes that began in France with the criticism of totalitarianism since the 1970s: Today's media-effective transatlantic people around Taubmann, as well as he himself, are united in the left political spectrum. Taubmann, Bruckner and Glucksmann counter this with the thesis that the negative French attitude towards the USA would show older great power rivalries and a certain tendency towards isolationalism.

Michel Taubmann and Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Michel Taubmann published The True Story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn ( Le roman vrai de Dominique Strauss-Kahn . Ed's Moment). There Taubmann reports, among other things, how Strauss-Kahn and his wife Anne Sinclair (neé: Anne-Élise Schwartz) cause a media fiasco by having themselves photographed as a couple DSK-Sinclair in front of a Porsche Panamera S. (The Porsche Panamera S is a bullet with “environmentally friendly” 400 hp and for a socialist with a price of over 100,000 US $ apparently “quite appropriate”. Ramzi Khiroun, one of his advisors, is the actual owner of the bolide). A year before the presidential election, Taubmann thought this was Dominique Strauss-Kahn's first major media mistake.

Literature (selection)

• L'affaire Guingouin. Éditions Lucien Souny, 1994 ( ISBN 978-2905262738 )
• La bombe et le Coran. Première biographique du président iranien Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Editions du Moment, 2008 ( ISBN 978-2-354-17007-3 ).
• Histoire secrète de la révolution iranienne, avec Ramin Parham, Editions Denoël, 2009 ( ISBN 9782207260708 )
• L'Iran: l'heure du choix. Entretiens avec Réza Pahlavi [fils] (Editions Denoël 2009)
• Le roman vrai de Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Editions du Moment, 2011, ISBN 978-2-354-17089-9 . (Biography)
• Affaires DSK, la contre-enquête. Editions du Moment, 2011, ISBN 978-2-354-17138-4 .

proof

1. ↑ DSK ne contrôle pas sa communication! M. Taubmann: DSK does not master its communication. (French)
2. ↑ A photo of Strauss-Kahn and his wife Anne Sinclair.
3. ↑ Stupid, but consensual. In: Spiegel Online from November 30, 2011