The French Fear Islamization but Do Nothing

In his classic study Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about Southerners’ attitudes towards the rapidly expanding population of Blacks:

In the states of the South, they are quiet; they do not speak about the future to foreigners; they avoid explaining themselves with their friends; everyone is in denial about it even with themselves. There is something more frightening about the silence of the South than the noisy fears of the North. [1]

Almost two centuries later, there is a similar attitude of denial among French politicians about the steady Afro-Islamization of France. Conservatives are happy to talk about “Islamic totalitarianism,” “secularism,” “burkinis,” etc, but not the underlying problem, which is continued Muslim immigration. Socialists recognize the problem in private, but do nothing either to stop the flood of Africans and Muslims. There is something surreal about the situation.

The most striking example of awareness combined with inactivity was provided recently by the publication of a book of exclusive interviews with our painfully uncharismatic and ineffectual president, the Socialist François Hollande. Among Mr. Hollande’s statements, one finds:

• On conservative politician Nadine Morano’s saying that France is “a country of the white race” (quoting Charles de Gaulle): “I am convinced that, when one asks the French, the majority have her position. [. . .] They think: ‘We are for the most part Whites. There are more Whites than others.’ ”
• On Islamic immigration: “There are at the same time things which work very well and the accumulation of potential bombs linked to a continuous immigration. Because it continues.”
• On the salience of race in politics: “The Left cannot win on the theme of identity, but it can lose on the theme of identity.”
• On ethnic segregation and potential civil war: “How can we avoid partition? Because that is really what is happening: partition.”

Mr. Hollande recognizes that integration, let alone assimilation, is not happening and that “at some point [immigration] will have to stop.” And yet, during his four years as president, he has done nothing to stop it. Instead, his government has radically increased the rate of naturalizations of foreigners, providing the flagging Socialists with thousands of new voters in time for national elections next spring.

On the Right, we have the conservative party, now called “Les Républicains,” led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. He knows racial problems well, having made a career from a sort of low-level race-baiting while, as president, actually letting more immigrants settle in France than his Socialist predecessors. Mr. Sarkozy is also well aware of the medium-term existential threat to France. As he said recently at a political meeting:

The Sahel will in 30 years have 200 million inhabitants. There are 6 to 8 children per family on average in the Sahel. Can we continue family reunification in these conditions? Is the future of the Sahel’s children to end up in our cities’ neighborhoods? Even though we have no jobs, no housing, and we no longer have the means to pay benefits for families who do not pay one cent in taxes.

Well said! But can Mr. Sarkozy claim to have been unaware of these facts while he was president from 2007 to 2012? The end of family reunification would be welcome, but in the face of the demographic threat to France and all of Europe, this is like fending off a rhinoceros with a water-pistol. Other than this, Mr. Sarkozy has mainly been trying to win the conservative party primaries by complaining about “burkinis” and demanding “assimilation.” However, as a former adviser Patrick Buisson–a Rightist who recently published a book on his disenchantment with Mr. Sarkozy–has said: “He is ready to say what is needed to get elected and to then do nothing.”

The gravity of the situation is matched only by the sheer fecklessness of European politicians. According to United Nations statistics, the population of Europe (including a growing proportion of highly-fertile non-Whites) will stagnate and decline this century while that of Africa is set to quadruple to a whopping 4 billion. The most important, tragic, horrifying, ungodly, evil question facing Western Civilization and mankind this century is this: Will Europe turn African?

Books warning against Islamization, whether by journalists or second-rate politicians, top the best-seller lists, but most French people care more about welfare and pay checks than long-term considerations. Even on economic issues, they would rather stay in denial, vaguely hoping the problems of a heavily state-run French economy in an inefficient Eurozone monetary union will sort themselves out on their own, rather than ask hard questions. Ethno-religious questions are even more inconceivable.

It is true that diversity is not yet an unmanageable problem in the daily lives of most Frenchmen, aside from the unpleasant evening news about Muslims shooting up hundreds of people at a rock concert, running down dozens of people with a truck on Bastille Day, or trying to burn policemen to death. Incidentally, the last time France’s religious homogeneity was broken–during the Protestant Reformation–this led to a civil war between Catholics and Protestants.

We are told that mass government surveillance, abrogation of civil liberties, and mass murder by the fanatics of a Middle Eastern religion are the price we pay for enjoying the fruits of diversity. And if you don’t like it, you will join the scores of European patriots who have been fined and even jailed under anti-free-speech laws for “inciting hatred.” (By the way, France has passed special laws to counter the Islamic terrorism. These same laws have been invoked to spy on thousands of patriots who have been designated as “security threats.”)

