La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot
The cover of this book bears an uncanny resemblance to an election manifesto. The French journalist and polemicist, who is described in France and abroad in superlative terms, has not yet officially thrown his hat into the ring for the French presidential election. His stock is rising in the opinion polls and, having killed off Marine Le Pen, he is already predicted to face Emmanuel Macron in the second round, according to a survey dated 13 October. There is not long to go until May 2020 and nobody knows whether “Hurricane” Zemmour, as the Italian daily Corriere della sera calls him, will last until then. The thing about hurricanes is that they can either gather strength or blow themselves out as they move forwards.
Does this work merit a space in this column? I must confess, I have my doubts. And until very recently, I had paid little attention to this pamphleteer navigating between the right-wing and the far-right. Zemmour is annoying, irritating, provocative and, therefore, necessarily shocking, but this does not make him any less intelligent. Although his principal target audience is the fraction of the population who are nostalgic for the cliche of a sepia-tinted France and who seem to think that the future can be resurrected from the past, there is no denying the fact that he has his share of popularity, for instance having sold 165,000 copies of “La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot” in just three weeks. The book, then, says as much about the state of a section of the French general public in the midst of an identity crisis as it does about the author and his ambitions. From this point of view alone, it is worth a read.
His previous mass-circulation piece was called “Le suicide français” and belongs to the school of literature of declinism. Here, the author continues in the same vein, decrying the same evils (mass immigration, Islamism, industrial decline, etc.) and the same players, starting with politicians of all political stripes, the legal institutions and Europe. Yet as the title (‘France has not said its last word’) implies, he now sees a national renaissance on the horizon.
The book is presented in the form of a diary covering the period between 22 April 2006 and 2 December 2020, weaving its way through political events, the media and judicial life of the author, the people he meets in the salons and restaurants of Paris. Echoes of Parisian life, his diary entries frequently become sketches, mostly vitriolic ones, particularly those of political figures. But the intellectual level of the book means that readers cannot help but admire the author and sometimes even his adversaries are afforded a degree of leniency. Some of the sketches are really quite accurate, like the one of Simone Veil. Elsewhere in the work, Zemmour takes no prisoners. He tells the story of having been the guest of Xavier Bertrand in September 2020. When discussing the presidential elections, Bertrand said: “I know I’m not good enough. But these days, nobody is. The presidential elections are not an exam, they are a contest. It’s how good the others are that matters” (our translation throughout). He then added, according to Zemmour: “after 2022, whether I win or not, there will only be two right-wing candidates: Marion (Maréchal-Le Pen) and you”.
“I am an Algerian Jew who grew up in the Parisian banlieue and it was my family heritage and reading that made me into a Frenchman of the soil and of the dead”, states Zemmour, who also claims Berber descent. Over the pages, he describes his passion for great literature, but also for De Gaulle and Napoléon. The themes of the Great Replacement and of the Islamic peril recur like a leitmotiv, together with comments that stop short of incitement to hatred but are nonetheless stigmatising, even when they describe the reality of the situation of certain urban areas and no-go zones. On Islam, he quotes from the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who gave François Mitterrand the concept of “tolerance threshold” and argued that Islam “eradicated the other”. He slams the political correctness, the rule of law, which he pretends not to understand as the final barrier to the abuse of power, and human rights, which he described as an ideology. Zemmour is no fan of Europe, presenting it as an agent of a form of globalisation that is harming the nation, the single currency, which he sees as a danger, and Defence Europe, which he describes as a “pipe dream”. “We should put the French and European judges and the Commissioners in Brussels back in the place they should never have abandoned, serving the people and the nations, which is the sole basis for democracy”, he writes, going on to add that “the rule of law and the European Union are not an end in themselves, but a means”. Zemmour also has harsh words for NATO, which he considers to be the White House’s “tool for the subjugation of its so-called ‘allies’”, which is not entirely incorrect, and as a means for the American industry to serve its potential clients, which are “forced to buy US-made equipment in the name of the ‘interoperability’ of the Alliance”, which is undeniably true.
“The hypothesis of my sensational debut in politics was just one more symptom of the disintegration of the political system and the degradation of the institutions of the Fifth Republic”, the author acknowledges at the start of the book. “In the lives of the nations as in those of individuals, we move through stages of despondency which precede a rebalancing; phases of decline which herald a renaissance”, concludes Zemmour, adding: “throughout its long history, our nation has often looked death in the face, from the Hundred Years War to the debacle of June 1940. Each time, an invader submerged us or force of arms and occupied all tracts of our national territory (…). But each time, from Joan of Arc to Bonaparte or De Gaulle, there came the man or woman of the hour, who was able to rise to the task and rally energies to ensure the survival of the nation”. And is the current man of the hour none other than Éric Zemmour himself? The author’s modesty prevents him from answering this question directly, but he offers instead the story of a telephone conversation with Emmanuel Macron, in a possible hint at a future presidential election debate.
So does the man of the hour have a manifesto? Let us say that if you look hard enough, you can find vague outlines of one: - immigration (abolition of the right to family reunification, stricter rules on asylum rights, abolition of the right to naturalisation for foreign spouses, the right of students and the rule of jus soli); - justice: bringing back double jeopardy for foreign criminals and stripping French nationality from any person with dual nationality convicted of a crime in order to allow that person to be expelled from the country; - Islamism: all Salafist mosques and those dominated by the Muslim Brothers to be closed down; - social: application of “national preference” for the payment of benefits (family, housing, single women, students, etc.) and reduction of the overall envelope for benefits in favour of investments.
