In Part II, we discussed the mindset of the European Left, his thoughts on the current political leaders in France and across Europe, his run-in with the French courts over freedom of speech, Michel Houellebecq, and more. Reality is a far-Right hoax.
In Part I of my interview with famed French author and political writer Renaud Camus, we talked about the ideas behind his notion of the Great Replacement, and offered some real-world examples of the replacement as evinced in Europe, as well as the philosophy behind his ideas.
How do you explain the defeatism of the current generation in Europe regarding events like terrorist attacks (saying not all Muslims and the like)? Why does it seem that people on the Left can have the view that traditional European culture has to be deconstructed and changed, while philosophies like Islam, which are the opposite of what liberals believe, are held as sacred?
Europe is sick with self-hatred. I think it never recovered from the Nazi episode. That is what I have called ‘The Second Career of Adolf Hitler’: maybe a little less criminal than the first one, but hardly less damaging, historically speaking. Europe is like a patient which has been operated upon so many times and so intensively to try and remove the Hitlerian cancer that the surgeons, in their eagerness to take no chances, have removed not only the cancer but most of the vital organs. The patient has no guts left, no heart, no brains, no virility, no legs, no will. The worst thing in what is happening is that we could very well resist, and still win. But we don’t want to. Europe does not want to. The Europeans don’t even want to know what is happening to them. And those who tell them are punished or banished, like birds of ill omen: the perpetual shooting of the messengers.
Michel Houellebecq brilliantly portrayed the final stage of the great replacement in his novel Submission. Do you see his scenario in the novel as credible? What criticism do you have of his vision?
Oh, utterly credible. My only criticism would be that it is much too convincing. I don’t want to be convinced. I’d much rather have civil war than submission. But of course it would be in no way ”civil’. Just a classical anti-colonial revolt, inspired by resistance to Nazism and struggles for independence.
In 2014 you were fined under French law for voicing a political opinion. Other Frenchmen like Dieudonné have run up against these draconian laws as well. As the Great Replacement progresses, do you predict more and more convictions under these laws as people speak out, and do you think, as President John F Kennedy once said, that ‘those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable’?
It is not only a peaceful revolution they make impossible; it is reality itself. As I once tweeted, reality is a far-Right hoax. I have called fauxel [the term he uses encompasses a sort of false reality akin to Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984-interviewer] the inverted real, the reign of the false, which the replacist power has imposed upon the people. In the fauxel, all words are lies. For instance, a popular district, un quartier populaire, is now, in French, a district from which the people have disappeared, where our own people have been already replaced. Last week I came across a marvellous headline in a newspaper: ‘Disturbing Rise of Religious Feeling in the Metro’. This was supposed to make one understand that nearly half the staff of the Parisian subway is Islamist. We have all become first-class hermeneuts, decryptors, and decypherists of a very strange language, where every word says something different from what it is supposed to say. If, for instance, you read the words un jeune, a youngster, the journalist does not want you to understand from this that he is speaking about a young man. He wants you to understand he is speaking about a non-European, not very old, man. It is exhausting, having to translate everything all the time. The most violent revolution would be truth breaking out of its prison: a subversion of the real against the falseal.
You have done a great deal of writing throughout your career in many fields. Do you have any intention of translating and publishing your political works in English or other languages?
Oh, well, the intention should not be mine. That does not depend on me. If someone wants to translate and publish my books in English, they are very welcome. The only one of them which has been published in English is Tricks, which is a very candid account of forty-five (homo)sexual encounters, with a Preface by Roland Barthes. I’m afraid it might be a little misleading…
You are now involved somewhat formally in French politics. Do you support the ideas of Marine Le Pen as the best of the worst, or as someone who has what it takes to counter the Great Replacement in France?
Well, she certainly has several of the most essential things to counter the Great Replacement: troops, militants, supporters, and voters. I’m not sure I support her ideas. I don’t support all of them in any case, but none of us can afford not to befriend any force which shows determination, at least to some degree, to fight invasion and conquest. As I said before, I’m pleading for unity: not only in France, but in Europe. And it would be madness to pretend and ignore the strongest components in that unity one is trying to achieve.
Regarding the political landscape in Europe, is there a party or leader outside of France who you regard as taking steps against the Great Replacement? If not, what qualities does a politician need in your mind, to open the eyes and ears of the public to this situation?
It seems political leaders, parties, governments, and the people in eastern Europe, such as in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, are much more determined to fight for Europe’s independence and identity than their counterparts in western Europe: as if the Communist dictatorship, for fifty years, had protected them against the anti-racist tyranny. One of the last demonstrations in which I took part was in support of Viktor Orbán, in front of the Hungarian embassy in Paris.
A leader for the resistance would probably come from unexpected quarters, and would not be your run-of-the-mill politician. He or she would need a strong symbolic, emblematic image. The young Le Pen girl, maybe, Marion Maréchal? She reminds the French of Joan of Arc…
Renaud Camus’ work can be viewed on his website http://www.renaud-camus.net and you can follow him on Twitter: @renaudcamus
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