In this episode, we talk about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and the history of the magazine and its relationship with the far-left. We also talk about what it means to be a left-wing publication in the 21st century.
00:00:05.000Well, Romain, tell us what it has been like living in Paris this past week in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
00:00:16.440So, actually, it's been a hectic week, as you can imagine, and I'm sure I'm going to forget some interesting events.
00:00:27.360But let's say that one week ago, because we are recording on the 14th of January, and on the 7th, there was a huge event that was expected.
00:00:48.100It was the release of Michel Welbeck's book, Submission in English.
00:00:53.260And Charlie Hebdo's issue that very day, because it's released on Wednesdays, was about this novel.
00:01:02.700So, the latest and sixth novel by Michel Welbeck.
00:02:02.600It's more provocative cartoons and not very well-written articles.
00:02:12.420And it's, of course, left-wing, but it's of the anarchist strain of the left.
00:02:19.540So, there are some issues with the collectivist and authoritarian left, especially about Islam, of course, but not only.
00:02:30.240And it used to be a left libertarian magazine, but which became more and more leftist with time.
00:02:39.880And in the 90s, for example, they petitioned against the Front National when it was an interesting party, which is not the case as of today.
00:02:51.740I have to remind our listeners about that, because if they read Patrick Lebrun at countercurrents, they won't know it.
00:03:00.640Anyway, it used to be more interesting, but with time, it was swept away by the cultural tsunami of the left-wing baby boomers,
00:03:16.160which came of age and started taking over everything and become the establishment.
00:03:23.420And Charlie Hebdo, which was at first a kind of non-conformist publication, became growingly conformist.
00:03:34.460And so, in the 90s, which was maybe the time when they were the most aligned with the left, the establishment left,
00:03:45.260they were petitioning against Front National.
00:03:48.740They were asking the government to ban this party.
00:03:54.020So, you know, so much for freedom of speech.
00:03:57.700But then there happened something at the turn of, you know, these very decisive years of 2004, 2005 and 2006.
00:04:11.340There were many events which were related.
00:04:13.440So, there was the assassination of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands about Islam.
00:04:25.040There was the Mohammed cartoons at the end of 2005, but which elicited riots in the Muslim world, including the West, in 2006.
00:04:39.360And these three years, which were maybe the hate of Islamophobia in the West, that's when Charlie Hebdo, at least on Islam, departed from the rest of the left.
00:04:55.520Because they were still attached to secularism, which was a left-wing tradition, but that the left abandoned in favor of, you know, third world and immigration and, of course, keeping its Muslim constituents in Europe.
00:05:16.640So, Charlie Hebdo started with these Mohammed cartoons and then, you know, it's, you could say it's Schmittian, but once you, you know, you depart from your side, you are forced to take another one.
00:05:35.080And that's what Charlie Hebdo increasingly did.
00:05:38.460And they even had some cartoons that could be described as racist in the, maybe the basic sense of the word.
00:05:50.560For example, last year when, you know, these 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria were kidnapped and turned into sex slaves by Boko Haram, this Muslim sect.
00:06:03.980But they had this cartoon with pregnant black women saying, we want to keep our social benefits.
00:06:16.540And which, of course, was seen as racist.
00:06:21.640And so, increasingly, there was, you know, the left was not really at ease with Charlie Hebdo and there were voices on both the phony right and the left that maybe they shouldn't release all these cartoons, especially those about Islam.
00:06:42.180Yeah. And the real threat was, I think it was in 2011 when their headquarters were arsoned by Muslims.
00:06:53.000And it was the first warning, but then it was forgotten because there was officially, at least, a police protection and they received threats, but not more than before.
00:07:12.180And ironically, in last week's issue, there was a cartoon the day that the shooting happened, a cartoon in the issue with, it was Sharpe, one of the guys who were murdered.
00:07:29.600But his cartoon where you see a Muslim guy and the text above his head says, still no attack this year.
00:07:40.480And he says, Happy New Year wishes, you can make them until the end of January.
00:07:48.900And so, I guess, he drew this cartoon maybe, let's say, the 2nd of January, you know, so the issue can be printed and, you know, rooted and be read on the day of the 7th.
