They’re American imports, say many Frenchmen, ones causing lots of trouble. They want them gone, too. And this spirit has in France sparked a perhaps stronger pushback against the threats in question — toxic left-wing theories of supposedly Yankee pedigree — than in any other Western country.
As The New York Times reports:
The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.
The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,” said President Emmanuel Macron.
French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,” warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.
… Mr. Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused universities, under American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by providing the intellectual justification behind their acts.
A group of 100 prominent scholars wrote an open letter supporting the minister and decrying theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.
… Pitted against them is a younger, more diverse guard that considers these theories as tools to understanding the willful blind spots of an increasingly diverse nation that still recoils at the mention of race.
So how is it that the French — whom conservatives regularly deride as specializing in white-flag production — and who’ve often been epitomized by leftism, are rebelling against “wokeness”?
One explanation the Times presents is that “France has long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental rights and core values like equality and liberty, rejecting diversity and multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society at war with itself.”
Yet there’s another, more significant reason. The “tangible, violent threat of Islamism, a clear and present danger in France, is a more important factor in rejecting identity politics,” notes American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson. “France has the largest Muslim population in Europe and is more threatened by Islamists than others. There are many ‘no go’ zones in heavily Muslim areas, especially in the suburbs, where police effectively are not in control.”
It’s even worse, however, than this indicates. In fact, immigrationism-born Islamic enclaves are so entrenched in France that an author named Christian de Moliner actually suggested that the country essentially be divided to avoid civil war with Muslims.
Writing in 2017, de Moliner stated that the Franco-Islamic “war in France is just beginning” and that we “can never put the toothpaste back in the tube and convert the 30 percent of Muslims who demand the introduction of sharia to … our democracy.” His solution?
Create what essentially would be a semi-autonomous Sharia state within France, where Muslims who so choose could live by the Koran.
It’s obvious, given this, why some Frenchmen would be concerned about stirring the pot further with identity politics: For them, it’s the 11th hour (at best).
One fault of man is that he tends to accept the status quo and not take necessary remedial action until it’s almost, or actually, too late. France is now frighteningly far down the rabbit hole of balkanization.
Further explaining the Gallic pushback, Lifson points out that the nation “also, since the French Revolution, has embraced secularism, originally directed against the Catholic Church but now finding more to fear and oppose in radical Islam. France has actually banned wearing face coverings like the niqab and hijab in public for more than a decade.”
Yet the Revolution — a bloody, destructive, radical leftist enterprise — and the secularism it birthed are the problem. For not only did the latter preclude consideration of how it could be impossible to assimilate large numbers of devotees of a radically different faith (“Religion is just window dressing, right?”), but, also, what does it provide to assimilate into?
Consider: If millions of ardent Marxists settled in your country, would you be surprised if a decade later you faced ideological discord and division and a communist insurgency? Now, is religious doctrine — which devout adherents believe is ordained by the Creator of All — not even more intractable? Isn’t assuming that devoted theists would accept your secularism even more fanciful than supposing devoted Marxists would accept your theism?
Talking about rejecting multiculturalism, the doctrine, rings hollow when multiculturalism, the condition, is made reality. Trumpeting “equality” (a lie, anyway) cuts no ice with people whose faith specifically rejects equality. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” — mere values — cannot compete with what people consider Truth.
For man does not live on bread alone. As to this, what does France (and the West in general) now offer to assimilate into? Bread, wine, and cheese? Moral relativism, salacious sexuality, pop psychology, and various and sundry isms that change with the wind? Many throughout history have died for God (and some kill for Him). How many will die for “equality”?
Really, there is here what many would call a classical “cultural misunderstanding,” along with some contradiction and implicit ideological chauvinism. Western moderns assume that their secularism is reasonable because, well, it allows everyone to have his religion — just don’t claim yours is exclusively true or seek to impose it on others. It’s no big deal, anyway, right, because everything being relative, religion is akin to taste? That’s how they view it.
Yet what happens when your new immigrants’ faith explicitly rejects these ideas (and no believing Muslim, Christian, or Jew is a relativist)? Moreover, why would you expect them to treat your secularism as if it’s exclusively true as you seek to impose it on them? Are your secular ideas so obviously superior? Is your relativism, somehow, the only absolute?
Such an understanding may be why de Moliner, under fewer illusions, says that the French “can never put the toothpaste back in the tube.” They should have considered this before opening the tube.
As to who’ll win the clash of civilizations, well, right now it’s intellectuals vs. imams, fancies vs. faith, the superficial vs. the spiritual. Who would you bet your money on?
