A Dark Vision From French Intellectuals

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/world/europe/a-dark-vision-from-french-intellectuals.html

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PARIS — There’s something very French about intellectuals weighing in on topical issues loudly and regularly. The latest twist is that they have taken over the political debate.

From front pages to television talk shows, a few philosopher-pundits have taken center stage, defending their dark vision of a France in danger of losing its identity, sovereignty, culture — in short, its soul.

Take the example of Éric Zemmour, a controversial commentator and author of a best-selling book, “The French Suicide,” whose title tells it all. Recently he was on the cover of the right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles as the hero of a new novel that casts him as a presidential candidate.

A headline in the newspaper Le Monde questioned whether the intellectuals who share Mr. Zemmour’s pessimism — including several prominent former leftists — aren’t playing the game of the National Front, the far-right party that has capitalized on popular dissatisfaction with immigration, globalization and, notably, the European Union.

Most vehemently deny any sympathy for the National Front — or any political party, for that matter. But the themes are similar, notably with respect to the European Union, which once promised to deliver a shared future to a continent scarred by war.

Now, they say, that dream is dead, done in by repeated crises, a stagnant economy and a technocratic elite that is deaf to popular opinion.

“They told us it would be heaven, and 25 years later, it is hell,” said Michel Onfray, a prominent philosopher, during a television debate.

Sudhir Hazareesingh, an Oxford professor and author of “How the French Think,” just published in the United States by Basic Books, dates the shift to 2005, when French voters rejected a new European constitution only to see the project move ahead anyway.

“Until then, there used to be a constructive debate,” he said in an interview. “Now only one side is audible. The other side is there, but we don’t hear them because they don’t want to engage.”

Other countries share a disillusion with the European project, but in France, the debate is shot through with a “sentiment underpinned by a fear of decline,” Mr. Hazareesingh said.

“When the French become anxious, anything that represents change is experienced as something perilous,” he said.

These views are not new: What is unusual is that they have drowned out opposing views that are open to a changing world. “The anti-moderns have cannibalized the public sphere,” Mr. Hazareesingh told Le Monde.

He has characterized this trend as an intellectual retreat, both in time and in space, back to a vision of French “republican” values of more than a century ago.

One example is “laïcité,” the French version of secularism, now reinterpreted as a bulwark against the perceived threat of an increasingly multicultural society.

Unlike French intellectuals of other periods, this group isn’t trying to reach audiences outside the country. “There is a very Franco-centric dimension to their way of thinking,” Mr. Hazareesingh said.

The paradox is that these ubiquitous “declinists” — as Mr. Hazareesingh defines them — regularly characterize themselves as victims of “la bien-pensance,” the French equivalent of political correctness.

They argue that any criticism of immigration policies is instantly branded as racist xenophobia, and any defense of French sovereignty is dismissed as nostalgia.

But as Le Monde noted, the idea that their views are being ignored is misplaced.

“On the right and on the left, ‘la bien-pensance’ is no longer the dominant discourse,” read a recent headline in the newspaper. The reigning ideology in France today, the article said, is “more authoritarian than libertarian, more conservative than progressive.”

This trend is happening against a backdrop of widespread dismay with a political class seen as incapable of dealing with popular concerns such as immigration or unemployment.

These issues are real, and the intellectuals definitely have picked up on “something that is genuinely felt,” Mr. Hazareesingh noted. The question is whether their solutions amount to a credible vision for France’s future.