Against the Robots

Emmanuel Todd has released a new book and is here to promote it. Listening to Emmanuel Todd is far more enriching than reading his work. He's just as vulgar as those he criticizes, sometimes even more so. Just listen to him talk about Nicolas Sarkozy using terms like "dude," "guy," and so on. When he speaks on any given subject, he peppers his sentences with "vachement" (a vulgar term), and the grammatical errors overwhelm the listener. But this is a populist tactic; it makes him seem like a "nice guy." He's close to the people.

Recognized by left-wing circles as a spokesperson, he is entirely like the left itself, whose sole platform is anti-Sarkozy sentiment and everything surrounding the head of state. Henri Gaino is an idiot in his own words. And he never would have believed that a guy like Sarkozy would one day be President… For someone who constantly boasts of having foreseen and predicted everything, a certain disappointment is evident. It's quite telling of those people who spent the entire campaign engaging in anti-Sarkozy rhetoric without seeing the masterful way Nicolas Sarkozy orchestrated a meticulously planned campaign. Here's yet another lesson that Emmanuel Todd, like other bourgeois intellectuals, hasn't learned: it's better to run a real campaign with ideas than to campaign against someone without any. As things stand, Nicolas Sarkozy should have a clear path ahead of him in 2011. And relying on popularity polls is to forget how Mitterrand reached peaks of unpopularity without it preventing him from being re-elected quite easily.

Emmanuel Todd, therefore, is just as vulgar as Nicolas Sarkozy. He thus has no authority to speak about the president's vulgarity. Especially since speaking about the president in this way weakens the office. These smooth talkers, including Emmanuel Todd, tell us that it was Nicolas Sarkozy who first weakened the office. Yes, but precisely because it's the president himself who does it, it's not comparable. And the Socialists have no right to give lessons in this regard, because they never really learned anything from Lionel Jospin's defeat. Lionel's hand on Jacques's shoulder was certainly not entirely unrelated to the former's defeat. Personally, I'm convinced it remained a form of insult that all undecided French people took as such. Disrespect is not appreciated by the French, just as they can be vulgar, they don't like it when others treat their symbols vulgarly. We are still here in this duality (schizophrenia?) of the French summarized by Marc Bloch's formula*.

Emmanuel Todd is a one-man band. By turns economist, sociologist, demographer, and prophet. The economist refuses to be a social democrat, but offers only nuances of nuance to escape the inevitability of the Socialist Party. The sociologist has seen everything about French society and, above all, has warned us about everything. The demographer is just as visionary. Here's a summary of his interview, which shows just how far-sighted he is: he begins by explaining that education is of a much higher standard in France, that "you don't get doors slammed in your face too often on the metro anymore" (a journalist will point out that, yes, you still get quite a few), that the president's vulgarity is indicative of Sarkozy's malaise, not a decline in education in France, and finally, his usual rambling, which makes him a herald of left-wing thought: unemployment is the cause of everything. Reduce unemployment, and then all teenagers will get their baccalaureate. In short, Emmanuel Todd truly sees things that no one else does. He'll even go so far as to repeat that old refrain so beloved by the most foolish socialists, which consists of asserting that it's society that corrupts our immigrants, and that without unemployment, delinquency among the children of immigrants would be nothing but a bad memory. At the end of this sentence, I thought Marc Voinchet would ruffle the great man's feathers, telling him that he had just received Henri Lagrange and that the latter, for all his self-righteous socialist principles, was demanding that everyone open their eyes to the catastrophic situation unfolding. Catastrophic being an understatement. But no, Emmanuel Todd, from his vantage point, sees something quite different and doesn't hesitate to say so. And the journalist doesn't want to cut off his idol's head.

Now that we're starting to see serious studies on our immigration (yes, I know that serious studies were published, for example, by Figaro Magazine more than twenty years ago, at the end of 1985), commentators like Emmanuel Todd should actually do some work reading books by real researchers instead of continuing to focus solely on their output. They would be doing us and themselves a favor. Henri Lagrange's book is a balm to the hearts of those who see this country's continued decline. Angela Merkel had the good sense to reiterate that multiculturalism no longer works. Multiculturalism no longer works because it's implemented with an immigrant population lacking qualifications, who cluster together and want nothing to do with France and its culture. Multiculturalism among educated people has always worked better. In every country. And we don't talk about the immigration that works. We, the old European countries, no longer know how to assimilate immigrants or their children. When young America has been doing it so easily for so long, then it makes sense for Nicolas Sarkozy to believe that by applying American solutions, everything will be better. Obviously, this is short-sighted logic. As always with Sarkozy's policies. But as always with French politics for the last thirty years.

Emmanuel Todd fails to see that our civilization is going to hell in a handbasket. That respect between people has almost disappeared, that women are no longer given any consideration, that French is a dying language, that verbal abuse and incivility are omnipresent and all-encompassing. Just watch a 1950s film on television and you'll feel like you're watching a science fiction movie. Just look at how people dress, how men treat women, how a bandit is considered educated and "classy," to realize that the abyss into which we are plunging seems endless. And frankly, quite frankly, you don't need to be a purveyor of political correctness to see it.

"There are two categories of French people who will never understand French history: those who refuse to be moved by the memory of the coronation at Reims; and those who read without emotion the account of the Festival of the Federation."

The Strange Defeat (1940), Marc Bloch, Gallimard, Folio History series, 1990, p. 198