Hello from France and thanks for that great piece. One could actually believe you live here... We are indeed reaching a turning point and I seriously think that should France fall, the rest of the West would be doomed. There seems to be a "pincer" threat between the new woke faith coming from the far left feeding from US campuses and the rise of Islamism feeding from uncontrolled immigration. We are closing a loop now with the post-modernism coming from the US but originally created by French leftist philosophers and the immediate threat of terrorism made possible by irresponsible politicians raised in liberal post-modernist ideas.
1) France is fragile because, while it is the oldest Western nation, it has a unique DNA - which actually has nothing to do with DNA. France is a nation that was not built upon an ethnicity or tribal group. And it's not a federation like Germany or a group of kingdoms like the UK, it is a centralized country. We have the Franks, a German barbaric tribe, the Gallic Celts, the Scandinavian Normands, and indeed the Latin Romans to cite the key components. It means the country cannot rely on ethnicity to regroup. It's a unique identity that makes France hold together based on a long history made of tears and glory, shared values and of course Catholicism. The danger today is that the woke left pushes to deconstruct French history which is our key bond while the Catholic faith has weakened like elsewhere in the West. The ties holding the nation together are weaker today. It is also fragile because massive immigration from North Africa brought Islam which is not just a faith but a political ideology which fundamentally conflicts with French secular values and Catholic roots. There has also been a cold type of Civil war since the French revolution that has deeply divided our people and almost like a national trauma. Let's not forget about half a million people were killed in the 1790 and that crack has resurfaced since then. That weakens the ability to resist as a nation.
2) This special identity brings strengths as well. There is a new alliance of intellectuals and regular people who want to resist and they come both from Right and Left typically because it is about saving a nation a bit like Catholic monarchists and Anti Clerical socialists fought together in the trenches in WW1. This is quite unique as well and can inspire other countries. You can find atheist philosophers like Michel Onfray, who defines himself as a Socialist partnering with Eric Zemmour, a writer of Jewish North African descent who admires Napoleon. Today we have ppl like those really willing to work together against the threat. The other strength is the French Army which is today the last 'real' army in Europe. It cannot compare with the US in terms of fire power and IT but it has remained solid with real fighting experience and also a deep understanding of foreign terrains and civilizations. Most officers joining the armed forces come with strongly rooted ideals. It is for a reason that the elite Foreign Legion is made of people coming from around the globe and ready to fight for France to their deaths. This example has a deep meaning that France still lives and inspires and it explains why the military is so popular for a big majority of French people, why their letters resonated so deeply. Remember Joan of Arc. She is today still seen as a savior whether you are Catholic or not... The secular values are rooted as well with a spirit of neutrality in public spaces when it comes to religion. This is a major fence to resist against Islamism and it is shared between Left and Right - hence the alliance mentioned above. "Laicite" is typically misunderstood in the Anglo Saxon world but it basically refers to strict neutrality. It has nothing to do with racism. Since Islamism always creeps in by taking small steps, winning small victories until it can rule, our secular values are an important weapon. This is probably why the Woke left influenced by the US campuses targets these values as a priority, by promoting a multi cultural society which simply doesn't belong here and would mean war.
The current upheaval is global, and not (as you eloquently say) limited to national borders. But you are right to monitor the situation in France. It is the thin and cracked backbone supporting the western civilization. The other major card in our house of cards is America... Both countries have in common to look at the world with universal eyes for good and bad reasons.
You have described perfectly the situation in France, in particular, the loss of Catholic faith and values that used to bind people to one another and to their leaders. A few days ago, we celebrated the feast of St. Joan of Arc, defender of France. There may come a time when celebrating her feast day, as well as the feast days of St. Denis, St. Mary Magdalene (also a patron saint of France), St. King Louis IX, will be “cancelled,” and all the names of cities, towns, villages, and streets referring to Notre Dame and the Saints, will be changed.
May the spirit and soul of St. Jeanne d’Arc continue to protect and inspire the French Army and may they feel the respect and appreciation they deserve from the rest of the world for their efforts to hold the line. God and St. Jeanne please protect them. 🙏
The West became "woke" in the late 1970s when it thought it a good idea to recruit, arm and train and fund Islamic terrorists to "fight Communist Russia" in Afghanistan. Sounded like a jolly progressive idea then - until the child turned out to be a Frankenstein monster.
Interesting piece by one of our most creative - and slightly insane - writers thru the link above. He's doesn't care about political correctness and that's why his voice is heard
The problem is that government is no longer by the consent of the governed.
In Western Democracies, unelected regulators, judges and bureaucrats make almost all of the most important decisions. This causes unrest because elections appear not to have the consequences voters expect.
Governments faced with popular protest movements, like the Tea Party or Yellow Vests, suppress them like peasant uprisings. Unpopular policies, like transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, are justified by unexplained "expert opinion." Even dissenting experts are suppressed.
For example, open discussion of global warming, whether it exists and, if it does, the most economical ways to deal with it, is suppressed. The common man may not have an MS in Statistics, like me, but they notice gasoline prices are going up in service of a theory which allows no dissent. This causes unrest.
The prevailing governing philosophy is that government knows better than the people themselves what's best for them. Vox populi, vox dei, is a totally obsolete concept for modern bureaucrats. However, the people think they should be able to choose for themselves. This conflict will only be resolved by a return to less intrusive government, or an advance to a more openly oppressive state. So far, the state is getting more repressive, but allowing mob violence to intimidate political enemies into submission.
Yes, and in America the Federal Government has lost it's legitimacy and had to rely on Fraud and Force. Biden & Co were sworn in surrounded by 25,000 Soldiers, no citizens, in an eerie state funeral for the Republic overlooking a field of flags - as if it was a cemetery.
This is a hollow government relying on STASI like social controls and pressures and a military they cannot trust, a military and police they purge and investigate.
<i>The problem is that government is no longer by the consent of the governed.
In Western Democracies, unelected regulators, judges and bureaucrats make almost all of the most important decisions. This causes unrest because elections appear not to have the consequences voters expect.</i>
I think you don't understand. The fact that unelected administrators get to control the apparatus of Government is a feature and not a bug of the system. It is the natural state of affairs when large numbers of uninformed, uninterested and cognitively challenged get to vote. Politicians bribe the electorate with all kinds of promises knowing that they can buy the people off and that the "electorate" can be distracted with pretty baubles. One of the big blind spots in democratic theory is the notion that the people can be rotten.
Alexandrina Ocasio-Cortez for example, what are her qualifications for government? There is no evidence that she was fraudulently put in office. And yet she was chosen by the constituents of her electorate as their representative. It was a democratic act of mass stupidity.
She is the perfect example of how, in a democracy, "the people" can go bad.
The "people going bad" is a justification for a return to the divine right of kings, modernized to become the divine right of experts. It's a cancellation of democracy.
John Locke justified the overthrow of King James II in 1688 by saying governments existed by the consent of the governed, not by the divine right of kings. The counter argument to Locke was that the people were too stupid and ignorant to govern themselves, that they needed a king. People who advocate government by experts are really advocating a return to feudalism. There's a reason economist Friedrich Hayek titled his book on socialism "Road to Serfdom."
Please note that the Declaration of Independence is based on the writings of John Locke. Our revolt aganst George III was based on withdrawing our consent to be governed by the British King. Government by the consent of the governed is the bed rock of the US as a country.
That the Declaration and our laws are based on Locke is the Carl Becker view, repeated endlessly by conservatives. True, he is to be credited (I think!) with the consent of the governed principle. He also argued that the Protestant sects should stop massacring each other, but with the caveat that Catholics and non-believers should NOT be tolerated. The Founders went beyond this, establishing freedom for all beliefs as long as the civil laws are obeyed. And in The Federalist Papers debating the Constitution, there is not one mention of Locke. There are several mentions of Montesquieu, however, and in one, Madison calls him "the oracle always referred to."
My claim was that the Declaration of Independence was based on John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, published in 1690 as a justification for the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Revolution of 1688 overthrew James II and replaced him with William and Mary. The idea of government by the consent of the governed, rather than by the divine right of kings, was Locke's main point.
I think if you read Locke's Treatise on Toleration, you will find that Locke was willing to tolerate people of all faiths, including Catholics, as long as they weren't plotting to overthrow the government.
