One of the most dispiriting things about the comments shutdown, which we are working to end as quickly as we possibly can, is that we have all missed out on remarks from our friend Hugh Fitzgerald, one of the most erudite and articulate anti-jihadists on the scene today. In fact, I can't think of anyone who tops him in either erudition or elegance of speech, and everything I have read of his is a sheer delight to read.
A note to the many people who have recommended that Hugh get his own blog, and write his own book: rest assured that work is being done on both fronts. Watch for updates.
Anyway, for those of you who are going through Hugh withdrawal, here is something to tide you over: Douce France, a typically perpiscacious meditation on our erstwhile friends in the land of Lafayette:
Imagine that you are a cosseted member of the French elite. One child is doing the khâgne, aiming for rue d’Ulm. Another is now a politechnicien. You are very comfortable, working for the state. You and your spouse are journalists, or writers, or one of that vast tribe of people conducting “recherches” and life is comfortable, good, the way it should be. Yes, you do notice more and more Muslims about you as you walk, no longer in the banlieues, but in the center of Paris, or Toulouse, or Lyon. And you remember how uneasy you felt, four years ago, when you happened to be walking on the Cannebière in Marseille. You decided, then and there, that you would not return.And you have friends who live in the south. And they tell you that the beurs – some call them maghrébins -- make life hell for everyone. They attack French children on the way to school. They vandalize cars. They threaten, and do more than threaten, anyone who is still foolish enough to walk out wearing a kippah or a cross. Whole areas of cities in the south, as in the north, and east, and west, have become off-limits to non-Muslims. In the schools, the teachers have lost authority. They cannot even cover the subjects of World War II, the Resistance, and the murders of the Jews as the state prescribes; they fear, with reason, the violent reaction of the Muslim students.
And as the schools become more and more dangerous for non-Muslim students and teachers, with more time and resources devoted to discipline rather than to learning, French parents and would-be parents are now silently factoring into their childbearing plans the present value of the future cost of what, they see, will now have to be added: private school tuition. And that means, of course, that those French people will plan on smaller families. And they will also be factoring in the growing cost, paid by them, those French taxpayers, for the whole expanding edifice of security, the guards in the schools, the guards at the train stations and métro stations and airports and at government buildings everywhere, the costs of keeping the gravestones from being vandalized, the costs of protecting the synagogues and the churches, the costs for all those tapped phones and agents in mosques, and subsidies to lawyers and judges to hear charges and try cases against Muslims, and the costs of monitoring da'wa in the prisons (more than 50% Muslim).
But the Muslims are indifferent to expenses incurred by the French state. France is part of the world; the world belongs to Allah, and to his Believers. That doctrine has remained immutable for 1400 years. Imam Bouziane, the one they keep trying to deport, had 16 children by two wives, all living on the French state: a representative Muslim man. Over time, the difference between average family size of Muslims and non-Muslims steadily increases. And, over time, the education system continues to disintegrate. Right now, perhaps, you cannot see it. Your children go to the best schools, followed by the best lycées. You vacation in Normandy, or Brittany, or the Ile de Ré. And you do not take the metro often enough, or walk in the right districts, or work in the right factories or offices, to understand what tens of millions of your fellow Frenchmen now have to endure. You, for the moment, are still immune, still willfully unaware. You have spent the last few decades learning about the Muslim world from Eric Rouleau, and his epigones (after they silenced Peroncel-Hugoz, the one journalist who reported the truth) in Le Monde. You are deeply-versed in the constantly reported-upon, endlessly dilated-upon, perfidy of the mighty empire of Israel. You know what we have all had dinned into us: that the Arab Muslims are reasonable people, with clearly-justified grievances, grievances so reasonable and so limited in scope, that justice demands they be satisfied. Everyone agrees on the “solution.” It is called a “two-state solution” and of course it is a “solution” for otherwise, of course, it would not have been called a “solution.”
