Jean Raspail: “We Are Only at the Beginning . . .”

Here is an interview with Jean Raspail that appears in Le Point. It is no surprise that he is unashamedly realistic about the inevitable collapse of Western civilization–unless we give up our “compassion”.

Le Point: Some on the right consider your book The Camp of the Saints, written in 1972, as visionary, especially since the refugee crisis. How do you feel about that?

JR: This migrant crisis puts an end to thirty years of insults and slander against me. I have been called a fascist because of this book considered to be a racist work . . .

Le Point: Are you a racist?

JR: No, not at all! You can’t spend your life traveling the world, be a member of the Society of French Explorers, meet I don’t know how many endangered populations, and be a racist. That would be hard, it seems to me. When it came out in 1972 the book shocked people tremendously, and for a reason. There was a period, notably during the seven-year term of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing when a veritable intellectual terrorism was employed against right-wing writers.

Le Point: “Intellectual terrorism,” already?

JR: Yes. They insulted me, dragged me in the dirt, then gradually it subsided. Because, little by little they began to experience what I had described in the book. A certain number of intellectuals, including those on the left, acknowledged that there was some truth in what I had announced. Bertrand Poirot-Delpech, who had crucified me in Le Monde when the book came out, declared in an article in the same newspaper in 1998, that in the end I was right. Now it’s over.

Le Point: The Camp of the Saints also inspires a rejection as well as an evocation of your name . . .

JR: Among the anti-Raspail irredentists, only Laurent Joffrin remains. There’s nothing you can do about him, he continues to spit on me, he can’t help it. But my friend Denis Tillinac has offered to reply to him. I’m not revengeful. I’m now in my proper place.

Note: Joffrin is head of the left-wing newspaper Libération.

Le Point: If this book is not racist, how would you describe it?

JR: It’s a surprising book.

Le Point: Surprising?

JR: This book came into being in a strange way. Before, I had written books about my travels and novels, with little success. One day in 1972, I was in the South of France staying with one of my wife’s aunts, near Saint-Raphaël, in Vallauris. I had an office with a view of the sea and I said to myself: “And what if they came?” This “they” was not clearly defined at first. Then I imagined that the Third World would rush into this blessed country that is France. It’s a surprising book. It took a long time to write it, but it came to me on its own. I would stop writing in the evening and start again in the morning without knowing where I was going. There is an inspiration in this book that is alien to myself. I am not saying it is divine, but strange.

Le Point: There is one thing you didn’t anticipate: the rejection generated by this book from the moment it appeared . . .

JR: When my publisher Robert Laffont, an apolitical man, read the manuscript, he was very enthusiastic and did not change a comma. Moreover, I did not change anything.

Le Point: Would such a book have been possible today?

JR: At first, The Camp of the Saints did not sell. For at least five or six years it stagnated. Very few sales. Then three years later, suddenly, the sales went up. Success came by word-of-mouth and thanks to the promotion from right-wing writers, until the day, in 2001, when a boatload of Kurdish refugees went ashore in Boulouris, near Saint-Raphaël, a few yards from the office where I wrote The Camp of the Saints! This affair made a terrible row in the region. Right away they began talking about my book again and it reached a wide public. It was the beginning of the arrival by sea of people from elsewhere. I am a bit ashamed, because whenever there is a large influx of migrants, it gets reprinted. It’s consubstantial with what is happening.

Le Point: Is it a political book?

JR: Perhaps a little, yes. The last stronghold of faithful and of fighters is composed of patriots attached to their identity and their land. They rise up against general fraternity and miscegenation (métissage) . . .

Le Point: You say you are not of the extreme right, but your book has become like a tract within certain xenophobic groups. Are you sorry about that?

JR: You’re speaking of the extreme of the extreme right! It’s possible that this book is being misused and there can be, at times, language that is excessive. There’s nothing I can do about that. Anyway, I don’t go to the Internet, I have not entered the 21st century, so I don’t know what they’re saying. Personally I am on the right, and it doesn’t bother me to say so. I am even “right-right”.

Le Point: Which means?

JR: Let’s say more to the right than Juppé. I am first of all a free man, never beholden to a party. I patrol the borders.

Note: Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux, is hardly on the right. A former member of Sarkozy’s cabinet, he is known as an activist for the Muslim population of his city and has promoted the building of mosques.

Le Point: Do you vote?

JR: Not always. I’m a royalist. I vote in the last round of the presidential elections. I don’t vote left, that’s for sure.

Le Point: Have you thought about a sequel to The Camp of the Saints?

JR: It is certain that there will be one, but not from me. Will it come out before the great collapse? I’m not sure.

Le Point: In your book you speak of the “ferocious” nature of the migrants. But we see today that those arriving from Syria or elsewhere don’t have a knife between their teeth . . .

JR: What’s happening today isn’t important, it’s anecdotal, for we are only at the beginning. Right now, the whole world is talking about this, there are thousands of specialists on the issue of migrants, it’s a chaos of commentary. Not one looks at the thirty-five years that lie ahead. The situation we are living through today is nothing compared to what awaits us in 2050. There will be nine billion people on the earth. Africa has gone from one hundred million to one billion inhabitants in a century, and perhaps twice that in 2050. Will the world be livable? The overpopulation and the wars of religion will make the situation fragile. That’s when the invasion will occur, it is ineluctable. The migrants will come in great part from Africa, the Middle East and the borders of Asia . . .

Le Point: Should we fight the evil at the roots and bomb the strategic points of Daesh, as France has just done?

JR: It’s their problem not ours. It doesn’t concern us. What are we doing in this business? Why do we want to play a role? Let them cope! Years ago we got out of these regions? Why go back?

Le Point: And what do we do when Syria sends out orders to attack France?

JR: We block them. We prevent them from entering French territory. The politicians have no solution to this problem. It’s like the debt–we pass it on to our grandchildren. Our grandchildren will have to manage this problem of massive migration.

Le Point: The Catholic Church is not at all on this wave length. It is urging the faithful to show their generosity . . .

JR: I have written that Christian charity will suffer a bit when faced with the answers to the influx of migrants. It will have to steel itself and suppress compassion of all sorts. Otherwise, our countries will be submerged.

Le Point: Refuse everybody, including the Eastern Christians?

JR: Possibly. But they are closer to the Westerners through their religion. This is why many Frenchmen would like to accept them. France, this country with no religious belief, proves that the basis of Western civilization is a Christian basis. People, even if they don’t go to church anymore and or practice, react in accordance with this Christian basis.