Zemmour, who revels in quoting from the great authors, might have liked to be Balzac. It is from Balzac’s hero from “Illusions perdues” and “Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes”, Lucien de Rubempré, that he took the name of the publishing company for this book. Unfortunately for him, the book starts with a most unfortunate spelling mistake, which is repeated four times: “J’ai pêché, je le confesse. Pêché d’orgueil, pêché de vanité, pêché d’arrogance” [translator’s note: the word ‘pêché’ is the past participle of the verb ‘pêcher’, meaning ‘to go fishing’; the author, one assumes, misspelt ‘péché’, which means ‘sin’]. But as Balzac believed that “the heart has no right or wrong spelling”, Lucien would certainly have forgiven this sin. But if Zemmour does end up standing as a presidential candidate, he will have a lot more fishing to do. (Olivier Jehin)
Éric Zemmour. La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (available in French only). Rubempré. ISBN: 978-2-957-93050-0. 349 pages. €21,90
Brève histoire de Russie
This is a history that reads like a novel, with its tragedies, stories of alcoves and a fair dollop of irony. From Rurik to Putin, centuries of history and the manipulation of history for political purposes spread out across the pages without ever becoming tedious. The author makes no claims to have made an exhaustive and detailed study of Russia, but sets out to “trace the recurrent splendours and misery of this extraordinary nation and see how the Russians have understood, explain, mythologised and rewritten their history” (our translation throughout).
“One of the reasons Russian history is both so vivid and conveniently malleable today stems from the passion with which it has been rewritten over the centuries”, argues British historian Mark Galeotti, adding that “new myths have superimposed the old ones in the process of creating this palimpsest identity, as the populations of this country have taken pains to recognise the lack of strength and common identity by creating legends in which destiny and fragility become determination and pride”. Across the pages, the author shows us how Russia expands to hold the threats surrounding it at arm’s length and how, as it advances, it finds itself confronted with new threats. He reveals to us the country’s pretensions to become the third Rome, even though it is a long way behind the West, but also its almost schizophrenic desire to be European while remaining on Europe’s margins.
Galeotti reminds us that as long ago as the 19th century, “there were already several rival myths connecting Russia directly to Europe”. “The reformers felt that it was not Western enough. The conservatives wanted it to reject the West, on pain of sinking into chaos. As for the revolutionaries, they increasingly turned towards ideologies that were manufactured in Europe and saw in them miracle solutions that could catapult Russia to the ranks of the most socially and economically advanced nations. Russia, which was disinclined to accept the changes that were in the process of remodelling Europe and, at the same time, refusing to be excluded from it, became torn in two by contradictions inherent to the stories it told itself”, the author writes.
Today, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, history is an instrument to legitimise a strong State which needs to defend itself tooth and nail, but which “does not practice aggression”. “Even the toxic propaganda on the public television channel, the removal of independent observers and the rejection of international standards and monitoring in terms of human rights, all of this is deemed necessary to combat foreign interference and the ‘war of information’”, Galeotti explains. Yet “when Russians answer opinion polls on the future they aspire to, the country’s status as a major power and security concerns come a long way down the list”. “What they want above all else is not just to live a decent life, but to have freedom of expression, organisation and into corruption in the feeling of being able to have their say about how their society is organised – in other words, all the liberties we take for granted in Western countries”.
Galeotti concludes by saying: “having spent centuries torn between a desire to be accepted by Europe and a steadfast determination to go it alone, maybe Russia has the possibility to just be itself. After all, the irony about Europe is that the centripetal forces exerted by the European Union, its expansion towards the East and the South, and Brexit, all of this increasingly forces us to realise that there is no such thing as ‘Europe’. There is the Europe of Sweden and Germany, but there is also the Europe of Italy and Greece, the Europe of Hungary, the Europe of the Balkans and the Europe of the United Kingdom, the Europe of France. There is room for Russia if the Russians want to take it. Putin and his accomplices may try to convince themselves – and others – of the contrary, the idea that they are not becoming more European being the very latest myth”. (OJ)
Mark Galeotti. A Short History of Russia: From the Pagans to Putin, Penguin Books 2020. Available in French; translated by Thierry Piélat, Flammarion. ISBN: 978-2-080-24413-0. 313 pages. €21,90
Élections allemandes : il est temps de parler d’Europe !
The deputy director of the Franco-German Institute of Ludwigsburg, Stefan Seidendorf, points out that Europe was conspicuous by its absence in the German general election campaign, even though the “major changes to come will require action at European level” (our translation throughout). While there were two possible coalition options immediately following the elections, negotiations for a so-called “traffic light” coalition, which would bring together the Greens and the Liberals around the Social Democrats, seem to be on track. But as is usually the case, the devil is in the details.
The author notes that the Greens and Liberals have diametrically opposed positions in some areas: “the FDP made a return to the ‘debt brake’ at national level and bringing back the ‘stability pact’ at European level its central election promise, quickly turning into ‘red lines’ for the coalition negotiations. In the opposite corner, the Greens’ manifesto puts forward the sum of 50 billion euros to be invested every year in Germany alone to accompany the major changes required. The Greens consider that this will also require deeper European integration, to better mobilise resources pooled in a common budget fed into by own resources or by common debt – in other words, everything the FDP is against”.
“Although the solution undoubtedly seems to lie in Europe, failure could stem from Germany’s refusal to enter into a public and political debate on its vision of Europe”, Seidendorf argues, before concluding that “the European partners of Germany, particularly France a few months away from taking on the Presidency (…), would be well advised to remind the German players of their responsibilities without delay”. (OJ)
Stefan Seidendorf. Élections allemandes : il est temps de parler d’Europe! (Available in French only). Confrontations Europe. This four-page note can be downloaded from: https://confrontations.org