[Editor’s note: The following is a translation by Ibn Warraq and Robert Kerr of Michel Onfray’s L’Art d’Etre Francais (The Art of Being French, Bouquins, 2021), published here for the first time. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here.]
Virginie Despentes also confesses that she doesn’t know how to “make the connection between what happened and Islam”… Should we cry or laugh? It is thus easy to see why so much nonsense can be uttered: the attacks of September 11? No connection with Islam. The Bataclan massacre? No connection with Islam… The murder of Jewish children by Mohamed Merah? No connection with Islam… The twelve dead and eleven wounded members of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo? No connection with Islam… The murders of Jews in the kosher supermarket by the Kouachi brothers? No connection with Islam…
She added: “I just saw the absurd irony of the whole thing: these Charlie guys [sic] turned into martyrs, and the extreme right-wing UMP-FN alliance pissing on their graves. Yes, it was weird for us Judeo-Christians – me, a blond white girl with pale eyes in the lead – to see that not all civilizations are going to collapse at the same time, and especially Muslim culture seems to be on the first note while we’re playing the last notes of the score. After having despised them, humiliated them, and having been born convinced of our superiority – even if it meant feeling a bit guilty, but so superior –, yes, it felt strange to understand that we won’t be part of the forces that count tomorrow. It’s not uninteresting, but it’s strange to experience the twilight of a civilization.”
Once she understands, Virginie Despentes gives her explanation of the reasons for hatred: “What we shoot at is the proof that we are responsible for our own failures.” So the criminal is a victim and the victim a criminal.
An example for those who do not understand this subtle theory: when Mohamed Merah put the barrel of a gun to the head of a Jewish child and killed him, the guilty party was not Mohamed Merah but the person who made his act possible – most of the time a middle-aged white male, Judeo-Christian… When Merah shoots, it is a white man who should be hung.
Virginie Despentes’ lesson is that these attacks are really reprehensible for one reason only: they have generated an image of terrorism being linked with Islam (remember that the rebellious, award-winning author who was then a member of the Goncourt jury didn’t see the connection…) and of Islam being linked with all Muslims, which is very damaging for the corner grocer where the author of Baise moi (Rape me)[9] does her shopping.
Let us add that, perhaps, a second reason could be found that would make this terror a bad thing: these attacks have indeed generated authoritarian police legislation that is more serious, in the end, than the death of the journalists of the satirical weekly. The idea that a police patrol could stop Virginie Despentes’ car and ask her to open her trunk was indeed a sign that we were now living in a far more dangerous State than the threat posed by those who, shouting “Allah Akbar!”, cold-bloodedly killed Jewish children in a school, Jewish customers in a kosher store, journalists in a newsroom.
In the end, the real issue, as the Saint-Germain-des-Prés intellectual discovers, is “masculinity”! “I believe that this regime of weapons and the right to kill will forever be what defines masculinity,” she writes.
Killers are men? This proves indisputably that men, all men, are killers: “Since they don’t give birth, they kill,” she asserts in an aphorism that sounds like it came out of some Sunday School where ladies sermonize about good and evil.
She concludes, this time as the Mother Superior who chaperoned the catechetical meeting, “When and how do we close the arms factories?” Indeed. How could I not have thought of this earlier: if only the arms factories were closed, there would be no more murders! For it was at arms factories that the Kouachi brothers bought their weapons with their credit cards. What was I thinking?
The left-wing intellectuals therefore walked on eggshells to explain that, in the end, the guilty parties were poor victims and the victims were miserable culprits!
Thus, in Who is Charlie? subtitled Sociology of a Religious Crisis (2015), the French academic Emmanuel Todd, attached to the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris, explained that the millions of people who took to the streets to condemn the terrorism that had just spilled blood were… Islamophobes! It takes a certain skill, if not a certain talent, to produce this kind of paradox, but in Paris, this sleight of hand is common enough.
While Todd claims to follow the sociology of Max Weber, he takes the statistics published by Libération seriously. The analyses seem judicious, but they are not scientific, contrary to what the maps, tables and statistics might lead one to believe. This book is a political and militant work, we wouldn’t want to hold that against him, but it is by no means a scientific production. Therefore, we can question the claim that he is a researcher who objectively interprets the facts as he claims.