00:08:09.540And on that day, his prediction was actually turned true.
00:08:17.880And what's interesting, again, is that this issue was dedicated to Welbeck's novel, which was released the same day.
00:08:27.340And the columnist who reviewed the book was murdered that day.
00:08:34.000So, it was really, saying it was a special day would be, you know, a kind of understatement because it was really a kind of climatic moment.
00:08:49.980It was, you know, some columnists said it was Francis 9-11 and I think it's right.
00:08:58.600But there were Muslim attacks three years ago and it didn't have the same effect.
00:09:04.600So, maybe we can talk about the effects now, but maybe you want to jump in about that.
00:09:11.800Well, yeah, I definitely want to talk about the social effects and the lasting effects.
00:09:17.240But first, I want to give our listeners a sense of the whole atmosphere of it.
00:09:23.860Because you've long been our Paris correspondent and so you need to do your duty.
00:09:31.420So, talk a little bit about just living in Paris.
00:09:35.220I think a lot of people, you know, because we have listeners certainly in America, but all over Europe, all over the world really.
00:09:41.200They, they've probably seen images of this rather disgusting parade of horrible, degenerate politicians.
00:10:13.760I said, I told myself maybe I should go there and take pictures, but really I couldn't.
00:10:19.300And I, you know, I didn't want to add another figure to their, you know, body count of the 3.7 million.
00:10:31.780But actually, maybe it's not so figurative because these people were committing a kind of cultural suicide.
00:10:40.220But to get back to the atmosphere in Paris, you know, it's funny because, not really funny, but it happened at 10.30 in the morning, I think.
00:10:56.280And I, I don't live near, I was at work, I don't walk near where it happened.
00:11:05.980But, you know, the atmosphere was, as always, and I, as I said in my review, it's a colleague who came to me and told me, so, 30 minutes later, what happened there.
00:11:23.900And, and then I started hearing all this, you know, police and ambulance sirens and fire brigades and all that stuff.
00:11:39.440And then I, I really realized, and, but when I went, I went out at noon or maybe at one to, to buy my lunch.
00:11:51.540The atmosphere was, you know, like in Woolwich in London, you know, in 2013, where, when there was, um, uh, this British soldier was beheaded by two Muslim blacks, um, and people in the street, on the street were, you know, minding their own businesses, uh, as usual.
00:12:13.160And it was that way that, uh, the atmosphere was at noon or one.
00:12:19.640Yeah, I was actually in, just to jump in really quickly, I was actually in New York City, uh, Brooklyn, to be exact, not lower Manhattan during 9-11.
00:12:28.940Um, but I, I was, I was actually, I was actually working in a, a very famous building in Brooklyn that overlooked the Twin Towers.
00:12:38.880So, anyway, but I, uh, I, I had the same impression.
00:12:44.220I think it was almost, it was surreally normal, uh, to put it that way.
00:12:50.160There, there was a weird normal about people going about, normality about people going about their business, but then everyone was aware that something shocking had taken place.
00:13:11.940I mean, you, you can't be, you can't be running around like a chicken with his head cut off.
00:13:18.020And, you know, I, I did the same, actually, when I, uh, so in the evening I had to, I know it's small talk, but I had to go to buy some, uh, food and to a grocery store.
00:13:32.900And everyone was, you know, smiling and there was a Muslim cashier who was saying, hello, sir, goodbye, sir, which you would never, don't, you know, normally you would just say hello and goodbye.
00:13:49.080And then I, I could be dignified with a monsieur twice, which, uh, which was actually quite unusual.
00:13:56.160And so people have to play so normal to, you know, pretend things are normal, but you could feel the tension, uh, as sport commenters like to say, you could really feel the tension, but you really feel it the day after, you know, when there is a hangover and people really, uh, start being afraid, uh, and rightfully so.
00:16:18.020And WikiLeaks, it was more about, you know, confidential documents, about geopolitical, you know, risk gains.
00:16:27.540It was more complicated, but, of course, both are interrelated.
