July 15, 2004

France’s “Anti-Hate” Hysteria: Facts Need Not Apply

By Paul Gottfried

[Recently by Paul Gottfried: Benny Morris’ Second Thoughts About Israel: Three Quibbles And A Question]

Under the misleading headline “Anti-Semitic Attack in Paris” the New York Post (July 14) published a Reuters report that

“French politicians, police, and religious leaders appealed Monday for severe punishments and new ideas to combat race hatred that led to an anti-Semitic attack on a young mother and her baby on a train.”

Indeed French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin appeared beside himself as he tried to cope with the “barbarous act” of racism—the robbing of the young woman and the drawing of a swastika on her stomach.

Neither the female victim nor her child was physically hurt (and may not even have been Jewish—but more on this later) Still, what happened to them, we were led to believe, required immediate anti-hate legislation.

The last such initiative in France, something we were not told, was in July 1990, when the Loi Gayssot, intended to deal with “neofascist” bigotry, was passed with overwhelming Communist-Socialist support.

This law, introduced by the Communist deputy Jean-Claude Gayssot, treats any published denial of the received account of the Holocaust, or any public statement that a judge might interpret as being offensive to a religious, ethnic, or racial group, as a criminal offense.

Since its passage the Loi Gayssot has been applied, predictably and almost exclusively, to Frenchmen (and women) who are white Christians.

But to French politicians, it would seem that the French live in a hate-law impoverished country.

It is only after reading more carefully that one learns that the alleged bigots in question were—“six youths of Arab and African origin.”

Paradoxically, French Jews contribute disproportionately to LICRA (Ligue Internationale contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme) and to other pro-immigration organizations that have done all they can to fill France with Islamicist anti-Semites.

In other words, the problem of “French anti-Semitism” is one that French Jews, and American Jewish liberals, exacerbate by supporting expanded immigration from Muslim countries as well as from everywhere else in the Third World.

At least equally to blame is the (supposedly center-right) French government. Raffarin’s minister of interior, Nicolas Sarkozy has called for combating the evil of French “racism”—make that “French” “racism”—by getting French commerce and education to practice “positive discrimination” i.e. Affirmative Action for the growing Muslim minority.

In a speech on the Rhone River on February 13, Sarkozy declared that “the children of Latifa and Mohammed [in the multicultural France now emerging] should receive more [public] assistance than that of Nicolas and Cecilia.” ["le fils de Mohamed et Latifa doit être plus aidé que celui de Nicolas et Cécilia".]

By "Nicolas and Cecilia," he means himself and his wife, Cecilia Sarkozy. Of course, the children of Cabinet Ministers are unlikely to be the "Invisible Victims" of racial preferences. (Here’s an open letter from a young Frenchman who is.)

Sarkozy has nothing to fear. His priorities are already in place. Beside the push for minority quotas and the manipulation of the facts about who is to blame for bigotry and violence, there is the added annoyance that much of the French budget is spent on social programs, and much of that goes to North Africans and Muslims.

Moreover, as noted by French novelist and man of letters Jean Raspail in Le Figaro, France is facing what may be an “irreversible situation” of population displacement and replacement. If present trends continue, and Raspail has no doubt that they will, by 2050

"French stock" will count for only half—the older half—of the population of the country, the remainder being composed of Africans, North Africans or blacks and Asians of all origins from the inexhaustible reserve of the Third World, with a dominant strain of Islam, Jihadists and fundamentalists included… [“«Français de souche» se compter seulement la moitié – la plus âgée – de la population du pays, le reste étant composé d'Africains, Maghrébins ou Noirs et d'Asiatiques de toutes provenances issus du réservoir inépuisable du tiers monde, avec forte dominante de l'islam, djihadistes et fondamentalistes compris…]   "La patrie trahie par la République"  by Jean Raspail, Le Figaro, 17 juin 2004

Raspail believes that nothing short of a Reconquista, “different from the Spanish one but inspired by the same concerns” will allow the “European Christian enclaves” to reclaim their countries.

The now-aging author of Camp of the Saints risks prosecution under the existing French hate laws, as he points out, not only for speaking about immigration frankly but also for expressing these anti-globalist “words of apostasy” [mot renégat].

He blames the present French Republic and its human rights doctrines for betraying France as his “physical fatherland.”

Raspail spells out what he sees as the “particular France” that is now under attack from both an anti-national republic and multicultural migrations. It is or was based “on families, natality, an endogamy of survival, its own national schools, and networks of solidarity.”

In contrast, Raspail cites the visionary speech of longtime minister Laurent Fabius, addressing a Socialist congress at Dijon in May 2003.

Incredibly, Fabius expressed the hope that "When the Marianne of our City Halls has the pretty face of a young Frenchwoman sprung from [Third World] immigrants, on that day France will have taken a step to make the values of the Republic fully alive." [Quand la Marianne de nos mairies prendra le beau visage d'une jeune Française issue de l'immigration, ce jour-là la France aura franchi un pas en faisant vivre pleinement les valeurs de la République.]

Of course, Fabius’s words could have been published in the New York Post or Wall Street Journal, substituting Uncle Sam for Marianne  and “nation of immigrants” or “credal nation” for “the values of the Republic.”

Here’s the kicker, which I’ve left for last: on the very day the  Post published its report on “French anti-Semitism,” another story immediately followed, although not (as far as I can see) in the Post,  [French woman admits she made up anti-Semitic attack , Yahoo.com News, July 14] explaining that the reported incident was entirely fictitious. [VDARE.COM NOTE: See here, here, here, and here, for fake hate crimes in the United State]

This contretemps has embarrassed both the Prime Minister and President Chirac—but when an interviewer asked Chirac if he regretted the huge public furor caused by this false accusation, he replied "Je ne regrette pas."

Neither the French government nor American immigration enthusiasts will do what is necessary to control the problem of “hate” that they claim to be so concerned about: stop importing it—by getting immigration under control..