Aurélien Bellanger – How France was right

Aurélien Bellanger’s novel “The last days of the left” describes a highly questionable attempt to save the Parti Social List (PS) from doom in France. An unscrupulous promoted player named Grémond wants to miss the Social Democrats using two television philosophers, Frayère and Taillevent, a also Islamophobes and state -bearing profile. Before the party disappears into insignificance, he founds the non -partisan “movement of December 9” – in memory of the law of December 9, 1905, which provides for the separation of church and state (laicism).

Grémond and his skewers serve the mood in the liberal bourgeoisie, which feels sublime about the right-left difference, considers the social agenda to be outdated and has agreed on a common opponent: the Muslim.

A novel is not a sociological examination, but it can translate abstract developments into concrete characters – very specific in this case, because all protagonists Bellangers have role models: the model for Grémond is the promoted Laurent Bouvet (1968–2021); The “apostles of fear” Taillevent and Frayère mean the star intellectual Raphaël DeHoven and Michel Onfray. These two, in turn, referred to the right thinker Cormier, who in truth was called Clément Rosset (1939–2018) and was a kind of French Peter Sloterdijk: he lived the old cynikers and common sense, while French theory and Marxism were nothing but charlatian.

The philosophical debates, which are broadly shown in the book, would have to be bizarre in our Bauman Germany. But with the appearance of Revêche we are back in familiar waters. Revêche alias Philippe Val was the editor-in-chief of the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, who thought was to print the Mohammed caricatures. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who wanted to clean the Banlieues with the Kärcher high-pressure cleaner, appointed him head of the radio station France Inter.

Only his tough anticlericalism still testifies to Revêche’s radical beginnings, otherwise he defamates the real left as anti -Semitic and demands the unconditional support of Israel and the USA. Although they have become what is usually called “neoconservative”, he and his fellow poins consider themselves the “real left”.

When Revêche invites you to dinner, Grémond and the two television philosophers get to know each other. While everyone is stabilizing on the lobster and the reasonable spirit of the fatherland and “Charlie Hebdo” to the cathedral of atheism, a guest has stomach pain: Charb, the new editorial manager who points out, there is a difference in whether one attacks the prevailing religion or that of a minority. The others laugh at him.

Shortly later, Charb and almost the entire editorial team are slaughtered by Islamists. Grémond, who holds this and similar attacks for “lucky cases”, sees his hour. Revêche, the two philosophical dirty slingshings and Grémond itself, it annoyed that the survivors of “Charlie Hebdo” do not want to have anything to do with reactionary. But they have long been in the Élysée Palace. Grémond supports the “extraordinary measures” of his President François Hollande and jealous the left as “traitor on their own country who split our society with their brainless multicultural tolerance and nonsense colonialism.”

The movement of December 9th (actually: “Printemps Républicain”, Republican spring), which Grémond launches, is said to be more than a think tank or a party, it is reminiscent of the “cult of the highest being” of the French Revolution – a Church of the Laitasters. As soon as she is founded, she sends her spellbounds from everyone who does not chant “Je Suis Charlie”. While Taillevent teaches that the Muslim world has only been cleared up thanks to colonialism, and Frayère dreams of laicistic standing dishes, Grémond explains to Islam.

Have you favored the rise of the “most authentic laticist of everyone”, the technocrat that is called “the canon” (canon) in the novel – Emmanuel Macron? Perhaps. In any case, the Macron of the novel, in Grémond, who is now enthusiastic about authoritarian regimes to find an “incomparable conspirator”.

Bellanger satirized himself as the cryptocatholic writer Sauveterre (literally “saved the country”), whom it caught cold when Frayère insults him as “Islam link”. At that moment, Sauveterre realizes that the “whole Laicism story was a pretext” for “some obscure” fascist from the start. After writing a novel on the subject, he is shot by a police officer who confuses him with an Islamist terrorist because of his beard.

Aurélien Bellanger on the basis of the propaganda, which is also well known to us, demonstrates that the shift to the right is by no means alone to the Le Pen family and a depressed proletariat. Well -off citizens who are mutated by half -left in liberals and then mutated into neo -conservatives have at least contributed as much to new chauvinism.

The book has the usual flaw of the thought novel: the dialogues read as well as from elongated tracts. Theoretical precision is at the expense of swing. But dry joke has the whole and the calibrus of the witty Grémond ensure cheerfulness. One aims at the left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose name sounds like “stir it” (“Mélangeons”). The translator, Frank Weigand, finds the pretty solution “Mélenseschaun we once”. Yes, let’s see how things will go on with the fatherland opportunities. Are you all fascist now?

Aurélien Bellanger: The last days of the left. Novel. A. d. French v. Frank Weigand. Claassen, 460 pages, Br., 28 €.