December 09, 2015
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(Similarly, Houellebecq, the leading reactionary intellectual, sees globalism as an Anglo-Saxon plot. His real name is Michel Thomas, but he took his Communist grandmother’s maiden name of “Houellebecq” as his pen name out of gratitude for raising him”and, perhaps, because “Houellebecq” is so much harder for us Anglophones to spell than “Thomas.”)
It’s noteworthy that in Submission, Marine Le Pen evolves under the alien Islamic threat away from her father’s colorful conservatism toward representing an ever-greater share of the French nation, which, by definition, includes both right and left. The New York Times this week used a comic number of scare quotes to describe Marine Le Pen’s increasingly inclusive patriotism:
She talks about the French “nation” and its “sovereignty” and making France once again proud of its “founding values” and “authentic Frenchness.”
For instance, Submission includes the seemingly random sentence “For a while there”d been rumors that Renaud Camus was writing some of her speeches, under the direction of Florian Philippot.” French readers, however, would be aware that the novelist Camus is certainly”and the political operative Philippot is likely”homosexual. Gay Frenchmen, especially in Paris, have been flocking toward the National Front to protect them from Islamic thugs. In the very long run, however, there is little anomalous about this in a growing big-tent nationalist party arrayed against an establishment insistent upon policies that would eventually turn the homeland over to an alien and hostile culture.
In Submission, Le Pen represents the Republic’s last redoubt of French republicanism: “I was struck by the republican, even anticlerical, tenor of her remarks.” As Houellebecq foresaw, the Times reports:
In her victory speech on Sunday night she added the word “laicité” to the core French values of liberty, equality and fraternity. “Laicité” is loosely translated as secularism, but increasingly has come to mean eschewing any show of religious affiliation in public, which some critics see as a cover for anti-Muslim views….
If elected, Ms. Le Pen would be the first female president of France.
Ms. Le Pen uses the prospect of an Islamic takeover of France as an example of what France must fight. If the war is lost against “Islamist totalitarianism,” she said after the attacks in Paris last month, “the veil will be imposed on all women.”
If Ms. Le Pen is not elected, there might never be a female president of France.
Marine Le Pen or Tashfeen Malik?
