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Let’s get into it:
French author Michel Houellebecq was placed under formal investigation on Tuesday over comments made during a 2022 interview where he stated that the Islamic invasion of his native nation was a problem that would result in violence not just from those migrants who had refused to assimilate to French culture but against those migrants by native French. Now he’s being charged with crimes of hate speech.
France is historically a Catholic country. For a time, it was the home of the Pope. There was even a wine made in his honor, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Houellebecq pointed out the native religion of his nation. He was cited for, per AI translation, these comments:
“When entire territories are under Islamist control, I think acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims — in short, Bataclans in reverse,” he notably declared, referring to the Islamist attacks of November 13, 2015.
“I believe that the wish of the native French population, as they say, is not that the Muslims assimilate, but that they stop stealing from them and attacking them — in short, that their violence decreases, that they respect the law and the people. Or else, another good solution, that they leave,” he said.
He went on to talk about the “great replacement theory,” which has been called a racist conspiracy theory. This theory suggests that native Europeans and Westerners are being replaced in their own nations by migrants from foreign lands with disparate cultures, all facilitated by the governments of those Western nations.
While it’s called “racist” to say this, it’s also true. The EU has policies demanding mass migration to EU nations, American immigration policy has allowed millions of illegal immigrants and then promised many of them legal or semi-legal status, with no vote or say from the native American people who already live here. In Britain, citizens have been fighting their own government to make the mass migration stop, but the government keeps allowing in boats upon boats of migrants and then giving them taxpayer-funded services and welfare benefits while condemning their own population.
“I was very shocked that people call that a theory,” the author said. “It’s not a theory, it’s a fact (…) Renaud Camus [originator of the theory] is a good writer, there’s no doubt about that. So he observed a great replacement or, to be more precise, the modification of the ethnic and religious composition of the European population. It’s a statistical fact.” Now he’s up on charges. Which is madness.
As American author Walter Kirn said, “As grave and insane a cultural development as I can imagine. All writers and artists must stand against this -- or what we do falls to the level of cake decorating. Guillotines next if we don’t.”
And he’s right. Ideas must be permitted to be discussed without threat of criminal penalty. This is essential for a free society.
Here in the US, there are no hate speech laws, and I urge everyone to stand against any formal push to implement them, as well as to stand firm against the informal, social effort to force people to curb speech under threat of serious consequences like job loss or ostracization.
Libby