And everything looks the way it always has looked: the linden trees, the river, the bridges, the réverbères, the étalage in the neighborhood boulangerie. Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance. At the end of the school day, chic mothers still congregate in little towns, or small cities, outside the school – this or that Ecole Jules Ferry -- waiting to pick up their children. Here come the littlest ones, from Maternelle, running up now -- just look at how small they are. And here are the CE1 group, with those huge cartables on their tiny backs. Run, run, run, to Mommy. Oop-la. And then the years of study, study, study marked by ever-larger cahiers -- "cahier" and "cartable" are the words that identify French DNA better than Piaf or gauloises, isn't that true? And now we will read the books, and study the subjects, set down so completely and precisely by the Ministry of Education. And now we are up to the final year, preparing for the Bac, with copies of blue-backed BALISES, guides to Les Châtiments and La Peau de Chagrin. And just look at the results listed in the newspaper: Claire-Alix has a mention très bien. Fantastic. Everything is fine, everything will always stay the same, whole countries cannot change. It’s not possible.
But it is changing, coming apart, quietly, slowly --let’s not look too closely, we mustn't pay too much attention -- the streets, the schools, the hospitals, the ability to speak the truth about things, about life as it is lived, la vita vissuta as they like to say in a neighboring country. Dominique de Villepin always knew there was nothing to worry about; he was born, after all, in Salé, next to Rabat, even spent a few years of his infancy there; of course he knows his Arabs, his Muslims. And surely Eric Rouleau, who for decades in Le Monde was the resident expert on the Middle East (he was so knowledgeable that he never had to so much as mention the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunna), surely he knew everything, didn't he? And those French translations of Edward Said that denounced with such passion the Islamophobia, and those vicious cliches with which the blind and rotting West has always caricatured the Arab Muslim world. Oh, we have been so terrible to the Arabs, we colonialists, we French, we Westerners. And then there is the never-ending outrage of Israel, that running colonial sore. Of course, they have every right, those Muslims, to come here to France. We went to their countries once, now they come to ours. And they have every right to hate us, don’t they?So now we have decided not to understand, and to cut all ties of sympathy to, Israel -- and how did we ever have any sympathy for it in the first place, the way some of our parents did back in 1948 or 1956 or 1967? How could they not have seen what the "Palestinian people" had to endure? Hanan, Yasser, Said, Saeb, Aziz, Walid, Rashid, Mohammed -- you have won our hearts and minds. Take us, do with us what you will.
No one will mention what is happening or what kinds of things we must begin to think about doing to save ourselves. No one of any decency. And whatever Le Pen and Megret say, we must say the opposite (except, of course, when they show their hostility to "the Jews"). Do not say those things, do not think them. Free thought is all very well in theory, but really -- consider the consequences. Don't dare to think outside that box brimming with idées reçues. Défense de penser au dehors du box.
No, everything will be all right as you stroll down the Avenue Paule-Anne. Those Muslims will never be a match for us. Why, just look at those legionnaires marching à pas lent down the Champs-Elysées, think of that string of desert victories. Inside our heads, it is 1930 and over here is the Exposition coloniale. You remember, tu t’en souviens, that painting by le Douanier Rousseau, don't you, with the burnoosed Arab standing next to the black Senegalese? I have it right, don’t I? France will always be France. Nothing will ever change.At a certain point, and despite everything that causes you not to see what is staring you in the face, you realize that something has gone irreparably wrong with your country, and you, and your children, are in danger of losing that country, down to every village and house, qui m’est une province et beaucoup davantage. And you do not know what to do, or how to explain this feeling to others, or in whom to confide your secret fears, or what can be done. It is so confusing, and so upsetting. You cannot vote for Le Pen. You cannot endorse "cowboy" Bush or those ridiculous Americans. You have no place to go.
And then you learn what Jacques Chirac -- who now has a Muslim grandchild himself -- and Dominique de Villepin, do not wish you to learn. For if you did, you might be very angry. You discover that 1 out of every 3 babies born in France today is a Muslim baby. And that means, in 20 years, one of every three 20-year-olds in France will be a Muslim twenty-year-old. And that means, twenty years after that, at present rates of reproduction, France will have a majority Muslim population. Where shall we hide the statues from Marly-le-roi? And the Venus de Milo? And what about all those paintings of animated life -- all those portraits in the Louvre, and the Grand Palais, and the Musée Guimet down there in linden-lined Aix, and everywhere else in art-filled artful France, mère des arts, des armes, et des loix -- that are absolutely forbidden according to the immutable strictures of the Qur'an. Should they be sent for safekeeping to those Americans across the seas? By then most of the Jews in France will have left, gone across the oceans for their own safekeeping, to Israel or to English-speaking Canada (they were worried about the Muslim population of Quebec, you see, which had been allowed to grow under the Province of Quebec's policy of encouraging francophone immigrants, preferring North Africans to potential immigrants from Italy, Greece, Spain), and above all, to America. What luck those Americans have had. No more bequests to France by the likes of the Rothschilds, or Nissim Camondo. No more Donations from another Pierre Lévy. Enjoy the Kufic calligraphy; some find it endlessly fascinating.