00:16:32.440But to get back to this shooting, the thing is, so first, people play so normal, over normal, to keep, you know, being, to avoid being too terrified.
00:16:47.800And then, the day after, the hangover, and people could not be brought to peace, because the day after, there was a first, there was another attack in, actually, a city which is called Mont Rouge, and in the southern, in the southern suburb.
00:17:07.400It's not, you know, it's not the kind of suburb that you can hear about on Fox News or CNN.
00:17:15.480It's, actually, I went there last summer when I was looking for apartments.
00:17:20.360And I don't know if it's really funny, but it makes me laugh, because it's schadenfreude, I think.
00:17:26.720So, I went there last summer, and I thought to myself, well, it's a good place to settle.
00:17:34.660But, finally, I went to Paris downtown.
00:17:38.360And so, there was this shooting in a normal city, and a policewoman was killed, actually, by a black Muslim.
00:17:47.720And the day, the day after, the day after, so two days after the Charlie Hebdo shooting on Friday, there were two events.
00:17:58.600First, the two shooters, the two Charlie Hebdo shooters were surrounded in the countryside and killed.
00:18:09.180And at the same time, in a Jewish grocery store, there was this black guy who killed the policewoman on Thursday, who killed four Jewish customers in the supermarket.
00:18:25.700And so, what's interesting in this course of events is that people tried to, you know, there is this bad event, and then you go back to normal.
00:18:41.960But it was three days in a row, and then you can't, you know, you can't evade it and say that it's just a remote event.
00:18:50.460And then you just have to go back to day-to-day life, and that's it.
00:18:57.540It means that the threat is present everywhere and every time, and then it gets different.
00:19:06.180But the important part of the reaction, since the attack took place a week ago, is that, so, the reaction of the political and media class was, you know, it was easy to expect.
00:19:28.340Of course, they want to maintain their power, so their first reaction is to say that it has nothing to do with immigration and Islam, and that the worst we could do, just like after Fort Hood in Texas, the worst we could do would be to undermine diversity.
00:19:47.960And the reaction of the French government was very close to the reaction of the U.S. Army after Nidal Malik took 12 lives, something like that, in Fort Hood.
00:20:04.500So, it could be expected, but what was really mind-boggling and interesting at the same time was the reaction of the people.
00:20:15.560So, everybody was putting, you know, as a Facebook avatar, Je suis Charlie, so, obviously, I am Charlie.
00:20:24.420And so, people were saying they would demonstrate on Sunday, and that, of course, it was something that was unacceptable.
00:20:35.000But the question that could be raised, so, you are Charlie, but do you support the fact that people publish cartoons of Muhammad?
00:20:46.560And I'm sure if you just ran a poll among the crowd on Sunday, just asking, should we have the right, and should we publish Muhammad cartoons?
00:21:02.560I'm sure you would have maybe one-third or one-half of the people present who would say no, you know.
00:21:14.900So, if people are Charlie, but don't want to talk about Islam and immigration, does that mean that they want to die just like the Charlie cartoonists and journalists?
00:21:29.240I think you brought up a lot of interesting points.
00:21:33.020Yeah, maybe too much, but there are many things to say.
00:21:36.960Yeah, no, you brought up a lot. I want to just talk about this issue a little bit.
00:21:41.580I mean, you brought up a lot of interesting points in your short article on the Charlie attacks that you wrote almost immediately afterwards.
00:21:50.940But, yeah, I'm always reminded of this joke, and it's a joke that can fit a lot of different circumstances.
00:21:57.860And there's many versions of it, like a folktale, but it's the broken kettle joke.
00:22:04.400So, a neighbor borrows a kettle from his other neighbor.
00:22:11.820And after a month, he goes and returns it, and it has a massive crack in the kettle, and it's now unusable.
00:22:19.660And the neighbor basically tells the borrower, you know, what's going on here?
00:22:23.960And the guilty neighbor says, well, first off, there's not a crack in the kettle.
00:22:31.240Second off, the crack was there before I borrowed it from you.
00:22:34.720And third off, I never borrowed that kettle.
00:22:37.480It's a kind of, you know, it's that over-explanation of some event.
00:22:43.460But I think you can get at that with these politicians.