Locke refused ordination, which was normally part of his university degree. This makes him possibly a closet congregationalist. Congregationalists believe that ordination is the prerogative of a congregation, not apostolic succession. I think Locke was extremely unorthodox, and tolerant, in his religious views.
Locke spent a lot of time in Holland in exile. They tolerated Catholics in Holand, as long as they didn't rebel. It may have influenced his thought later on.
My point is that the big decisions aren't made in legislative bodies by representatives of the people. Whether the people's votes are bought or not really doesn't matter very much.
The election of AOC might make a difference if she actually influenced legislation in Congress. However, she's all mouth and very little legislation. It might also make a difference if Congress controlled regulations, but in most cases they don't. Biden's executive orders which stopped oil leasing on federal lands, cancelled the Keystone pipeline, reafirmed the Paris Climate Agreement and threatened to limit fracking were far more influential than anything Congress has done in 2021. The EPA can regulate fracking to death, and Congress would have trouble stopping it.
Biden is talking about canceling the patents on Covid-19 vaccines. Again, Congress would not be involved. Cancelling patents would be and unconstitutional taking of private property for public use without due process of law, and without compensation.
The prevailing wisdom is that only "experts" can make important decisions, like shutting down the entire economy for the Covid-19 quarantine. "Follow the science" is the excuse for a lot of arbitrary government action that Congress and state legislatures have no say in.
Authorities use their credentials to rule, without bothering to explain what the science actually says. For example, quarantining an entire healthy population is historically unprecidented and unique. After the first 3 months, it was clear that the demographic most at risk was people 55 and older. How was continuing to quarantine everyone following the science?
Please note that Congress and state legislatures were not involved in the quarantining decision at any point. It was all implemented by executive orders at the state level, justified by federal guidelines.
My point is that legislatures, designed to reflect the consent of the governed, no longer have the power to do so.
You're putting up a strawman argument. The political options available aren't simply limited to either an unqualified democracy or rule by kings/experts. But this misses the point. There is no political "system" i.e. orgnaisational arrangement, that can guarantee good government. Virtue, not rights, is the foundation of any healthy system of governance. The whole Lockean/Aristocratic antagonism is ultimately an argument is an argument on who has ultimate political rights and sidesteps the question of the "goodness" of the respective parties.
A Christian critique of this argument would be that it doesn't matter how you carve up power, if the power holders are corrupt, then no system of governance will work. A bad people is just as bad as a bad king. The French Revolution is a case in point. No honest man can justify the Ancien Regime, but then again no honest man can justify the actions of the Jacobins. It was villainy all around. A democracy of virtue is a glorious thing, a democracy of vice is to be damned.
The reason why the Protestant nations were able to ascendancy from the late 19th C is because they were able to instantiate virtue into their institutions to a degree that was not seen in other countries. (I'm Catholic, BTW). They were well run, honest and not insane. It's the same throughout history, good governance is only possible by good men. The form of it doesn't matter.
This is why the collapse of "sound Protestantism" has been of the most profound significance to the West. (It was inevitable however due to Protestantisms internal self destructive mechanisms). It undercut the moral foundations of its good governance.
France never had a seriously explicit "Protestant" influence but it's equivalent was the "Republican ideal" of virtue, but it too shared the same fate as Protestantism for different reasons. Furthermore, the Protestant and Republican "lite" versions are insane and are now actively undermining the West.
The Catholic Church's role in France, in particular, has been regressive and it's inability to deal with modernity has meant that the French Right when not dabbling its toes in outright Fascism has been useless in combating the insanity of the Left. Charles Peguy saw this years before anyone else and no one noticed. Charles De Gaulle, hugely influenced by Peguy, attempted to heal France but he was unable to change French culture and was thus undermined by it in '68.
I couldn't disagree more. Due process and representative democracracy are guarantees against abuse. It's hard to corrupt people over the long term. The reason we are in trouble is that the people have been cut out of the process of government. Over the long term, it's too expensive to bribe the voters to keep it up.
The rule of experts removes accountability from government completely. There are no checks or balances. The voters can't learn their lessons and repent. Experts are self perpetuating. There is no change possible from the mistakes of experts. By definition, they make the best decisions possible.
My argument is that the voters no longer have much control. You haven't really addressed that argument. If the voters have no control, your argument that they are hopelessly corrupt is irrelevant. I would argue that the voters have much less motivation to do better, because their votes make little difference in the big decisions made by experts.
The Yellow Vests and the Tea Party were suppressed like peasant revolts, without any consideratin of the validity of their objections to the status quo. The election of Trump was met with 4 years of bureaucratic efforts to undermine his power by any means necessary. The permanent bureaucracy called his election illegitimate, and treated it accordingly.
Biden is ruling by decree. Biden's election was facilitated by a tsunami of election procedure changes from courts and election officials, contrary to state law. Again, legislatures were ignored.
This is very on point. Coming world is trending toward Chinese authoritarianism as a way to effectively govern. The only hope is multiple decentralized governments generating so much social and economic capital that they can outlast China.
People have to start asking themselves if large nation states make sense anymore. What is their purpose? To defend their citizens? To accumulate land and capital so that there are enough resources to take care of their citizens?
Where most of the value generated in the world is going to be online and through software, what piece of that puzzle does a government protect? Where city states could potentially defend themselves through cyber-attacks on their enemies and thousands of drones, why does a bigger government make sense? If a bigger government attacks a smaller government and cannot take any of their online value generated by private citizens easily, then the purpose might just be for land or resources. But where the online resources are more valuable than the physical, the incentive to attack will be less and less going forward.
This is a very good point - one that I would love to see Lyons add to his analysis. Software eating the world is not hyperbole. Life will soon be lived by the masses mostly online. The convergence of hugely disruptive technologies (Blockchain, 5G, AI, quantum computing, self-driving vehicles, etc.) are coming much sooner than people realize, and will change the world in ways we cannot comprehend. I predict we won't even recognize our world in 10 years.
Using technological change to justify changes in government systems is ridiculous. My grandmother was born in 1898, and died in 1978. She went from horses and buggies on the streets to powered airplane flight to a man on the moon. Manufacturing based on interchangeble parts resulted in a grat migration from farm to factory. This was a tremendous amount of technological change, which was used as an excuse to justify "scientific socialism," a system which has failed in every country in which it has been tried.
Nation states are successful because they provide a system of laws that allow the distribution of goods and services throughout large territories without major disruptions. As Covid-19 has shown, emergencies can make even relatively porus borders, like the US Canada border, into sudden barriers. Advances in information Technology don't change this problem, and shouldn't be used as an excuse for changing nation state system.
I first learned to program computers in 1968, as a high school student. I had a career of over 45 years in IT, both military and civilian, including a lot of cyber security. While I agree that information is valuable, you can't eat it, wear it, shelter under it or directly use it to defend yourself from physical attack. Information has value only as it relates to the physical world. Information technology doesn't change the value of nation states.
The Colonial Pipeline hack is a perfect example of how IT gains value from the physical world. It was destructive because it stopped the distribution of gasoline and other oil products to the Eastern US. It was a successful hack because Colonial Pipeline didn't have a successful backup procedure that allowed for a bare metal resore, in other words a restore of absolutely all software and data, from an uncorrupted backup.
As an aside, nobody will get serious about cyber security until corporations and government start to fire people who should have done more to protect IT assets after successful hacks. Colonial Pipeline should fire their Chief Information Officer and their CEO for not haveing a bare metal backup and restore capability. It was extremely negligent, a dereliction of duty. Same for Solar Winds and the Office of Personnel Management. All successful cyber security efforts start with fear of the consequences of failure.
Not justifying changes in gov't systems at all. Personally, I'm a big fan of our Constitution and B o' Rights. My point is that the speed, scope and sweep of technological change is bigger than any period of change in human history (in a comparable time period). That will gov't systems, whether we like it or not.
"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"
Thanks for this thorough, thoughtful, and alarming piece on the problems of Islamism and American-imported identity politics that are assailing France. I’m a professor of French in the US, and this is one of the only articles I’ve read on what’s happening over there that isn’t either lazily undetailed or just plain legacy media bull&*%t.