For the moment, you allow yourself to believe that something will come up. Most likely, all those Muslims will simply convert. I mean, they do that, don't they, quite easily I'm told. Of course, why didn't I think of it, that is exactly what will happen. The situation is always saved in time. Just like during the war. Nothing to worry about. Nothing.
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Hugh does not “bash” France, he laments the path it has taken in the last thirty years or so.
The french intellectuals so busy in protecting the purity of its language from America and the Anglo saxons were more outraged by words such as “le weekend” or “le sandwich” or “le hamburger” that it hardly paid attention to its Islamisation.
Its dislike of American culture and American politics since the Gaulish days of post WW, led it to make it's eager alliances with the arab world in its desire to secure oil supplies and distance itself from America.
Such alliances were reinforced by its collective guilt of its imperialist transgression in the north African continent. A guilt which formed the core of its intellectual left policy towards Islam.
Such was the glory of french culture that foreigners had indeed flocked to France to experience it for centuries.
Even its cuisine, its boulangeries, its haute couture were elevated to an art form by its protagonists . indeed living in france was itself an art form.
So is it any wonder that the french held their culture in such high regard that they believed that any newcomers would be seduced by it and eventually accept and conform to it.
It was France’s monumental culture which caused it’s blindness to its Islamisation.
How could anybody not be seduced by its wonderful art museums its glorious literature, its magnificent buildings its savoir vivre ?
Had not the Russian Immigrant fleeing the ravages of communism become distinguished french citizens, and the Vietnamese refugees, and the polish communities or the Eastern Christians who had fled the persecution of Islam.
So France opened its gates to Islamic immigration, welcoming a new wave of people who would embrace their culture and be grateful for the largesse of their hosts.
Those who warned of the consequences were silenced by cries of racism or fascism and were associated with the far right who were infested with anti-Semites, holocaust deniers and homophobes
Those who pointed out that Islam has never coexisted peacefully as a minority in any culture were silenced and told that islam is a religion of peace.
When Boumedienne boasted in 1974 at the UN that millions of Muslims would venture north as warriors of islam and would conquer it with the wombs of Islamic women , who paid attention ?
Even The reporting of such a statement would have brought cries of racism from the french intellectual left and its media.
And yet it was about this time that the persecution and slaughter of Middle eastern Christian took a new impetus. Yet again even the reporting of this was virtually banned in the french media.
Whenever such atrocities were reported they would invariably be blamed on Israel not on the jihadists. The political doctrine that the elimination of israel from the map of the middle east would solve the problems of Islamic jihad was at the core of left wing thinking.
The Christian communities joined in the lambasting of israel and even praised their persecutors in the hope that this would calm them down and stop further attacks.
So as far as the french were concerned, any attacks by muslims on eastern Christians were the fault of israel and Islam was exonerated of any blame.
When the massacre at Shatila occurred the same mind set was applied in France.
Although thousends of maronite Christians were at the time seeking refuge from persecution in france, their genocide by Araft's PlO and the Syrians was sub judice.
The PlOs nebulous roots in leftism were enough to grant them immunity from criticism.
Shatila was a jihad training camp attented by international terror groups such as the red brigade , leila khaled ,carlos etc. But was refered to as a refugee camp in the Fremch press .
Because of the writings of journalists such as Fisk and Chomsky it has been remembered whilst the beheadings and rapes of thousands of Christian lebanese are long forgotten.
The PLO murdered some 200,000 lebanese in a country that had given them sanctuary. BUT Who has heard of the massacres at Damour,Aintoura and Mtein .
And so it went on in the yougoslav peninsula, only the killing of muslims raised the eyebrows of the french press.
These are indeed a prime example of the conspiracy of silence surrounding the brutality of islamic Jihad both by the victims of the brutality and by the western presses' non reporting of Islamic ethnic cleansing.