Is France at war? Alain Finkielkraut, one of the most popular and respected – if controversial – intellectuals in France, appears to think so. Finkielkraut recently made further enemies by joining a growing set of French intellectuals, writers and politicians who say that France is in the midst of a desperate battle. To Finkielkraut, the rioting and looting that ripped across France earlier this summer was part of an ongoing conflict between two groups: those who respect Republican values and those who hate the French Republic.
What Finkielkraut fears above all is that the French Republic might buckle under the strain of this fight. What has been happening in France, he said in an interview in the latest issue of Causeur, ‘is the inexorable ‘Lebanonisation’ of France.’ This ‘internal war’, he goes on to say, is far from over.
Philosopher Michel Onfray shares Finkielkraut’s troubling assessment: he argues that ‘a civil war’ has been happening in France for a long time, but that it is taboo to say so in ‘civilised, liberal’ political discourse.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this summer’s riots was the way in which the violence specifically targeted symbols of the French Republic
Talk of war is spreading out of intellectual circles.
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