00:22:47.740It's a kind of like, well, we've brought in all of these people who are now...
00:25:11.940And it's this, again, it's this very, it's a kind of diluted cycle that the American and Western establishments seem to go through.
00:25:22.160Is that, you know, they're apparently, they believe there'll be no consequences, bad consequences to their actions.
00:25:27.720And then when these predictable bad consequences occur, they, you know, want to distract everyone by talking about, you know, some vague notion of free speech rights or the dangers of extremism or something.
00:25:46.080Even though, again, I mean, there are dangers of extremism, sure, that's obvious.
00:25:50.440But, again, some of these things, they're very predictable.
00:25:52.800You can't predict when and where and what it's going to happen.
00:25:58.360But you can predict that something's going to happen.
00:26:01.340There are going to be consequences to all of these things that American and European, Western European elites are supporting.
00:26:09.800Especially when you give weapons and money and training to people who are going to train terrorists.
00:35:52.920We're just, you know, we're going to listen in and perhaps even arrest you if we decide that.
00:35:57.440You know, it reminds me that there's a very good series about Big Brother, let's call it like that, in Britain.
00:36:07.420It's Black Mirror, which is on Channel 4, I think.
00:36:12.920And, of course, you can find it by legal or a little less than legal means on the Internet.
00:36:23.220And it's really about that, and it's excellent.
00:36:26.400But to get back to this demonstration, so there were 3.7 million people in, not only in Paris.
00:36:38.480I think in Paris it was 2.5 million and 2 million.2 remaining was in the other cities.
00:36:48.900And for American listeners, to imagine what it means in American terms, so France's population is one-fifth that of the United States.
00:37:02.060So imagine a demonstration with 18.5 million people in the U.S.
00:37:10.760So that means really something important.
00:37:14.140Of course, it means that you still have 60 million people in France who didn't demonstrate.
00:37:20.360But in a way, I felt orphan of a country on Sunday night because, you know, I was seeing all these people, even people I know and I used to, you know, have a good opinion of.
00:37:35.040And, you know, changing the avatar and, you know, talking about this free speech thing when the rest of the year when I send them links about things that are important, they don't, you know, they don't bother read.
00:37:55.940And I really felt that, you know, when we talk about riding the tiger or letting the car, you know, the Tyler Durden thing to stop trying to let, to control everything and just let go.
00:38:14.820And, you know, we are really at this point now and it doesn't mean that we should do nothing or don't try to convince people that can be convinced.
00:38:25.420But there are people who can't be, you know, you can't reason them because it's not about free speech.
00:38:33.960Of course, of course, it's not about being safe from Islamic terror.
00:38:42.800And when there are disturbing truths, you can't reassure people without, you know, first telling the truth and then bringing solutions to the problems that the truth underlines.
00:38:57.100And so first you have to, you know, to be aware of that and with people who refuse to be aware of that, you can't really do something.
00:39:09.620So that's the day I have said it before, but this time it was really official that the day when I felt I didn't have a citizenship.
00:39:21.420You know, I saw this kind of national fervor about something that is not only ridiculous, but also immoral to, to demonstrate behind all on Merkel and Sarkozy and Cameron.
00:39:36.920It's really, you know, and Netanyahu funded these terrorists and then he's happy to have, you know, a citadel state that can expel them, but then he's happy to send them in Europe and Sweden is happy to take them.
00:39:54.880You know, it was, you know, it was, you know, I prefer focusing on more constructive things, which maybe in this podcast lead us to bring us to Welbeck's novel.
00:40:11.800Let's, let's talk about Welbeck's novel.
00:40:15.740He's someone who is fairly well known in the United States.
00:40:19.720Well, I remember I read a few reviews of his work a number of years ago and I decided to start to dive in and I've actually read the Elementary Particles and Platform, which are both really worth reading.
00:40:38.320Platform is probably the one that has affected me the most and it's kind of stuck with me the most, maybe because it included so much sex.
00:40:46.740But let's just talk a little bit about, you know, who he is.