I’m a fan of your theory of a general Upheaval with a nexus of related dilemmas plaguing the liberal democracies of the West. I do, however, want to insist a little on just how much the Islam question ups the ante in France compared to the American case. France is considered a special target by Islamists for two reasons: on the one hand, it’s the land of the Franks and the point of departure for the Crusades; on the other hand, it’s considered the nation of the Revolution and thus of atheism, humanism, and secularism. Paris in particular is the “capital of an undefinable mixture of Catholicism and impiety,” to quote the historian Pierre Vermeren in his 2016 book La France en terre d’Islam (France in the Land of Islam). This unique combination of historical inheritances makes it doubly hated by Islamists and a symbolic target for their agenda (or fantasy, if you prefer) of global domination.
France, as your article helps show, appears to be slowly coming around to the idea that these kinds of archaic motivations do in fact motivate certain people. The question is whether it’s not already too late, and whether the French are not always a fatal step behind their enemies.
On another note, if you’re interested in imagining what a French civil war might actually look like, the 2016 novel Guerilla by Laurent Obertone (a nom de plume) is the place to go. Obertone, who is trained as a journalist, based the novel on the working hypotheses of the French intelligence services. He has also written a number of non-fiction bestsellers on the theme of "insecurity" in France. This has made him persona non grata in respectable society, but that’s how you know he’s worth reading. The only catch is that he hasn’t been translated into English.
The heart of the malaise in France is that a "woke" leadership cannot handle the current migrant/Islamist crisis. The military and most of society are calling for French cultural identity and "honour" to be defended, while Macron has been apologising for France's colonial and other "crimes against humanity" and now plans to "deconstruct" French history - in a kind of "Project 1619"... (Interview with CBS News. 18/4/21)
Meanwhile, Erdogan is said to be leading a Muslim "Trojan-horse" conquest of Europe, starting with France - which is what the French army is warning against - and the intel agencies before them.
The professor is right about "these kinds of archaic motivations motivat[ing] certain people": Erdogan does think in such terms. In a speech on 3/4/17, he described a meeting between EU leaders and Pope Francis in the Vatican as evidence that the EU is an anti-Turkey “Crusader Alliance” - https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-eu-is-crusader-alliance-lying-to-us-111524
Well, the Doha strategy similarly insists on Muslims “preserving their distinctiveness” as befits their “spiritual and moral superiority” (p. 11), especially through continued efforts to “master their native language” and “the principles of the Islamic Sharia’ (p. 12), notably through the creation of “Islamic cultural centres” (p. 13), the overall goal being “to immunize their cultural identity” (p. 14).
The strategies for achieving this are specified in Chapter 2 (p. 24ff).
According to the Strategy, wherever the “spiritual and moral superiority” of Islamic living will be demonstrated, it will “set the Muslim immigrant family as an example of a unified and efficient family that western society can benefit from.” (p. 65)
And by all accounts, Erdogan is doing well "infiltrating" France. The French people know that their intel community has been reporting on this to the leadership:
"Plusieurs rapports adressés à l'Élysée par la Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI), la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) et la Direction du renseignement de la Préfecture de police (DRPP) à la fin du mois d'octobre 2020 – et que le JDD a pu consulter – dévoilent l'ampleur, les formes et les objectifs d'une véritable stratégie d'infiltration impulsée depuis Ankara au moyen de réseaux animés par l'ambassade de Turquie et le MIT, le service d'espionnage turc. Ces "vecteurs d'influence" pointés par les experts français agissent principalement auprès de la population turque immigrée, mais aussi à travers les organisations musulmanes et même depuis peu dans la vie politique locale, par l'appui apporté à des élus inféodés."
Beyond Macron's shouting matches with Erdogan, nothing much has changed, which suggests the professor may right again: it’s already too late, and the French are a fatal step behind their enemies...
"France ... slowly coming around to the idea that these kinds of archaic motivations..." do in fact motivate certain people.
According to Th. Meyssan, France's intel people want the people to realise this. He says that a Feb. 2021 piece published by Le Journal du Dimanche, “ENQUETE. Comment le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan infiltre la France (msn.com)", was prompted by the DGSI - La France face au jihadisme de son allié turc, par Thierry Meyssan (voltairenet.org)]
Meyssan's paper gives an interesting history of the rise of Islamic Jihadism, and the central role played by Turkey and others, including Western powers.
Mr. Lyons, There is much to fear in your analysis, but also bits to cheer. Specifically regarding the latter, influential people, at least in France, are beginning finally to pinpoint the principal source of the cancer chewing away at the vital organs of Western Civilization: U.S. Universities.
I am part of a Franco-American family. Usually we reside in the USA but spend part of every year in France and sometimes stay longer. We are in France currently.
My wife is French and my French language skills are poor, but I don't sense the same kind of political divisions in France that we have in the USA. In America, the media has the Left and Right separated into two completely and mutually hostile realities. France has a lapdog media that is inseparable from the power structure. American media has US citizens hating each other. There is nothing comparable in France. I don't see civil war here. But there is a common distain for the feckless French state. It's response to Covid was particularly appalling. It combined draconian infringements on personal freedoms not seen since the Nazi Occupation with a thoroughly inept medical response. Meanwhile France has an entrenched and corrupt ruling class - they all go to the same university to learn to be politicians - that makes the USA's stale political class look dynamic. I'd say that if anything, France is ripe for a revolution and the USA for the civil war.
That, said, your article is interesting and makes a lot of good points.
The central tenet of Critical Race Theory as taught in seminars for corporations and as understood by BLM and their "allies" is: "All white people are racists". It does not take an efficient mind anything more than that irrevocably to conclude that CRT is unadulterated racism veiled by verbiage. One does not need to study Islam long or deeply to confront the absolute hatred hatred of non-believers, of democracy, indeed of the underpinnings of western civilization, demanded of Muslims. I have said for at least a score of years that war- real war, war with the gloves off as in WW1- with Islam was inevitable and would start in either France or Belgium. The ideas I see as implicit in your essay, sir- that a French civil war would not be presented in the international press as a war against Islam, and that it would not ignite WW3- are shortsighted and wrong. When the balloon goes up it will soar. Paris is not Petrograd in 1917 but Vienna in 1683. We should ever be mindful of the adage, usually attributed to Sun Tzu, that "in time of peace the wise man prepares for war". Get ready. It shan't be long.
I think many of us, even an average nobody like myself, have kind of sensed this coming for a long while. Even if we were unclear on how it would all unfold and exactly come undone. I still don't know if will take 50 years or 50 months to play out. I know a few baby boomers who think similarly but take some weird solace in the fact they'll likely be dead before anything serious happens. I am not as confident being a Gen X'er. So what now? Just sit and wait?
I was just thinking that very thing. The issue with many of us of the failing West is that there isn't much of a "we" any longer. The three marks of life in the megamachine are isolation, tedium, and meaninglessness. The "solace" offered by the entertainment-industrial complex is a hard drug to kick. Even friends I know who more or less concur with the dire analysis given here are radically unwilling to do anything whatsoever about it.
To be clear, what I often suggest to friends is hardly extreme, to say the least. That we should try to do things together. Get outside of the matrix for a time. Look at the stars; play music together; begin to share our lives in more direct ways than being online. It seems to fall on deaf ears.
I am writing from Italy where I have lived, on and off, for over 40 years. Italy is an interesting arena in which to view the introduction of woke identity politics. Modern Italy (post WWII) was never really united, its fractious politics a remnant of the bipolar cold war (Marxist leftists vs. Christian Democrats), but the fault lines were always social and cultural, not racial or ethnoreligious (Italy did not have slavery in the last century, nor does it have a large post-colonial Muslim population). What is left of the Italian Post-Communist left is largely in tatters, and the center left Democratic party is dipping its toe into woke politics (along with green climate politics), in an attempt to salvage some semblance of a political platform (it has to contend not only with an array of right of center parties, but also the amorphous populism of the 5 Star Movement which upended the Italian political scene a decade ago). But how do you mobilize the younger generation if most of them are white and middle class, and you can’t coopt BLM by blaming the police or systemic racism? You fall back on the gender wars. The Democratic Party recently shot itself in the foot by insisting on rigid “pink quotas” for female representation in its reconstituted leadership only to have several female party members lamenting backroom deals and corruption in the selection process (of other female party members). But the big new move is the “DDL Zan” a law billed as an anti-homophobia law that threatens to punish speech that is deemed offensive (one shudders to imagine the already lethargic Italian legal system absorbing all the new cases). So the bottom line for Italy, in my estimation, is that the political left, in desperate need of new energy, is going to adopt some watered down version of American woke politics, mostly focused on gender and sexuality, but framed as a larger move towards “inclusivita’” and time will tell whether it will effectively penetrate the body politic or remain like the McDonald’s restaurant, a ubiquitous American presence with limited influence on Italy’s “cultural cuisine.”
