Jonathan Meades

Le French bashing has spread to France. Are things really that bad?

Jonathan Meades thinks it’s rash to judge an entire country by the comings and goings of the rancorous former First Bimbo

issue 13 December 2014

The French for French-bashing is le French bashing. This verbally costive nation is at it once again, torpidly borrowing an approximately English expression rather than coining its own. Such bashing is not an exclusively Anglo-Saxon practice. There is indigenous bashing. At least there is Éric Zemmour, whose salutary Le Suicide français was published a couple of months ago. Its very first sentence declares that France is the sick man of Europe — which prompted Manuel Valls, little Hollande’s prime minister this week and a man who is not growing into that poisoned office, to take the bait, exhibit a preposterously thin skin and denounce the book twice in a few days.

This is not to suggest that M. Zemmour — a tireless stirrer, an exhilarating hater, a man for whom giving offence is a duty — is necessarily on the money about everything. His exhaustive trawl through France’s maladies and imaginary maladies is more notable for its provenance than for its originality.

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