00:40:54.620Why don't you, I guess maybe the best way to jump into it is to talk a little bit about this, this kind of long-term scandal that was occurring before anyone could have possibly even read his latest novel, Submission.
00:41:08.160So first, I have to say it's funny, but so before Submission was released, actually, I read the five first novels last year.
00:41:25.040Before 2014, I had never read Welbeck because, I don't know, but when something is, you know, it's like when a movie is too popular, I have the contrary and tendency to be wary of it.
00:41:46.680And so I waited until last year to read the five novels in maybe the matter of one month or five weeks, one a week, you know.
00:41:58.780And so I read the five ones last year and, of course, I was expecting the sixth one.
00:42:06.680And in December, I went on Amazon and pre-ordered the book to get it on the day, the official day of the release, so the 7th of January.
00:42:19.940And there was this controversy going on for weeks, and I referred to it in my article because first I wanted to talk about the controversy and what it reveals about what I termed the age of tweets.
00:42:37.640And so the book was not released, and there were still people praising it and criticizing it.
00:42:45.560So, of course, the establishment types were criticizing it because it was about French's Islamization, and there was the identitarian movement, which is referred to in the novel explicitly.
00:43:01.440The identitarian bloc, the bloc identitaire, is mentioned explicitly in the novel.
00:43:07.640And so, of course, since I knew them for a time, I found it interesting.
00:43:15.640And there was this controversy going on for weeks when even the leaked copies were not available at that time.
00:43:23.660And then they were, but, you know, it takes a while to really read a book and be, you know, able to analyze it.
00:43:34.080And so there was this controversy going on about not the content of the book, but just the title, Submission, which, as we know, the Arabic word for submission is Islam.
00:43:52.220So people knew it was about Islam, and it would bring some, you know, uncomfortable subjects.
00:44:04.060And in an Ulubeckian way, submission also has very strong sexual connotations.
00:44:10.180And that's, you know, you're right to mention it.
00:44:15.020And there are maybe two common themes in the six novels by Welbeck.
00:44:27.480And the second one, which is related, is the fact that the Western software of, you know, humanism and the seek to, you know, human individual happiness on earth has come to an end.
00:44:51.520And he says that in, you know, the famous interview he gave just before the novel was released, he said that the Enlightenment was dead.
00:45:02.060And which, of course, is true from our perspective.
00:45:09.280But so these themes are always common in the six novels, and especially in platform, of course.
00:45:17.720So you have a main character, which, of course, is Welbeck himself, at least in the elementary particles, it's true.
00:45:31.640And then it's at least partly himself, who is, you know, sexually dissatisfied.
00:45:39.340And then you have the relations there is between the sexual misery, which is not only concerning the character, but also Western society at large.
00:45:53.380And the fact that the West is dedicated to earthly human happiness, which can't be fulfilled and then leads to temptations of other things.
00:46:06.160And so in a novel released in 2005, which was in English, it was a literal translation, I think it was the possibility of an island.
00:46:18.680And there are two parallel stories between a guy who is outwardly successful at the beginning of the 21st century, successful in sexual terms, but also sexual in his career, and he's gotten rich and he's famous and socially respected.
00:46:41.300So he shouldn't be, you know, worried and he can even get women when he wants.
00:46:50.200So it's not, it's not really an issue for him, but he's dissatisfied anyway, because the sexual liberation is only about carnal satisfaction, which he less and less gets.
00:47:08.000Because, you know, it's like a drug, because, you know, it's like a drug and you need higher and higher doses.
00:47:13.020And then you, you're not getting it, especially when you're getting older.
00:47:17.900And then the other story is the story of his clone, actually, it's a kind of, you know, a journal written by his clone centuries later when humanity has become a kind of,
00:47:36.040mankind is living in a kind of matrix, a kind of big honeycomb where everyone has this, you know, as their own, you know, shuttered space.
00:47:53.200And the only contact with the other human beings is through internet.
00:47:58.120And of course, it's a metaphor of the world we live in.
00:48:02.480And when we talk about the future, we're always talking about the present.
00:48:06.620And so an alternate ending this time was that this desire of, you know, going out of history, this desire of an end of history, finds an answer with Islam, which is, you know, the central topic of submission.
