Islamo-Leftism (Part 4)

[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.]

… and things

The history of France, since then, is one of the country’s long allegiance to Islamo-leftist demands: complicit silence on the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie; acceptance of polygamy on national territory; promotion of Muslim human rights against those of the French Revolution; demand for repentance for the Algerian War; con­sti­tution of Islamic trade unions; exacerbation of the right to difference; the Islamic veil; celebration of Afghan jihadists; validation of sexual mutilation, namely female circumcision; proclaiming blasphemy as a crime; comparison of colonialism to national socialism; positive discrimination; attack on the freedom of conscience; reactivation of old-fashioned Muslim anti-Semitism; refusal of secular education; rejection of the national education system’s curriculum in science and history; presentation of immigration as an opportunity for France; rewriting history in the sense of a submission of white civilization to that of the so-called Blacks of Egypt and the Muslims; rejection of nativity scenes and Christmas trees in public places; generalization of halal slaughter; tolerance of Muslim violence in the lost territories of the Republic; invention of the notion of Islamophobia;  rewriting the history of France in a stigmatizing way; and then, worst of all: justification of Muslim terrorism…

How can we understand the reactions of this or that person to the attack on the Bataclan, [music venue in Paris] which killed 131 people and whose photos, which do exist, have been banned from publication? For what mysterious reasons? How could we have credibly combatted the totalitarianisms of the 20th century if we had not shown, as Alain Resnais did in his 1956 film Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard), the corpses of the victims of National Socialism? But then it’s true that we never show those of the victims of Marxist-Leninism either…

The attacks have been numerous and have allowed journalists, intellectuals, and philosophers who are fellow travelers of Islamo-leftism to react. For example, Virginie Despentes published an unambiguous piece in Les Inrockuptibles[7] (17 January 2015), the flagship publication of this ideology…

The argument can already be found in the work of Houria Bouteldja[8]: the emasculated white Westerner resents the Arab-Muslim man, to use the appropriate terminology, on account of his virility, or even his supervirility.

One needs only to read Virginie Despentes’ title to understand her thesis:

“Men remind us who is in charge, and how.” Obviously, it is out of the question that a white man can be in charge, that would be fascism, racism, sexism, phallocracy, homophobia, anti-Semitism, et cetera! Conversely, if we are dealing with non white males (the “Arab-Muslim” to express oneself as Houria Bouteldja does, of the mestizo, in the words of Guy Hocquenghem, of the creole in the diction of Édouard Glissant), then one can enjoy different privileges – sexual possession proves to be the great fantasy of those who, in their insults, propose to fuck mothers or threaten to sodomize anyone who looks at them in the wrong way. While Christian eroticism based on the imitation of an angelic or martyred body for men or a virgin mother for women, was not very balanced, Muslim imagination in this field does not seem to offer a more desirable alternative: the desire to penetrate someone’s mother’s pudenda or the rectum of men in order to punish them, never ceases to amaze.

Virginie Despentes says that after the attacks of January 7, 2015, which decimated the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and which, the following day, caused the death of four Jews in a kosher supermarket, her first reaction was to love everyone, without distinction… She said she loved even those who were not Charlie, which hardly seemed a feat out of reach for anyone defending the Islamo-leftist line! Given that she loved what was furthest from her habitual loves, she even “was Charlie”, that’s how hard she tried.

But this wave of love went even further, for, in a statement that would have sent shivers down the spine of the Pope, such an extension of the scope of love was truly Christ-like, she added: “I was also the guys who went in with their guns. Those who had just bought a Kalashnikov on the black market and had decided, in their own way, the only one [sic] available to them, was to die standing up rather than living on their knees. I also liked those who made their victims stand up and ask them to identify themselves before aiming at their faces. I also liked their desperation. Their way of saying – you don’t want me, you don’t want to see me, you think I’m going to live my life crouched in a ghetto putting up with your hostility without getting in the way of your week of sales shopping or your round of golf – I’m going to break into your fucking realities that I hate because not only do they exclude me but they put me in jail and condemn all of my people to the dishonor of a ponderous precariousness. I loved them in the sweeping movement of the lens, their gesture also became a declaration of love [sic] – look at me, take me into account” – as if it were the only way to get to the sales and the golf course on one day.

But the declaration of love made to the terrorists does not stop there. Here is how the Passion, according to Despentes, continues: “I loved them in their awkward blundering – when I saw them with their weapons in hand sowing terror while shouting ‘we have avenged the Prophet’ and not finding the right tone to say it. Like a bad action movie, bad gangsta-rap. Right down to their heroic [sic] act, something that didn’t succeed.”

She goes on to talk about the victims of 9/11, the Jewish children murdered at close range by Mohamed Merah in front of their Jewish school, noting, “I can’t seem to differentiate between these different ways of dying.”

This is followed by musings on “the mushy leftism” of Libération and Charlie Hebdo which were attacked by these famous perpetrators of “heroic acts” – including the murder of Jewish children… Ultimately, Virginie Despentes resigns herself to defend the right-wing left – honor is preserved intact, the readers of Libération who go to the sales and play golf, those of the Inrockuptibles too, ditto with those of Le Monde, or the listeners of France Inter will have been spooked for nothing! They will still be able to vote Macron in the second round of the presidential elections…

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[7] Inrockuptibles, first published in 1986, is a French magazine, initially covering only rock music, but now covers all matters political and cultural. It is on the hard left of the political spectrum.

[8] Houria Bouteldja [born 1973] with parents of Algerian origin. Houria has often been accused of antisemitism, homophobia, and antiwhite prejudice.