Thanks, that's an interesting perspective. My distant impression is that Italy has so far largely laughed off a lot of this stuff in a way that most other countries in Europe have not, but I'm not sure why - possibly because of a tighter-knit culture (if not politics)? Thoughts on this?
You are not wrong. But we like to say here that Italy is 20 countries (the 20 regions) and the difference between Emilia Romagna and Sicily is like comparing Maine to Alabama. The south is still very traditional and more catholic, so much of the gender stuff is completely alien to them. The north is a different story, but it's complex. I think much of the move towards woke-ness is opportunistic. Corporate Italy is trying it out (I saw billboards for an online footwear company as I rode my bike to work last week with a male LGBT couple and then a young girl with down syndrome, and it just contained the brand name and the term "Inclusivita'" which is not really a word you even heard here until about 2 years ago. Italians often mix contempt for US culture with a curious fascination for it, and secretly they think that the US is ahead in all things business-related and choose to copy it. Politically, as I said, it's purely that the center left has no ideas. But culturally, I think it will simply be a tougher sell. Italian women prize femininity, beauty, fashion and motherhood in ways that are very, very deep and structural (one of the reasons I adore this country) and Italian comedians are still quite free to mock some of the crazier elements of identity politics. BUT, I am worried about the trajectory. They are trying it on, they will see if it where it gets them, and it may stick and begin to tear the society apart on an all new vector. Time will tell.
I enjoy your comments it truly lends to some incite to Italy. Americas woke culture is like all academia driven leftist past attempts to gain every lasting power, it blows up on its self.
I understand that most out side the US have on the hollywood media take on where America is. America is passed the peak of this current efforts and like always the leftist over reach is boubding back at them like never before.
In the end what many foreigners fail to understand is first and foremost we ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY! we never have been we are a Federalist Republic. We are in the end a nation of laws and when the public becomes awear of illicit activity by both elected & bureaucrats hell always follows. There is a difference however this time around thw US media has lost trust with the people and are consider more enemies of the people they their friend as for academia its reached its peak power aswell both social and economical.
Dispite what think the US economy is a service driven economy this is what has allowed china to assume so much of what we manufactured. This however to is changing because regionally manufacturing is still an required model to maintain a healthy middle class.
In 2022 you will see a back lash that will make 1994 look miniscule, further as new media raises the old media is in it final death throws.. last if you want to be scared for real do the math on the actual worth vs cap value of Tesla, Amazon and Facebook their stock value is nothing but a house of cards that could very well colaspe at any moment.
The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that SAVES this world. Whether mothers or not, I commend Italian women for prizing femininity and tradition.
I thproughly enjoy your articles but the claim above about "climate-induced migration" from Africa and Central America borders on laughable. These populations are fleeing leftist-induced hellholes. I have yet to hear anyone in the migrant caravans scream "Climate is getting us! HEEEELLLLLP!"
Commenting from the UK I'm in complete agreement with your analysis. Although we are some way behind the cycle of 'upheaval' than France, many are convinced that it will come. What is quite astonishing though is the extent to which the middle-class establishment and political elites are 'pushing the narrative' that has been exported from the US. They appear to have no understanding of where the divisions they are creating will lead us. This I find strange because the middle-classes, as I've understood them, are particularly protective of their own advantage and financial well-being. I don't think it's a case of them believing they 'protect' themselves from the inevitable upheaval, but of them being completely blind to it due to a myopic self-righteousness. I personally trace this back to the post-modernist influence in our educational institutions and the widespread acceptance of critical theory by those who've gone through a contemporary university education. Many of them are now entering the establishment, as is their middle-class wont, and as a result we see an increasing disparagement of traditional culture. Indeed we are being treated, over the next few weeks, to a TV series in which Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry, is played by an actress of African heritage. The cultural elites will praise it to the skies and nobody will watch it.
I'm a bit unclear as to your basis for thinking that any of this migration is the least bit climate induced. My impression is that it's entirely economic, and you don't have to appeal to 'climate change' to explain why the first world is more attractive to economic migrants than the third world.
Are you sure the New Faith hasn't, all unnoticed, started to infect your own thinking?
Hmm, I read While Europe Slept 15 years ago. France and well as other Western European nations have put on blinders with respect to the rise of radical Islam and the unwillingness of certain populations to assimilate. Our ancestors should have also anticipated that their colonial exploits would one day come back to haunt future generations. What did they expect? However, as an American, I take exception to the notion that all of this is being exported from the US. Europe has been asleep, perhaps not wanting to face hard truths in the post-WWII era and here we are.
Europe slept? Yes, most are, hoodwinked by the lies of their criminal governments. But Americans are in deeply sleep still.
Islamic terrorism was born in Afghanistan, deliberately birthed and nurtured by the US. All its allies/groupies joined in, including France:
NSC, 11 Sep 1979–22 Jul 1980: “Provide lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Provide selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediaries.” https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v12/d107
You'll see in this archive piece how Admiral Turner was excited about “accelerated shipment of arms to the Afghan rebels via Saudi Arabia.”
That's when Usama bin Laden joined the jolly party - which later moved to the US as "9/11".
This piece explains how this most foolish initiative developed – and also how the UK was actually ahead of the US in terrorism engineering - and was never the sluggard: https://www.voltairenet.org/article212155.html
All are now reaping the bitter fruits, including the sleeping ones, who still don't know that their so-called leaders fathered it all…
like most woke leftist this author only gets part of the story correct. As the author himself repeats many of the same themes of this "new faith"
While he does an excellent job on the theology and those who push it he should refrain from making any scientific proclamations as its not within his wheel house of actual knowledgeable.
Futher to blame Republicans I
i.e. those who stand on the law through his accusations against Trump only further exposses the authors inability to focus on the problem which he himself prescribes proclaims much of this "new faith" The authors inability not to blame the messenger in an attempt to cover for his full throated truths about the left and its academic and media support. Leaves the author still part of the problem not part of the solution.
I have asked two friends who live in France their sentiment about the army officer letters. They both think they are exaggerated but nonetheless not without substance. From my observation, affectio societatis is strong in France so the country may be farther away from civil war than one might think, but still...
I think France is facing the same problems that US: an inability to properly analyze its past foreign interventionism mistakes and hold those who made them to account. These mistakes have a real potential of domestic destabilization, especially in France whose population include a large number of people with origin in Africa and the Middle East. It is mind boggling that foreign policies are not discussed more closely in relation to domestic policies in both countries. Those who actually dare to try (for example Tulsi Gabbard) have been vilified in an abject manner.
Interesting. While I claim no special knowledge, I do spend more time thinking about France than most Americans. France has been the leading edge of modernity since the demise of the Roman Empire, for better and for worse, and is therefore worth paying attention to. The translation of identity politics into French as communitarianism I found especially interesting as that seems at odds with the meaning in English, as often identified with Etzioni . I have always though Etzioni's philosophy to be a stalking horse for collectivism, but in fairness he has a much broader notion of the community than the fracturing implicit in identity politics. I am sure he is aware of the French usage but haven't seen any comment by him.
Hello from France and thanks for that great piece. One could actually believe you live here... We are indeed reaching a turning point and I seriously think that should France fall, the rest of the West would be doomed. There seems to be a "pincer" threat between the new woke faith coming from the far left feeding from US campuses and the rise of Islamism feeding from uncontrolled immigration. We are closing a loop now with the post-modernism coming from the US but originally created by French leftist philosophers and the immediate threat of terrorism made possible by irresponsible politicians raised in liberal post-modernist ideas.
1) France is fragile because, while it is the oldest Western nation, it has a unique DNA - which actually has nothing to do with DNA. France is a nation that was not built upon an ethnicity or tribal group. And it's not a federation like Germany or a group of kingdoms like the UK, it is a centralized country. We have the Franks, a German barbaric tribe, the Gallic Celts, the Scandinavian Normands, and indeed the Latin Romans to cite the key components. It means the country cannot rely on ethnicity to regroup. It's a unique identity that makes France hold together based on a long history made of tears and glory, shared values and of course Catholicism. The danger today is that the woke left pushes to deconstruct French history which is our key bond while the Catholic faith has weakened like elsewhere in the West. The ties holding the nation together are weaker today. It is also fragile because massive immigration from North Africa brought Islam which is not just a faith but a political ideology which fundamentally conflicts with French secular values and Catholic roots. There has also been a cold type of Civil war since the French revolution that has deeply divided our people and almost like a national trauma. Let's not forget about half a million people were killed in the 1790 and that crack has resurfaced since then. That weakens the ability to resist as a nation.