00:48:31.140And so the main character finds a way to be satisfied with women through the conversion to Islam, but it's more general.
00:48:45.200It's just that the West has extinguished, you know, itself, the Enlightenment project, the Humanist project, which dates back to even further.
00:48:58.400Whether it's the early 16th century and even the late 15th century, actually, this, you know, desire to be at peace and, you know, not care about having a higher purpose leads to Islam, which finds many answers.
00:49:20.040Right. I mean, I think it's this contradiction where Islam is the flip side of the end of history or, you know, Islam is the nightmare of the end of history, but in a way that it's the end of history's nightmare.
00:49:35.240You know, it's something that is peculiar to the end of history and is almost a consequence of it.
00:49:41.300I mean, I think the platform novel, and it's funny, I haven't posted this podcast yet, but we actually did a podcast with John Morgan on Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut, and we talked about platform for a little bit because the Ulebek controversy was in the air at the time when we recorded it.
00:49:59.360But, yeah, I think that, so I'll talk about it again, because it's a very relevant novel.
00:50:04.820And it's, again, you know, I read a lot.
00:50:06.840This thing I wrote, this novel I read about seven or eight years ago now, but I still remember it quite vividly.
00:50:14.000But anyway, it's a story about the kind of average, decadent Westerner who, you know, goes on business junkets to Southeast Asia and, of course, you know, patrons, prostitutes, and all this kind of thing.
00:50:28.320And, but, you know, he goes to poor traditional societies and symbolically rapes them, you could say.
00:50:36.200But he also has this love affair with a Parisian woman, and, and then they, they experience all sorts of, you know, carnal desire and, and, you know, all new, new ways of having sex.
00:50:52.220And again, like a drug, any drug, you, there's, there's a kind of the, the marginal return keeps diminishing, and you need more and more and more in order to get back to that original high.
00:51:03.600And that, that's certainly the case for him.
00:51:06.600And, but it's kind of interesting of, by the end of the novel, it, it's like sexuality is transfigured to, it's seemingly opposite.
00:51:20.660What I, what I mean by that is that, in the end of the novel, they start to transform his, his, his girlfriend's travel agency into an agency that, that will have, into just a full-on sex tourism agency.
00:51:34.400So they're going to drop all pretenses and just say, this is about experiencing eroticism with other races and traditional societies.
00:51:45.900And, but it becomes, in a way, the, the kind of ultimate expression of the Enlightenment project and the end of history.
00:51:53.820And so it becomes, they, they actually have a, a, a saying, which is, a pleasure is a right.
00:51:59.620And I think at one point in the novel, they talk about, oh, this, this will really resonate after all of the humanitarian interventions in Serbia.
00:52:06.100You know, we, it's all about human rights now.
00:52:08.420And, you know, of course, if you have a human right to a fair wage or to health care or to, to what, what have you, then why not?
00:52:18.140You, you, you also have a human right to orgasm and to orgasm in various exotic ways.
00:52:25.200And so it was kind of like, go to Kenya and find African boys, go to Thailand and screw these people.
00:52:33.420It's just, but again, it's just the fact that it's wrapped up in human rights dogma is just, in a way, so perfect.
00:52:40.220And again, I don't, spoiler alert, if you haven't read it, then I don't want to ruin the novel for you.
00:53:02.740Yeah, but in a, in another way, on a, on a whole other level, being, getting your limbs blown off by, by Muslim terrorists is almost, in a way, the ultimate act of sadomasochism.
00:53:18.000You know, it's a, it's like, you've already been gang banged and whatever.
00:53:24.260The next step is to die by having a bomb thrown at you.
00:54:48.020Well, Beck, he's not of any side, but as you said, he's expressing the zeitgeist.
00:54:56.600And, you know, it even shows in his physical appearance because he has really been, you know, rotting off these last years because of alcohol abuse.
00:55:09.760And, uh, I think he smokes a lot and, uh, in submission.
00:55:14.760So the identitarians who don't read books enough, uh, and they quote Ebola, but they don't read him or any other author for that matter.
00:55:33.080Um, so they, they thought that well back was on their side and they wrote him a letter.
