Hugh on the French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin and attendant miseries:
One cannot say enough bad things about Dominique de Villepin. The formula I have attempted to suggest repeatedly is “preening poseur.” The diplomat-poet, who will read you his verses, whether you asked to hear them or not. There was a telling picture of him a year or so ago, going backstage after what’s-her-name, the actress in Pauline au plage who married Bernard-Henri Levy (another preening poseur, but not nearly as stupid as DdeV), had just opened in “Beauty and the Beast” — my how silly he looked.
Don’t forget that DdeV won’t let you forget that he was born in Salé, hard by Rabat, in 1953, and so — having spent those important years 0-3 or so in Morocco, he “understands” the Arab and Muslim world. Right. And if he doesn’t “understand” everything, except how pretty the Centre du monde arabe is (oh, and it is, lots of curlicues and calligraphy and a real hammam), then Tahar Ben Jelloun and the silly Gilles Kepel, or the pretend-serious Olivier Roy (imagine Gilles Kepel crossed with, say, Anthony Cordesman, so there’s a bit more portentousness and grownupnesss in the delivery of the obvious than you find in Gilles “Wrong Again” Kepel).
Perish the thought that he could take time from his busy schedule to read the late Kateb Yacine on Berbers and Arabs, much less, on that little matter of Islam — say, does that Paris-Amsterdam train still go aller-retour from the Gare du Nord. No time to consult with the maghrebins laiques organization in France, or to read Kateb Yacine on the Arab treatment of Berbers and Berber culture, much less to read Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina, or Azam Kamguian, or Anwar Shaikh on Islam as Arab Imperialism, or a thousand others who might just set some Infidels straight. But DdeV is one of the ruling elite who permitted, to France’s great and permanent damage, the migration into France, and the taking root in France, and the failure to contain or constrain, in France, millions of Muslims who, now that they are there, have made life less interesting, more inhibited, more unpleasant, much more expensive, much more agitated, and far more dangerous, to Infidels.
France should be referred to, formulaically, as Occupied France. But the Free French, from Brazzaville to Boston to Buenos Aires to Beijing, can start having mini-demonstrations outside French embassies from Ouagadougou to Washington. It will begin to get attention.
The signs should not be simple-minded (“Muslims Out” “A bas la dhimmitude” and so on). In the end, of course, their target is the slow Muslim conquest of France from within, through unhindered immigration, disproportionately high birthrates, and active efforts at Da”wa. But the signs will not directly discuss, at least at first, the potential for Muslim takeover, through demographic conquest and unceasing Muslim demands and dhimmitude in response to both, but to remind the French that what makes France France would not last a minute in an Islamized society. Self-assurance or even condescension — for “cowboy” Americans–is even sillier than usual if those exhibiting these attitudes have forgotten to preserve, or respect, those achievements from which the original assurance or condescension had derived. There is hardly a writer or an artist or a scientist in France who could ever have been produced within Islam, or would have lasted a minute within a Muslim society. This must not be forgotten.
By alluding to such people, you begin to remind everyone — in Occupied France and outside Occupied France — that those unpleasant people who have been allowed to monopolize, and thereby discredit, a sensible policy of halting Muslim immigration and limiting or reversing the Muslim presence in France — not because “Muslims are bad” but because of the nature of the belief-system that is Islam. For adherents of that belief-system, to the extent that they remain good Muslims, or find, after some setback (and it could be anything) consolation in a faith with renewed fervor, are a danger, whether in posse or in esse, to all Infidels.
This is why the first demonstrations must begin with Français d”outre-mer et a l”etranger, and then extend to Metropolitan France itself. First a little, thence to more. You must make an end-run around the government-controlled press, and Le Monde, and Libération, and also around those who until now have been allowed to monopolize, and thereby to discredit, because they are such people as Le Pen, any sober discussion of what Islam is all about, of why it is not the Fascists who are their real enemy, because Islam as a belief-system has so much in common with Fascism, but quite different people.
There is hardly a French person who would not, if asked, wish that the migration from Muslim countries of the past few decades had never taken place. But though that may be silently recognized, there has not been any public discussion of what will happen if the Muslim population continues to grow unchecked and unreversed, and tens of millions of people silently endure the transformation of their own country into something unrecognizable. The present inhabitants of France are demonstrating great ingratitude to those who left them a certain legacy, and which they have no right to toss aside, or to create the conditions in which that legacy will be lost. Life in France is now less free, more expensive, more unpleasant, more agitated and uncertain, and much more dangerous, than it would be, had the indigenous French Infidels not admitted into their midst the adherents of a belief-system that uncompromisingly divides the world between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, between the Believer and the Infidel.
One needs somehow to bring the matter of cultural suicide to the attention — in small ways at first — of the population in what can be called Occupied France.
One suggestion is for protestors, French and sympathizers with France, who can hold small protests outside various French Embassies — possibly beginning, in a spirit of “La Fayette nous voilà ” — J. J. Jusserand would have understood, even if Pierre-David Levitte pretends not to — and to be the subject of articles, and in those articles, they will have the chance to express their views about the current state of France, what prevents people from finding out even about such matters as the real census figures and estimates, and to protest the stultifying condition of the pensée unique that has France in its grip.
Here are samples of signs that might be made, and then carried aloft, in silent reproach, by protesters — and the more fetching the female protesters in the group, the better — outside French embassies everywhere.
#1.
For those who remember their zero-de-conduite schooldays, and who now appreciate that greatest of French contributions to world civilization, the dictée:
More Montaigne, Less Mohammad#2.
For those who had the misfortune to study after things eased up, and who failed at the time to appreciate the dictee, and perhaps appreciated just a bit too much the que sçais-je? theme, and for whom the world is not quite as word-centered as for their parents or grandparents:
More Mistinguett, Less Mohammad#3.
Long before there was the crook Chirac, or the poseur D.de V., other kinds of people were in French political life. The smiling, clever, relaxed, bemused, cultivated face of French tolerance, and que-sçais-je?, mixing Montaigne and Mistinguett, and making one think back to French governments at their short-lived best (from 1945 to 1958), but which, in light of what happened under the “three regimes” of the Fourth Republic — the Chirac regime, before it the Mitterand regime, and before it the extended regime of De Gaulle et Cie, those post-war musical chairs seem positively appealing.So the last in the series of Infidel signposts along the dissenting way should read:
More Mendes-France, Less Mohammad“La France a perdu une bataille. La France n’a pas perdu la guerre. Elle n’est pas seule. Elle a un grand empire derrière elle! cette guerre ne prendra pas fin avec la bataille de France car c’est une guerre mondiale.”
The “empire” referred to here must in 2004, be a reference to that “grand empire” which consists of a single puissant state, L”Amérique septentrionale. Other than that, the text needs no emendation and no gloss.
Français, I speak to you from Brazzaville.