2) This special identity brings strengths as well. There is a new alliance of intellectuals and regular people who want to resist and they come both from Right and Left typically because it is about saving a nation a bit like Catholic monarchists and Anti Clerical socialists fought together in the trenches in WW1. This is quite unique as well and can inspire other countries. You can find atheist philosophers like Michel Onfray, who defines himself as a Socialist partnering with Eric Zemmour, a writer of Jewish North African descent who admires Napoleon. Today we have ppl like those really willing to work together against the threat. The other strength is the French Army which is today the last 'real' army in Europe. It cannot compare with the US in terms of fire power and IT but it has remained solid with real fighting experience and also a deep understanding of foreign terrains and civilizations. Most officers joining the armed forces come with strongly rooted ideals. It is for a reason that the elite Foreign Legion is made of people coming from around the globe and ready to fight for France to their deaths. This example has a deep meaning that France still lives and inspires and it explains why the military is so popular for a big majority of French people, why their letters resonated so deeply. Remember Joan of Arc. She is today still seen as a savior whether you are Catholic or not... The secular values are rooted as well with a spirit of neutrality in public spaces when it comes to religion. This is a major fence to resist against Islamism and it is shared between Left and Right - hence the alliance mentioned above. "Laicite" is typically misunderstood in the Anglo Saxon world but it basically refers to strict neutrality. It has nothing to do with racism. Since Islamism always creeps in by taking small steps, winning small victories until it can rule, our secular values are an important weapon. This is probably why the Woke left influenced by the US campuses targets these values as a priority, by promoting a multi cultural society which simply doesn't belong here and would mean war.
The current upheaval is global, and not (as you eloquently say) limited to national borders. But you are right to monitor the situation in France. It is the thin and cracked backbone supporting the western civilization. The other major card in our house of cards is America... Both countries have in common to look at the world with universal eyes for good and bad reasons.
You have described perfectly the situation in France, in particular, the loss of Catholic faith and values that used to bind people to one another and to their leaders. A few days ago, we celebrated the feast of St. Joan of Arc, defender of France. There may come a time when celebrating her feast day, as well as the feast days of St. Denis, St. Mary Magdalene (also a patron saint of France), St. King Louis IX, will be “cancelled,” and all the names of cities, towns, villages, and streets referring to Notre Dame and the Saints, will be changed.
May the spirit and soul of St. Jeanne d’Arc continue to protect and inspire the French Army and may they feel the respect and appreciation they deserve from the rest of the world for their efforts to hold the line. God and St. Jeanne please protect them. 🙏
The West became "woke" in the late 1970s when it thought it a good idea to recruit, arm and train and fund Islamic terrorists to "fight Communist Russia" in Afghanistan. Sounded like a jolly progressive idea then - until the child turned out to be a Frankenstein monster.
This French writer tells the story: https://www.voltairenet.org/article212155.html
https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-narcissistic-fall-of-france/
Interesting piece by one of our most creative - and slightly insane - writers thru the link above. He's doesn't care about political correctness and that's why his voice is heard
The problem is that government is no longer by the consent of the governed.
In Western Democracies, unelected regulators, judges and bureaucrats make almost all of the most important decisions. This causes unrest because elections appear not to have the consequences voters expect.
Governments faced with popular protest movements, like the Tea Party or Yellow Vests, suppress them like peasant uprisings. Unpopular policies, like transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, are justified by unexplained "expert opinion." Even dissenting experts are suppressed.
For example, open discussion of global warming, whether it exists and, if it does, the most economical ways to deal with it, is suppressed. The common man may not have an MS in Statistics, like me, but they notice gasoline prices are going up in service of a theory which allows no dissent. This causes unrest.
The prevailing governing philosophy is that government knows better than the people themselves what's best for them. Vox populi, vox dei, is a totally obsolete concept for modern bureaucrats. However, the people think they should be able to choose for themselves. This conflict will only be resolved by a return to less intrusive government, or an advance to a more openly oppressive state. So far, the state is getting more repressive, but allowing mob violence to intimidate political enemies into submission.
Yes, and in America the Federal Government has lost it's legitimacy and had to rely on Fraud and Force. Biden & Co were sworn in surrounded by 25,000 Soldiers, no citizens, in an eerie state funeral for the Republic overlooking a field of flags - as if it was a cemetery.
This is a hollow government relying on STASI like social controls and pressures and a military they cannot trust, a military and police they purge and investigate.
This does not end well.
<i>The problem is that government is no longer by the consent of the governed.
In Western Democracies, unelected regulators, judges and bureaucrats make almost all of the most important decisions. This causes unrest because elections appear not to have the consequences voters expect.</i>
I think you don't understand. The fact that unelected administrators get to control the apparatus of Government is a feature and not a bug of the system. It is the natural state of affairs when large numbers of uninformed, uninterested and cognitively challenged get to vote. Politicians bribe the electorate with all kinds of promises knowing that they can buy the people off and that the "electorate" can be distracted with pretty baubles. One of the big blind spots in democratic theory is the notion that the people can be rotten.
Alexandrina Ocasio-Cortez for example, what are her qualifications for government? There is no evidence that she was fraudulently put in office. And yet she was chosen by the constituents of her electorate as their representative. It was a democratic act of mass stupidity.
She is the perfect example of how, in a democracy, "the people" can go bad.
The "people going bad" is a justification for a return to the divine right of kings, modernized to become the divine right of experts. It's a cancellation of democracy.
John Locke justified the overthrow of King James II in 1688 by saying governments existed by the consent of the governed, not by the divine right of kings. The counter argument to Locke was that the people were too stupid and ignorant to govern themselves, that they needed a king. People who advocate government by experts are really advocating a return to feudalism. There's a reason economist Friedrich Hayek titled his book on socialism "Road to Serfdom."
Please note that the Declaration of Independence is based on the writings of John Locke. Our revolt aganst George III was based on withdrawing our consent to be governed by the British King. Government by the consent of the governed is the bed rock of the US as a country.
That the Declaration and our laws are based on Locke is the Carl Becker view, repeated endlessly by conservatives. True, he is to be credited (I think!) with the consent of the governed principle. He also argued that the Protestant sects should stop massacring each other, but with the caveat that Catholics and non-believers should NOT be tolerated. The Founders went beyond this, establishing freedom for all beliefs as long as the civil laws are obeyed. And in The Federalist Papers debating the Constitution, there is not one mention of Locke. There are several mentions of Montesquieu, however, and in one, Madison calls him "the oracle always referred to."
My claim was that the Declaration of Independence was based on John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, published in 1690 as a justification for the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Revolution of 1688 overthrew James II and replaced him with William and Mary. The idea of government by the consent of the governed, rather than by the divine right of kings, was Locke's main point.
I think if you read Locke's Treatise on Toleration, you will find that Locke was willing to tolerate people of all faiths, including Catholics, as long as they weren't plotting to overthrow the government.
Locke refused ordination, which was normally part of his university degree. This makes him possibly a closet congregationalist. Congregationalists believe that ordination is the prerogative of a congregation, not apostolic succession. I think Locke was extremely unorthodox, and tolerant, in his religious views.
Locke spent a lot of time in Holland in exile. They tolerated Catholics in Holand, as long as they didn't rebel. It may have influenced his thought later on.
My point is that the big decisions aren't made in legislative bodies by representatives of the people. Whether the people's votes are bought or not really doesn't matter very much.
The election of AOC might make a difference if she actually influenced legislation in Congress. However, she's all mouth and very little legislation. It might also make a difference if Congress controlled regulations, but in most cases they don't. Biden's executive orders which stopped oil leasing on federal lands, cancelled the Keystone pipeline, reafirmed the Paris Climate Agreement and threatened to limit fracking were far more influential than anything Congress has done in 2021. The EPA can regulate fracking to death, and Congress would have trouble stopping it.
