Another "politically incorrect" book by another enervated member of the Western intelligentsia about that winning strategy for civilizational destruction known as "muticulturalism" -- Trojan horse for Islamization, among other Western nation-killers -- has again prompted a "heated" response in the media. The book is L'Identité Malheureuse, the writer is Alain Finkielkraut, and it is a pair of journalists from the German publication Spiegel who are hot and bothered.
The questions alone suffice to convey the "interview."
SPIEGEL: Mr. Finkielkraut, are you unhappy with today's France?
SPIEGEL: Why is that? Post-national and multicultural sounds rather promising.
SPIEGEL: Aren't you giving in here to the right-wingers' fears of demise? ...
Note: Even with the post-nation upon them, citizens who lament the evident loss are "right-wingers" harboring "fears" -- as though they wear jackboots for fun and their concerns are imaginary.
SPIEGEL: The anger of these young people is also stirred up by high unemployment. They are turning their backs on society because they feel excluded.
SPIEGEL: These neighborhoods that you speak of, have you even seen them firsthand? ...
SPIEGEL: You yourself are the child of immigrants, the progeny of a persecuted family. Does your personal will to integrate explain your radical commitment to the values of the Republic?
SPIEGEL: And made you into its apologist?
To call these journalists merely predictable undercuts their skills as propaganda artists.
SPIEGEL: How do you define this French civilization that you speak of?
SPIEGEL: Those are idealized clichés that nations create for themselves.
Why didn't they just interview each other?
They continue:
SPIEGEL: Is the modern French identity still shaped by the Revolution of 1789?
SPIEGEL: But doesn't French secularism today also serve to justify the aggressive rejection of Islam?
Finally, something interesting. If secularism may be a weapon against the Judeo-Christian traditions underpinning Western culture, it is also a bulwark against incursions of Islam into the public square in the West. Secularism, suddenly, then becomes very bad, -- the "radical committment to the values of the Republic," as far as these Spiegelistas go. This turning on secularism when Islam is the offender is akin to feminists turning on equal rights when Bill Clinton is the offender (sexual predator/rapist). The ends always justify the means for ideologues determined to destroy Western civ.
SPIEGEL: Hasn't Islam long since become a part of Europe, a part of France and Germany, as former German President Christian Wulff once put it?
SPIEGEL: Well, the Muslims are here now. So don't they also belong?
SPIEGEL: How do you view the political rise of Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Front party?
Aha. Marine Le Pen -- a politician in opposition to Islamization and supportive of France's secularity. What does Finkielkraut say? Nothing. He proclaims his allegiance to the Spiegel Left.
SPIEGEL: How do you view the political rise of Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Front party?
Finkielkraut: This disturbs me, of course. But the National Front would not be continuously on the rise if it had not discarded the old issues of the extreme right. Nowadays the National Front focuses on secularism and the republic.
SPIEGEL: That sounds as if you could imagine voting for the party.
Finkielkraut: No, I would never do that because this party appeals to people's base instincts and hatred. And these are easy to kindle among its supporters. We can't leave these issues to the National Front. It would also be up to the left, the party of the people, to take seriously the suffering and anxiety of ordinary people.
Poor intellectual. Everything swims before his eyes. There is no case to support National Front, not even the one he has made. The party Marine le Pen leads may well, as Finkielkraut says, have "discarded the old issues of the extremem right" and "focuses on secularism and the republic," and thus take "seriously the suffering and anxiety of ordinary people" -- something he says the left should be doing but isn't. But never would he cast a vote for it. Apparently, he would rather just write more "politically incorrect" books about "multiculturalism" that prompt "heated" responses in the media.
By the way, since when does "the left, the party of the people take seriously the suffering and anxiety of ordinary people?"
Finkielkraut, meanwhile, failed to prove his Leftist bona fides.
SPIEGEL: What do you say to people who call you a reactionary?
Finkielkraut: It has become impossible to see history as constant progress. I reserve the possibility to compare yesterday and today and ask the question: What do we retain, what do we abandon?
SPIEGEL: Is that really any more than nostalgia for a lost world?
Finkielkraut: Like Albert Camus, I am of the opinion that our generation's task is not to recreate the world, but to prevent its decline. We not only have to conserve nature, but also culture. There you have the reactionary.
SPIEGEL: When you see all these problems in France -- the debts, unemployment, educational crisis, identity crisis -- do you fear for the future?
Finkielkraut: I become sad and feel a growing sense of anxiety. Optimism would seem a bit ridiculous these days. I wish the politicians were able to speak the truth and look reality in the face. ...
Of course, even when they do, he won't vote for them!
Better for the enervated intellectual type to write "politically incorrect" books, and suffer.