Emmanuel Todd releases a new book and comes to promote it. Listening to Emmanuel Todd is much more rewarding than reading him. He is as vulgar as those they castigate, sometimes much more. You only have to hear him talk about Nicolas Sarkozy using the terms: guy, guy... listener. But there is a populist tactic there, so he passes for a “nice guy”. He is close to the people.

Recognized by left-wing circles as a spokesperson, he is entirely like the left whose sole program is his anti-Sarkozyism and everything surrounding the head of state. Henri Gaino is a jerk in his mouth. And he would never have believed that a guy like Sarkozy would be President one day… For someone who constantly prides himself on having planned and predicted everything, there is a certain disappointment. It's quite demonstrative of these people who spent all the time of the campaign doing anti-Sarkozyism without seeing the mastery that Nicolas Sarkozy put into a campaign prepared to the millimeter. Here is another lesson that Emmanuel Todd did not retain, like other bo-bo thinkers, it is that it is better to make a real campaign with ideas than to campaign against someone without idea. As it is left, Nicolas Sarkozy should have a boulevard in front of him in 2011. And trusting the popularity polls is to forget how much Mitterrand reached heights of unpopularity without that preventing him from being re-elected quite easily.

Emmanuel Todd therefore, is as vulgar as Nicolas Sarkozy. He therefore has no authority to speak of the president's vulgarity. Especially since speaking of the President in this way weakens the function. These smooth talkers, of which Emmanuel Todd is a part, explain to us that it was first Nicolas Sarkozy who weakened the function. Yes, but precisely when it is the President himself who does it, that is not comparable. And the Socialists do not have to give lessons in this sense, because they have never really learned from the defeat of Lionel Jospin. Lionel's hand on Jacques' shoulder certainly had something to do with the former's defeat. Personally, I am convinced that it remained as a form of insult that all undecided French people took as such. Lack of respect is not appreciated by the French, just as it can be trivial, he does not like it with his symbols. We are still here in this duality (schizophrenia?) of the French summarized by the formula of Marc Bloch*.

Emmanuel Todd is a one-man band. Alternately economist, sociologist, demographer and prophet. The economist refuses to be a social democrat, but only offers nuances of nuances to escape the fatality of the socialist party. The sociologist has seen everything about French society and has warned everything above all. The demographer is just as visionary. Summary of his interview which shows us how far-sighted he is: he will first explain to us that education is of a much better level in France, that we no longer "take too many doors in the face in the metro (a journalist will point out to him that yes, we still take a lot), that the president's vulgarity is significant of Sarkoz's malaise not of a drop in education in France, and finally his usual drivel which makes it a herald of left-wing thought: unemployment is the cause of everything. Reduce unemployment and therefore all adolescents will have their baccalaureate. In short, Emmanuel Todd really sees things that no one else sees. He will even go so far as to harp on this refrain so dear to the most stupid of socialists, which consists in asserting that it is society that makes our immigrants bad, and that without unemployment delinquency among the children of immigrants would only be a bad memory. At the end of this sentence, I thought that Marc Voinchet would fly in the feathers of the great man by telling him that he had just received Henri Lagrange and that this one, all socialist well thinking that he is, asked that the we open our eyes to the current catastrophic situation. Catastrophic being an understatement. But no, Emmanuel Todd from the top of his lookout sees something quite different and does not hesitate to say so. And the journalist does not want to cut off the head of his idol.

Now that we are starting to have serious studies on our immigration (yes, I know that serious studies have been published for example by the Figaro Magazine more than twenty years ago, it was at the end of 1985) speakers such as Emmanuel Todd should work a little to read the books of real researchers rather than continuing to concern themselves only with their production, they would be doing us a favor and doing themselves a favor. Henri Lagrange's book gives heart balm to those who see the continuous drowning of this country. Angela Merkel had the good idea to repeat that multiculturalism no longer worked. Multiculturalism no longer works, because it is achieved with an immigration without diplomas, which groups together and does not want to know anything about France and its culture. The multiculturalism of graduates has always worked better. In every country. And immigration that works, we don't talk about it. We, the old countries of Europe no longer know how to assimilate immigrants or their children. When young America has done it so easily for so long. So there is something logical in Nicolas Sarkozy to believe that by applying American recipes, everything will be better. Obviously this is short-term logic. As always with Sarkozy's policy. But as always with French politics for thirty years.

Emmanuel Todd does not see that our civilization is going down the drain. That respect between people almost no longer exists, that women no longer receive any consideration, that French is a language in perdition, that verbal aggression, incivility are omnipresent and omniscient. Watching a 1950s movie on TV is enough to feel like watching a sci-fi movie. It is enough to see how people are dressed, how men behave with women, how a brigand is educated and has "class" to realize that the abysses in which we sink seem endless. And frankly, very frankly, you don't have to be a well-meaning one-man band to see that.

*“There are two categories of French people who will never understand the history of France, those who refuse to resonate with the memory of the coronation of Reims; those who read without emotion the account of the feast of the Federation. »

The strange defeat (1940), Marc Bloch, ed. Gallimard, coll. Folio History, 1990, p. 198