Biden is talking about canceling the patents on Covid-19 vaccines. Again, Congress would not be involved. Cancelling patents would be and unconstitutional taking of private property for public use without due process of law, and without compensation.
The prevailing wisdom is that only "experts" can make important decisions, like shutting down the entire economy for the Covid-19 quarantine. "Follow the science" is the excuse for a lot of arbitrary government action that Congress and state legislatures have no say in.
Authorities use their credentials to rule, without bothering to explain what the science actually says. For example, quarantining an entire healthy population is historically unprecidented and unique. After the first 3 months, it was clear that the demographic most at risk was people 55 and older. How was continuing to quarantine everyone following the science?
Please note that Congress and state legislatures were not involved in the quarantining decision at any point. It was all implemented by executive orders at the state level, justified by federal guidelines.
My point is that legislatures, designed to reflect the consent of the governed, no longer have the power to do so.
You're putting up a strawman argument. The political options available aren't simply limited to either an unqualified democracy or rule by kings/experts. But this misses the point. There is no political "system" i.e. orgnaisational arrangement, that can guarantee good government. Virtue, not rights, is the foundation of any healthy system of governance. The whole Lockean/Aristocratic antagonism is ultimately an argument is an argument on who has ultimate political rights and sidesteps the question of the "goodness" of the respective parties.
A Christian critique of this argument would be that it doesn't matter how you carve up power, if the power holders are corrupt, then no system of governance will work. A bad people is just as bad as a bad king. The French Revolution is a case in point. No honest man can justify the Ancien Regime, but then again no honest man can justify the actions of the Jacobins. It was villainy all around. A democracy of virtue is a glorious thing, a democracy of vice is to be damned.
The reason why the Protestant nations were able to ascendancy from the late 19th C is because they were able to instantiate virtue into their institutions to a degree that was not seen in other countries. (I'm Catholic, BTW). They were well run, honest and not insane. It's the same throughout history, good governance is only possible by good men. The form of it doesn't matter.
This is why the collapse of "sound Protestantism" has been of the most profound significance to the West. (It was inevitable however due to Protestantisms internal self destructive mechanisms). It undercut the moral foundations of its good governance.
France never had a seriously explicit "Protestant" influence but it's equivalent was the "Republican ideal" of virtue, but it too shared the same fate as Protestantism for different reasons. Furthermore, the Protestant and Republican "lite" versions are insane and are now actively undermining the West.
The Catholic Church's role in France, in particular, has been regressive and it's inability to deal with modernity has meant that the French Right when not dabbling its toes in outright Fascism has been useless in combating the insanity of the Left. Charles Peguy saw this years before anyone else and no one noticed. Charles De Gaulle, hugely influenced by Peguy, attempted to heal France but he was unable to change French culture and was thus undermined by it in '68.
I couldn't disagree more. Due process and representative democracracy are guarantees against abuse. It's hard to corrupt people over the long term. The reason we are in trouble is that the people have been cut out of the process of government. Over the long term, it's too expensive to bribe the voters to keep it up.
The rule of experts removes accountability from government completely. There are no checks or balances. The voters can't learn their lessons and repent. Experts are self perpetuating. There is no change possible from the mistakes of experts. By definition, they make the best decisions possible.
My argument is that the voters no longer have much control. You haven't really addressed that argument. If the voters have no control, your argument that they are hopelessly corrupt is irrelevant. I would argue that the voters have much less motivation to do better, because their votes make little difference in the big decisions made by experts.
The Yellow Vests and the Tea Party were suppressed like peasant revolts, without any consideratin of the validity of their objections to the status quo. The election of Trump was met with 4 years of bureaucratic efforts to undermine his power by any means necessary. The permanent bureaucracy called his election illegitimate, and treated it accordingly.
Biden is ruling by decree. Biden's election was facilitated by a tsunami of election procedure changes from courts and election officials, contrary to state law. Again, legislatures were ignored.
This is very on point. Coming world is trending toward Chinese authoritarianism as a way to effectively govern. The only hope is multiple decentralized governments generating so much social and economic capital that they can outlast China.
People have to start asking themselves if large nation states make sense anymore. What is their purpose? To defend their citizens? To accumulate land and capital so that there are enough resources to take care of their citizens?
Where most of the value generated in the world is going to be online and through software, what piece of that puzzle does a government protect? Where city states could potentially defend themselves through cyber-attacks on their enemies and thousands of drones, why does a bigger government make sense? If a bigger government attacks a smaller government and cannot take any of their online value generated by private citizens easily, then the purpose might just be for land or resources. But where the online resources are more valuable than the physical, the incentive to attack will be less and less going forward.
This is a very good point - one that I would love to see Lyons add to his analysis. Software eating the world is not hyperbole. Life will soon be lived by the masses mostly online. The convergence of hugely disruptive technologies (Blockchain, 5G, AI, quantum computing, self-driving vehicles, etc.) are coming much sooner than people realize, and will change the world in ways we cannot comprehend. I predict we won't even recognize our world in 10 years.
Using technological change to justify changes in government systems is ridiculous. My grandmother was born in 1898, and died in 1978. She went from horses and buggies on the streets to powered airplane flight to a man on the moon. Manufacturing based on interchangeble parts resulted in a grat migration from farm to factory. This was a tremendous amount of technological change, which was used as an excuse to justify "scientific socialism," a system which has failed in every country in which it has been tried.
Nation states are successful because they provide a system of laws that allow the distribution of goods and services throughout large territories without major disruptions. As Covid-19 has shown, emergencies can make even relatively porus borders, like the US Canada border, into sudden barriers. Advances in information Technology don't change this problem, and shouldn't be used as an excuse for changing nation state system.
I first learned to program computers in 1968, as a high school student. I had a career of over 45 years in IT, both military and civilian, including a lot of cyber security. While I agree that information is valuable, you can't eat it, wear it, shelter under it or directly use it to defend yourself from physical attack. Information has value only as it relates to the physical world. Information technology doesn't change the value of nation states.
The Colonial Pipeline hack is a perfect example of how IT gains value from the physical world. It was destructive because it stopped the distribution of gasoline and other oil products to the Eastern US. It was a successful hack because Colonial Pipeline didn't have a successful backup procedure that allowed for a bare metal resore, in other words a restore of absolutely all software and data, from an uncorrupted backup.
As an aside, nobody will get serious about cyber security until corporations and government start to fire people who should have done more to protect IT assets after successful hacks. Colonial Pipeline should fire their Chief Information Officer and their CEO for not haveing a bare metal backup and restore capability. It was extremely negligent, a dereliction of duty. Same for Solar Winds and the Office of Personnel Management. All successful cyber security efforts start with fear of the consequences of failure.
Not justifying changes in gov't systems at all. Personally, I'm a big fan of our Constitution and B o' Rights. My point is that the speed, scope and sweep of technological change is bigger than any period of change in human history (in a comparable time period). That will gov't systems, whether we like it or not.
"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"
DJT, Warsaw, July 6, 2017
like him or not, he was certainly prescient
Thanks for this thorough, thoughtful, and alarming piece on the problems of Islamism and American-imported identity politics that are assailing France. I’m a professor of French in the US, and this is one of the only articles I’ve read on what’s happening over there that isn’t either lazily undetailed or just plain legacy media bull&*%t.
I’m a fan of your theory of a general Upheaval with a nexus of related dilemmas plaguing the liberal democracies of the West. I do, however, want to insist a little on just how much the Islam question ups the ante in France compared to the American case. France is considered a special target by Islamists for two reasons: on the one hand, it’s the land of the Franks and the point of departure for the Crusades; on the other hand, it’s considered the nation of the Revolution and thus of atheism, humanism, and secularism. Paris in particular is the “capital of an undefinable mixture of Catholicism and impiety,” to quote the historian Pierre Vermeren in his 2016 book La France en terre d’Islam (France in the Land of Islam). This unique combination of historical inheritances makes it doubly hated by Islamists and a symbolic target for their agenda (or fantasy, if you prefer) of global domination.
France, as your article helps show, appears to be slowly coming around to the idea that these kinds of archaic motivations do in fact motivate certain people. The question is whether it’s not already too late, and whether the French are not always a fatal step behind their enemies.
On another note, if you’re interested in imagining what a French civil war might actually look like, the 2016 novel Guerilla by Laurent Obertone (a nom de plume) is the place to go. Obertone, who is trained as a journalist, based the novel on the working hypotheses of the French intelligence services. He has also written a number of non-fiction bestsellers on the theme of "insecurity" in France. This has made him persona non grata in respectable society, but that’s how you know he’s worth reading. The only catch is that he hasn’t been translated into English.
