No left-wing political leader has a commanding influence in France. In this void, toxic theories are resuscitated, and used to frame discussion, without robust or persuasive rebuke
Today, however, France is seeing a disconcerting revival of ultranationalist thinking, and with it the rehabilitation of once-ostracised reactionary writers. Robert Laffont, a respected Paris publisher, reprinted the collected works of Maurras in 2018. This year a right-wing French publisher reissued “The Great Replacement”, which first came out in 2011; its author, Renaud Camus, is a hard-right writer currently appealing a conviction for incitement to racial hatred.
Two sinister underlying obsessions link this contemporary discourse to the earlier reactionary and nationalist French essayists. The first is a belief in an immutable “eternal France”. Maurras, who was a leading figure in Action Française, a political movement that was founded in 1899 to defend “true France”, termed this: a land of church spires, ancestral soil and family tradition.
The second obsession is paranoia about decline, and the failure of elites to protect French identity. For Maurras, the chief menace to it was that enemy within: Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and foreigners. For Barrès, the enemy was principally without: Germany, and its military might. For Mr Camus and Mr Zemmour, it is above all Islam.
That such views are given a legitimate airing is new, and disquieting. Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the hard-right party that his daughter, Marine Le Pen, rebranded and now leads, appalled the salons of Paris and was treated accordingly. Mr Zemmour, who is well-read and flatters the French regard for the, is handled with respect. Aspiring presidential candidates are invited by debate moderators, with scarcely a blush, to offer their perspective on the “great replacement theory”.
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