In a laundry and the Val-d’oise, france, last Sunday, a man was beaten after having asked her assailant to wear a mask. A violence that has already manifested itself in similar cases.
The scene was filmed by a cctv camera. We see a man get beat up by four individuals, some armed with baseball bats. The facts took place Sunday in a laundry Soisy-sous-Montmorency (Val-d’oise). The victim, a father of a family, ” says in his complaint that he asked for another client to wear a mask, as is required by law. After a verbal altercation agitated, the man in question returned with for what looks like a punitive expedition.
READ ALSO >> Lyon, Bayonne… “These are not facts, various isolated”
The reason for this beating, however, is not unprecedented. A Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) in early July, a bus driver, Philippe Monguillot, died after having been violently beaten by two men for the same reason. If there are no statistics on this specific topic – the causes of such violence are not listed as such – the local press is full of similar examples.
summer Offer : Take advantage of the special offer 2 months for 1€ I subscribe
at Gaillac (Tarn), Dijon (côte d’or), Orleans (Loiret), or Montpellier (Hérault) and Martigues (Bouches-du-Rhône), bus drivers and tram, but also agents of the SNCF have been struck or insulted after having imposed the wearing of the mask to the passenger. The security guard of a store of clothes in Nantes (Loire-Atlantic), and two employees of a Mcdonald’s restaurant in Agde (Hérault) have suffered the same fate. Verbal aggression were also reported in long-term care Facility of Correze.
“Who is this other to exercise this control over me ?”
name-calling, threats, insults, blows… every time, the same trigger : the victims have asked their abuser to comply with an obligation provided by law, in transport as in enclosed public places. How to explain that such queries can lead to altercations and sometimes very violent ? “It is a reaction of emotional type. It will arise as soon as a person sees his freedom threatened. Those who tolerate the least sense are going to attempt to restore the lost freedom,” says Patrick Rateau, professor of social psychology at the University of Nîmes.
READ ALSO >> “You need to stay consistent” the question is: should we make it mandatory for the mask-wearing everywhere in France ?
To do this, their action may take different forms : brave directly forbids it, work around it or adopt a reaction of hostility or even violence against “those who limit”. Most of the time, the reminder of the standard that is well lived, the people involved will apologize and run. “The problem is, for a small number of individuals, it is when they consider one who asks them to follow the rules -the controller – social as non-legitimate. They ask, ‘who is this other to exercise this control over me’,” says Patrick Rateau.
“Be aware of the danger”
“What they feel, it is that someone takes the power over them and give them orders that they find useless or superfluous. They wonder by what right, complete the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Serge Hefez. For most people, this poses no problem, we have this idea of the collective in the background. But to those who submit less easily, it can turn into an explosion of violence.”
READ ALSO >> How the wrath of the “anti-mask” is born in online groups, accents complotistes
Dr. Hefez said that the mask can be experienced as a violence exerted on our body. “To bend, you really need to be sure that it is done for his good and the good of others.” The problem is that the message the government has been fluctuating on the subject since the beginning of the year, enough to maintain doubt on the validity of the obligation, or even outright rejection in some. “To accede to coercive measures on its body, it is necessary to be aware of the danger and therefore, have lived close. This is not the case for many young people,” says Serge Hefez. He who has long worked on HIV draws a parallel with the loosening of condom use when most young heterosexuals were more Aids patients in their entourage.
Read our complete file
“Covid-19”, the new coronavirus
VIDEO. Tourism : “It may start again even stronger than before” Death of a native chief, WHO warns the young people… The point on the pandemic in The United States have already invested $ 9 billion in vaccines against the Covid-19
If the verbal or physical aggression remain the exceptions, Patrick Rateau like Serge Hefez believe that the incidents are increasing, as is the distrust or even rejection of any form of authority. Remains to be seen whether this trend will increase or not while wearing a mask tends to impose a little more in the public space. As in Paris, where the mayor Anne Hidalgo has asked the prefect to extend the obligation to certain places such as the banks of the Seine or the covered markets.