Thanks again for this great piece.
Thank you! Appreciate the thoughtful comment, and the reading recommendations.
Mr Lyons, thanks for your informative report.
The heart of the malaise in France is that a "woke" leadership cannot handle the current migrant/Islamist crisis. The military and most of society are calling for French cultural identity and "honour" to be defended, while Macron has been apologising for France's colonial and other "crimes against humanity" and now plans to "deconstruct" French history - in a kind of "Project 1619"... (Interview with CBS News. 18/4/21)
Meanwhile, Erdogan is said to be leading a Muslim "Trojan-horse" conquest of Europe, starting with France - which is what the French army is warning against - and the intel agencies before them.
The professor is right about "these kinds of archaic motivations motivat[ing] certain people": Erdogan does think in such terms. In a speech on 3/4/17, he described a meeting between EU leaders and Pope Francis in the Vatican as evidence that the EU is an anti-Turkey “Crusader Alliance” - https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-eu-is-crusader-alliance-lying-to-us-111524
I'm sure you're familiar with "The Strategy for Islamic Cultural Action outside the Islamic World" (adopted by the 9th Islamic Summit Conference, Doha, 2009) - https://vladtepesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Strategy-for-Islamic-Cultural-Action-ISESCO.pdf (And a commentary: "ISESCO and their European Muslim Agenda" https://americandigitalnews.com/index.php/2017/09/30/isesco-european-muslim-agenda/)
I'd say Erdogan has been implementing this strategy, using the Turkish communities in EU countries.
- He said that Muslims in France (and in the EU as a whole) are "under his protection" https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17202/erdogan-turkey-islamic-superpower
- They should integrate but not assimilate, knowing they are the future of Europe, have many children, and always act as “representative of the Turkish nation” https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/no-turkish-alterity-in-europe-erdogan-149920
No Turkish alterity in Europe: Erdoğan - Turkey News (hurriyetdailynews.com) ; https://www.bing.com/search? ; https://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2017/03/erdogan-to-fellow-turks-living-in-europe-you-are-the-future-of-europehave-not-just-three-but-five-children-3261759.html
Well, the Doha strategy similarly insists on Muslims “preserving their distinctiveness” as befits their “spiritual and moral superiority” (p. 11), especially through continued efforts to “master their native language” and “the principles of the Islamic Sharia’ (p. 12), notably through the creation of “Islamic cultural centres” (p. 13), the overall goal being “to immunize their cultural identity” (p. 14).
The strategies for achieving this are specified in Chapter 2 (p. 24ff).
According to the Strategy, wherever the “spiritual and moral superiority” of Islamic living will be demonstrated, it will “set the Muslim immigrant family as an example of a unified and efficient family that western society can benefit from.” (p. 65)
And by all accounts, Erdogan is doing well "infiltrating" France. The French people know that their intel community has been reporting on this to the leadership:
"Plusieurs rapports adressés à l'Élysée par la Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI), la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) et la Direction du renseignement de la Préfecture de police (DRPP) à la fin du mois d'octobre 2020 – et que le JDD a pu consulter – dévoilent l'ampleur, les formes et les objectifs d'une véritable stratégie d'infiltration impulsée depuis Ankara au moyen de réseaux animés par l'ambassade de Turquie et le MIT, le service d'espionnage turc. Ces "vecteurs d'influence" pointés par les experts français agissent principalement auprès de la population turque immigrée, mais aussi à travers les organisations musulmanes et même depuis peu dans la vie politique locale, par l'appui apporté à des élus inféodés."
ENQUETE. Comment le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan infiltre la France (msn.com); https://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/enquete-comment-le-president-turc-recep-tayyip-erdogan-infiltre-la-france-4023517
Beyond Macron's shouting matches with Erdogan, nothing much has changed, which suggests the professor may right again: it’s already too late, and the French are a fatal step behind their enemies...
"France ... slowly coming around to the idea that these kinds of archaic motivations..." do in fact motivate certain people.
According to Th. Meyssan, France's intel people want the people to realise this. He says that a Feb. 2021 piece published by Le Journal du Dimanche, “ENQUETE. Comment le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan infiltre la France (msn.com)", was prompted by the DGSI - La France face au jihadisme de son allié turc, par Thierry Meyssan (voltairenet.org)]
Meyssan's paper gives an interesting history of the rise of Islamic Jihadism, and the central role played by Turkey and others, including Western powers.
(English version: https://www.voltairenet.org/article212155.html)
Mr. Lyons, There is much to fear in your analysis, but also bits to cheer. Specifically regarding the latter, influential people, at least in France, are beginning finally to pinpoint the principal source of the cancer chewing away at the vital organs of Western Civilization: U.S. Universities.
I am part of a Franco-American family. Usually we reside in the USA but spend part of every year in France and sometimes stay longer. We are in France currently.
My wife is French and my French language skills are poor, but I don't sense the same kind of political divisions in France that we have in the USA. In America, the media has the Left and Right separated into two completely and mutually hostile realities. France has a lapdog media that is inseparable from the power structure. American media has US citizens hating each other. There is nothing comparable in France. I don't see civil war here. But there is a common distain for the feckless French state. It's response to Covid was particularly appalling. It combined draconian infringements on personal freedoms not seen since the Nazi Occupation with a thoroughly inept medical response. Meanwhile France has an entrenched and corrupt ruling class - they all go to the same university to learn to be politicians - that makes the USA's stale political class look dynamic. I'd say that if anything, France is ripe for a revolution and the USA for the civil war.
That, said, your article is interesting and makes a lot of good points.
The central tenet of Critical Race Theory as taught in seminars for corporations and as understood by BLM and their "allies" is: "All white people are racists". It does not take an efficient mind anything more than that irrevocably to conclude that CRT is unadulterated racism veiled by verbiage. One does not need to study Islam long or deeply to confront the absolute hatred hatred of non-believers, of democracy, indeed of the underpinnings of western civilization, demanded of Muslims. I have said for at least a score of years that war- real war, war with the gloves off as in WW1- with Islam was inevitable and would start in either France or Belgium. The ideas I see as implicit in your essay, sir- that a French civil war would not be presented in the international press as a war against Islam, and that it would not ignite WW3- are shortsighted and wrong. When the balloon goes up it will soar. Paris is not Petrograd in 1917 but Vienna in 1683. We should ever be mindful of the adage, usually attributed to Sun Tzu, that "in time of peace the wise man prepares for war". Get ready. It shan't be long.
I think many of us, even an average nobody like myself, have kind of sensed this coming for a long while. Even if we were unclear on how it would all unfold and exactly come undone. I still don't know if will take 50 years or 50 months to play out. I know a few baby boomers who think similarly but take some weird solace in the fact they'll likely be dead before anything serious happens. I am not as confident being a Gen X'er. So what now? Just sit and wait?
Sitting, watching, waiting works great for Arabs. They've been at this game for 5000 years.
I should mention they are all heavily armed and born into gangs, aka clans/tribes.
That's actually the most important part.
I was just thinking that very thing. The issue with many of us of the failing West is that there isn't much of a "we" any longer. The three marks of life in the megamachine are isolation, tedium, and meaninglessness. The "solace" offered by the entertainment-industrial complex is a hard drug to kick. Even friends I know who more or less concur with the dire analysis given here are radically unwilling to do anything whatsoever about it.
To be clear, what I often suggest to friends is hardly extreme, to say the least. That we should try to do things together. Get outside of the matrix for a time. Look at the stars; play music together; begin to share our lives in more direct ways than being online. It seems to fall on deaf ears.