00:55:38.720Um, saying that, uh, at least if on someone who agreed with them, first, I have to say that an artist and a novelist is an artist, uh, you know, he's not a politician.
00:55:52.600So it doesn't have to be pro or contra or, you know, it's just about writing a novel, even if there are political implications.
00:56:03.280And then in the novel, which I read, uh, entirely from first to last letters, uh, what, what I read is that the identitarians are trying to, uh, prevent France from electing a Muslim president and they fail.
00:56:22.800And then you have a Muslim president and France is, you know, uh, trying to build a new Arabian civilization with, uh, near and Middle East and North Africa.
00:56:36.460And, uh, and, uh, and that's, that's an answer to many problems, according to well back, especially regarding feminism, uh, because, uh, you know, Western women are finally, they are disappointed by sexual liberation.
00:56:55.340And they want to get back to being, you know, um, household maids and, and, uh, please their husbands and men are tired, uh, with hookups and they want to, they can have several wives, but, uh, if they're rich, but they want to get back to a normal life.
00:57:17.160So it's not truly what's an identitarian could expect, uh, at least, uh, regarding Islam, maybe not about feminism.
00:57:27.420So submission ends in, on this note, and it's the first time well back, uh, states such a thing, because even in platform, it ends on, um, an Islamic terror attack.
00:57:40.420But there is a character who tells, uh, the main character that eventually Islam will, uh, be defeated by modernity.
00:57:49.800And he goes even further in the possibility of an island because it's about the future, uh, several centuries from now.
00:57:57.060And, uh, uh, all mankind has adopted, um, a new sect that is about, you know, kind of new age sect, uh, that is about reencarnation, carnation.
00:58:08.940And, um, so it's basically something that goes against Islam.
00:58:21.260Well back is not on our side, whatever that means.
00:58:25.160Uh, but what, I mean, it couldn't be more topical, you know, and, uh, what really struck me and is good to end on this note, uh, for me, um, is that, you know, when you read this novel and you know what's happening today in France, not only, uh, regarding the attacks, but also what's happening with national fronts.
00:58:57.820So on the right and on the left, the parties that are, uh, you know, that have more and more difficulties to keep, uh, their secular platform because of Islam and the fact that Muslims vote for them.
00:59:13.880Um, and, uh, you know, it's really well informed.
00:59:17.560And I, I even recognized some people I met on the far right, uh, for example, there's a hooligan, uh, Paris football, as we say in Europe.
00:59:29.660So you say soccer, a Paris football hooligan with, was, was got the first name of a night, a medieval night.
00:59:38.000And, um, actually I know I met a guy with the first name of medieval night and was one of the leaders of these Paris hooligans.
00:59:49.680So something tells me that maybe he met people he shouldn't mention publicly, uh, or maybe knew them, or maybe he got information about them.
01:00:03.500But, uh, what's really interesting is that, you know, it's not really an over, it's more like, uh, it takes the situation now and just accelerates it.
01:00:15.740And even if it's not really realistic that a Muslim regime, uh, is imposed in, you know, 2022, so only seven years from now, what's interesting is that not even if it's not realistic, it's what more and more people are talking about, especially since last week.
01:00:37.660So it's, uh, well, back in a kind of, uh, messenger and, um, his solutions are not our concern.
01:00:46.960He doesn't, he doesn't really provide solutions actually.
01:00:51.300Just that when you, if you want to find a novelist today that really describes, uh, what's happening today, you, it's, it's maybe the, this is the best one.
01:01:05.820Um, I have to mention before, uh, closing that, uh, platform that you referred to was published only two weeks or maybe 10 days, uh, before 9-11 and it ends with a, an Islamic terror attack.
01:01:23.920So, you know, I can't say more than that.
01:01:28.260I mean, no, I mean, some of these writers who even delve into parody, they, they, in a way, delve into prophecy.
01:01:36.040Uh, but let's, let's just put a bookmark in it and, uh, I, this certainly won't be the last thing we have to say about this matter.
01:01:43.520But, Ramal, thanks for being on the program once again and, uh, I'll talk to you soon.