The thesis of this book is simple: the dechristianization of France has left the country without bearings. The middle class then looked for an enemy. He writes: “Xenophobia, yesterday reserved for the working classes, is migrating up the social ladder. The middle and upper classes sought a scapegoat” – and they have found one in the Muslims.
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[9] A controversial French novel published by Virginie Despentes in 1994, the English edition entitled Baise moi (Rape me) appeared in 2003.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Orwellian logic is running rampant throughout the Western world. The other day Joe Biden gave a scathing review of the January 6th “insurrection.” Meanwhile, under Biden’s orders, the doors of our southern borders were flung open allowing tens of thousands to violate our sacred sovereignty. Now there is talk of allowing these same illegals to vote in our elections. What’s next, electing them to Congress. Oh, wait, we already accomplished that abomination. I believe her name is Ihan Omar?
jule says
Globalism
Walter Sieruk says
Speaking of the of Islamo- Leftism which is other times is called those of the” Red/Green Alliance”, they are not only un-American in ideas but vicious cruel brutal and malicious as seen by how they terribly treat the pro- Trump patriots in federal prison denying them the basic US Constitutional l and human rights. They are political prisoners.
As revealed In THE EPOCH TIMES 1/5/22 A1,3. “In a series of allegations that Jan. 6 defendants have been beaten, tortured, and denied food and proper medical care while in federal custody …”
That there are “many instances of physical and psychological abuse, 24- hour solitary confinement , denial of access to legal counsel , destruction of records , and general abuse of rights for prisoners…”
Of those many terrible things, just the one alone about the “destruction of records” shows that there are many illegal, unethical and likewise criminal activities by those in power of else there would be no need to destroy recorded information.
This nation that is called the United States of America is far what this country used to be when the government was “of the people, for the people.” Under that treacherous Joe Biden and those in high power how uphold him in the Office of the Presidency and use him as their stooge for their wicked goals the US is gradually becomes a tyranny , as seen by how those Patriots are so terribly abused.
The horrendous ways the patriots are treated in federal prison is, in many ways, similar to the treatment of the political prisoners held in Communist China and North Korea.
Doomer says
What a pathetic example France is giving.In many ways its contribution has been magnificent,but it has the dishonor of its French Revolution ( in the name of human rights) turning into a bloodbath
(40,000 innocents guillotined in 1 year),
and later falling into despotism with NAPOLEON,who:
1. Legalized Slavery again in 1802 ( abolished in 1794).It lasted till 1848.
2. Destroyed Democracy: first became a de facto DICTATOR( title of Consul, for Life, 1799-1804 ),
then EMPEROR ( 1804-1814 ).
3. The French revolutionaries had given Blacks Full Civil Rights, Napoleon Eliminated it. Racism was Legal under him.
4. He promulgated the Code Napoleon the new legal system: in it, WOMEN lost, they were Legally MINORS . It deprived women of ANY individual RIGHTS, and reduced the rights of illegitimate children.
5. Finally,his wars killed 3 MILLION people ( of which 1 million dead French). A real Antichrist.if ever there was one.
Hoi Polloi says
So, Tommy Robinson’s wiki says, “The nom de guerre successfully hid Robinson’s identity as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and his criminal history, until the connection was uncovered in July 2010 by Searchlight magazine.”
While wiki says of Virginie Despentes, “For the book, she had taken the pen name, “Despentes,” which was inspired by La Croix-Rousse, her old neighborhood in Lyon. The neighborhood was hilly; “pente” is French for hill. She had chosen the pen name so that her family could have some distance from the book.”
We are thus instructed in proper thought by wiki that TR is a criminal with no family to protect (as he tries to protect little girls when the UK won’t; but then, wiki doesn’t care either). VD, on the other hand, has only the best (and most literate) intentions on her way to selling out little girls to the real power to come, islam. Thanks again, wiki. Now I’ve got it straight.
jule says
Globalism