I am writing from Italy where I have lived, on and off, for over 40 years. Italy is an interesting arena in which to view the introduction of woke identity politics. Modern Italy (post WWII) was never really united, its fractious politics a remnant of the bipolar cold war (Marxist leftists vs. Christian Democrats), but the fault lines were always social and cultural, not racial or ethnoreligious (Italy did not have slavery in the last century, nor does it have a large post-colonial Muslim population). What is left of the Italian Post-Communist left is largely in tatters, and the center left Democratic party is dipping its toe into woke politics (along with green climate politics), in an attempt to salvage some semblance of a political platform (it has to contend not only with an array of right of center parties, but also the amorphous populism of the 5 Star Movement which upended the Italian political scene a decade ago). But how do you mobilize the younger generation if most of them are white and middle class, and you can’t coopt BLM by blaming the police or systemic racism? You fall back on the gender wars. The Democratic Party recently shot itself in the foot by insisting on rigid “pink quotas” for female representation in its reconstituted leadership only to have several female party members lamenting backroom deals and corruption in the selection process (of other female party members). But the big new move is the “DDL Zan” a law billed as an anti-homophobia law that threatens to punish speech that is deemed offensive (one shudders to imagine the already lethargic Italian legal system absorbing all the new cases). So the bottom line for Italy, in my estimation, is that the political left, in desperate need of new energy, is going to adopt some watered down version of American woke politics, mostly focused on gender and sexuality, but framed as a larger move towards “inclusivita’” and time will tell whether it will effectively penetrate the body politic or remain like the McDonald’s restaurant, a ubiquitous American presence with limited influence on Italy’s “cultural cuisine.”
Thanks, that's an interesting perspective. My distant impression is that Italy has so far largely laughed off a lot of this stuff in a way that most other countries in Europe have not, but I'm not sure why - possibly because of a tighter-knit culture (if not politics)? Thoughts on this?
You are not wrong. But we like to say here that Italy is 20 countries (the 20 regions) and the difference between Emilia Romagna and Sicily is like comparing Maine to Alabama. The south is still very traditional and more catholic, so much of the gender stuff is completely alien to them. The north is a different story, but it's complex. I think much of the move towards woke-ness is opportunistic. Corporate Italy is trying it out (I saw billboards for an online footwear company as I rode my bike to work last week with a male LGBT couple and then a young girl with down syndrome, and it just contained the brand name and the term "Inclusivita'" which is not really a word you even heard here until about 2 years ago. Italians often mix contempt for US culture with a curious fascination for it, and secretly they think that the US is ahead in all things business-related and choose to copy it. Politically, as I said, it's purely that the center left has no ideas. But culturally, I think it will simply be a tougher sell. Italian women prize femininity, beauty, fashion and motherhood in ways that are very, very deep and structural (one of the reasons I adore this country) and Italian comedians are still quite free to mock some of the crazier elements of identity politics. BUT, I am worried about the trajectory. They are trying it on, they will see if it where it gets them, and it may stick and begin to tear the society apart on an all new vector. Time will tell.
I enjoy your comments it truly lends to some incite to Italy. Americas woke culture is like all academia driven leftist past attempts to gain every lasting power, it blows up on its self.
I understand that most out side the US have on the hollywood media take on where America is. America is passed the peak of this current efforts and like always the leftist over reach is boubding back at them like never before.
In the end what many foreigners fail to understand is first and foremost we ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY! we never have been we are a Federalist Republic. We are in the end a nation of laws and when the public becomes awear of illicit activity by both elected & bureaucrats hell always follows. There is a difference however this time around thw US media has lost trust with the people and are consider more enemies of the people they their friend as for academia its reached its peak power aswell both social and economical.
Dispite what think the US economy is a service driven economy this is what has allowed china to assume so much of what we manufactured. This however to is changing because regionally manufacturing is still an required model to maintain a healthy middle class.
In 2022 you will see a back lash that will make 1994 look miniscule, further as new media raises the old media is in it final death throws.. last if you want to be scared for real do the math on the actual worth vs cap value of Tesla, Amazon and Facebook their stock value is nothing but a house of cards that could very well colaspe at any moment.
The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that SAVES this world. Whether mothers or not, I commend Italian women for prizing femininity and tradition.
I thproughly enjoy your articles but the claim above about "climate-induced migration" from Africa and Central America borders on laughable. These populations are fleeing leftist-induced hellholes. I have yet to hear anyone in the migrant caravans scream "Climate is getting us! HEEEELLLLLP!"
Commenting from the UK I'm in complete agreement with your analysis. Although we are some way behind the cycle of 'upheaval' than France, many are convinced that it will come. What is quite astonishing though is the extent to which the middle-class establishment and political elites are 'pushing the narrative' that has been exported from the US. They appear to have no understanding of where the divisions they are creating will lead us. This I find strange because the middle-classes, as I've understood them, are particularly protective of their own advantage and financial well-being. I don't think it's a case of them believing they 'protect' themselves from the inevitable upheaval, but of them being completely blind to it due to a myopic self-righteousness. I personally trace this back to the post-modernist influence in our educational institutions and the widespread acceptance of critical theory by those who've gone through a contemporary university education. Many of them are now entering the establishment, as is their middle-class wont, and as a result we see an increasing disparagement of traditional culture. Indeed we are being treated, over the next few weeks, to a TV series in which Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry, is played by an actress of African heritage. The cultural elites will praise it to the skies and nobody will watch it.
I'm a bit unclear as to your basis for thinking that any of this migration is the least bit climate induced. My impression is that it's entirely economic, and you don't have to appeal to 'climate change' to explain why the first world is more attractive to economic migrants than the third world.
Are you sure the New Faith hasn't, all unnoticed, started to infect your own thinking?
Hmm, I read While Europe Slept 15 years ago. France and well as other Western European nations have put on blinders with respect to the rise of radical Islam and the unwillingness of certain populations to assimilate. Our ancestors should have also anticipated that their colonial exploits would one day come back to haunt future generations. What did they expect? However, as an American, I take exception to the notion that all of this is being exported from the US. Europe has been asleep, perhaps not wanting to face hard truths in the post-WWII era and here we are.
Europe slept? Yes, most are, hoodwinked by the lies of their criminal governments. But Americans are in deeply sleep still.
Islamic terrorism was born in Afghanistan, deliberately birthed and nurtured by the US. All its allies/groupies joined in, including France:
NSC, 11 Sep 1979–22 Jul 1980: “Provide lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Provide selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediaries.” https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v12/d107
You'll see in this archive piece how Admiral Turner was excited about “accelerated shipment of arms to the Afghan rebels via Saudi Arabia.”
That's when Usama bin Laden joined the jolly party - which later moved to the US as "9/11".
This piece explains how this most foolish initiative developed – and also how the UK was actually ahead of the US in terrorism engineering - and was never the sluggard: https://www.voltairenet.org/article212155.html
All are now reaping the bitter fruits, including the sleeping ones, who still don't know that their so-called leaders fathered it all…
This retired French general and his team of analysts (unrelated to the "Generals' Letter discussed in Lyons' article) warn that NATO may prove more lethal to Europe than Islamic terrorism: https://www.capital.fr/economie-politique/otan-2030-il-faut-stopper-ce-train-fou-avant-quil-ne-soit-trop-tard-1396756
like most woke leftist this author only gets part of the story correct. As the author himself repeats many of the same themes of this "new faith"
While he does an excellent job on the theology and those who push it he should refrain from making any scientific proclamations as its not within his wheel house of actual knowledgeable.
Futher to blame Republicans I
i.e. those who stand on the law through his accusations against Trump only further exposses the authors inability to focus on the problem which he himself prescribes proclaims much of this "new faith" The authors inability not to blame the messenger in an attempt to cover for his full throated truths about the left and its academic and media support. Leaves the author still part of the problem not part of the solution.
I have asked two friends who live in France their sentiment about the army officer letters. They both think they are exaggerated but nonetheless not without substance. From my observation, affectio societatis is strong in France so the country may be farther away from civil war than one might think, but still...
I think France is facing the same problems that US: an inability to properly analyze its past foreign interventionism mistakes and hold those who made them to account. These mistakes have a real potential of domestic destabilization, especially in France whose population include a large number of people with origin in Africa and the Middle East. It is mind boggling that foreign policies are not discussed more closely in relation to domestic policies in both countries. Those who actually dare to try (for example Tulsi Gabbard) have been vilified in an abject manner.
Interesting. While I claim no special knowledge, I do spend more time thinking about France than most Americans. France has been the leading edge of modernity since the demise of the Roman Empire, for better and for worse, and is therefore worth paying attention to. The translation of identity politics into French as communitarianism I found especially interesting as that seems at odds with the meaning in English, as often identified with Etzioni . I have always though Etzioni's philosophy to be a stalking horse for collectivism, but in fairness he has a much broader notion of the community than the fracturing implicit in identity politics. I am sure he is aware of the French usage but haven't seen any comment by him.