Nonetheless, the current offering for next spring’s presidential elections in France is dismal. Besides Mr. Hollande and Mr. Sarkozy, with whom the French are thoroughly disenchanted, there is the frontrunner in the conservative primaries, Alain Juppé, a felon guilty of misusing public funds, who is proud of France’s “diversity.” He speaks of France’s new “happy identity,” and is being called a “steady,” “serious” candidate–who will change nothing. As mayor of Bordeaux, he noted that 60 percent of the students in some of his schools are “foreign-language speakers,” but appeared to think this was nothing worse than an exciting challenge.

Then there is the eternal promise of the Front National, a party that has risen to unprecedented heights in polls and secondary elections. But this has come at a significant cost: Marine Le Pen has gone to great lengths to “detoxify” the party and stay within the bounds acceptable to France’s heavily policed and state-dependent mainstream media. The “new FN” talks more about dismantling the European Union and the Euro than about identity and Islam, let alone race.

Marine Le Pen is breaking no new ground in the fight against political incorrectness, in contrast with the Alternative for Germany’s Frauke Petry on the other side of the Rhine. And yet, a solid two-thirds of French people still strongly oppose Miss Le Pen. She will probably reach the second-round runoff of the presidential elections and then lose in a landslide, though surely with a better score than her father’s 18 percent in 2002. The majority of Frenchmen are likely to be repelled by the prospect of an FN government that represents the working classes and the ethnocentric fringe. The conservatives, for their part, have refused to work with the FN ever since the French branch of the B’nai B’rith asked them to in 1986.

The most groundbreaking politician in France today is probably the mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, who, in a former life as a leftist, founded Reporters Without Borders, but now calls himself a reactionary. He has broken French law by counting the city’s school children by religion–he found that 65 percent were Muslim, judging from their first names. He wants to reinstate the death penalty, opposes homosexual marriage, and he visited a refugee center to tell the occupants they are not welcome in France. Recently he proposed a municipal referendum to reject the imposition of “refugees” on his town.

Disenchantment is severe among the French: 83 percent think Mr. Hollande is “disqualified” as president due to his failure on unemployment. Two-thirds think Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande were equally bad presidents, and a solid majority, continuously egged on by a hostile media, are “worried” by Marine Le Pen. I am inclined to agree with best-selling author Éric Zemmour, whose latest book is Un Quinquennat Pour Rien (“A Five-Year Term for Nothing”), when he says that the next year’s elections are pointless.

Why is there such a divide between the aspirations of French voters and the politicians on offer? I believe this can be explained only by the authoritarian cliquishness of the French political system: The parties and the media serve as critical choke points to prevent the penetration of nationalist and identitarian movements that might appeal to a majority of the French people. No Trump-like figure–half independent billionaire half media personality–has emerged to break this stranglehold by uniting the nationalist fringe of the disenfranchised white working class with mainstream conservative voters.

All this is depressing, but one must not forget that, as the great European historian Dominique Venner said: “History is nothing but a set of strategic surprises.” The presidential elections are in April and May, and six months is a long time in politics. France cannot remain unaffected by the enormous political and cultural gains made in recent years by nationalists across the West. Happy surprises do happen. If Donald Trump were to win, this would set a patriotic and anti-immigration precedent for many Europeans governments. There is a long tradition of opportunistic European politicians slavishly following the American political and cultural lead.

The mainstream political establishments across Europe are reeling from the economic crisis, the migrant invasion, and–one must not underestimate this–the mainstream media’s own economic and legitimacy crisis due to the rise of alternative media. These establishments are merely trying, in a dull bovine reflex, to keep the ship on course without ever questioning their premises. But this is proving harder and harder. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who for her role in opening the floodgates to Afro-Islamic colonization is an objective enemy of Europe, is facing real problems. Her party, the so-called Christian-Democratic Union, has reached its lowest ever levels of support, falling to less than 30 percent.

The critical media-political choke points of power in the “democratic” West–particularly in America, Germany, and France–are more open for takeover than ever. If one or two go, particularly America, many of the rest are likely to follow. If we are lucky, a major shift towards national-populist governments could be possible. This would appeal to the great majority of our people and drastically reduce the pace of dispossession. And that could be a prelude for far greater things to come.

By the way, 57 percent of French police officers plan to vote FN.

[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), vol. 1, 523.