In his book The Declinists, Alain Roy dismantles the distorted rhetoric of the proponents of the “grand replacement,” led by Éric Zemmour and Mathieu Bock-Côté.
Updated yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
The great replacement, you know?
This theory suggests that France is undergoing a “people’s shift” in favor of the African and Arab populations. If nothing is done, the country will become predominantly Muslim, while “native” French people will be in the minority.
The issue of immigration is very real in France – as in other Western countries.
But this conspiracy theory put forward by Renaud Camus in 2010 is still surprising in its radicalism.
Even more surprising: it continues to be taken up by other thinkers who modulate and enrich it in their own ways, allowing it to penetrate mainstream society and establish itself as a right-wing extremist concept. It is even trendy as a political program.
To curb this “great influence,” Quebecer Alain Roy decided to attack the proponents of this controversial theory.
In 150 short pages, the author questions the writings of Renaud Camus (The Great Replacement), but also of the politician Éric Zemmour (Le Suicide Français), the author Michel Houellebecq (Submission), the philosopher Michel Onfray (Décadence) and Alain Finkielkraut (Unfortunate Identity) and the Quebec sociologist Mathieu Bock-Côté (Multiculturalism as a political religion), who has become the darling of the French right-wing media.
Alain Roy moves forward methodically. Analyze each other’s arguments. Criticize their intolerance. Your bad faith. Your intellectual shortcuts. Your reflexive weaknesses.
Alain Roy complains about the lack of factual data in Camus and Finkielkraut. Varlope Zemmour’s bullying and paranoid speech (surprising, by the way, that he was able to run for the presidency of the Republic). Highlights Bock-Côté’s tendentious rhetoric. Points out the inconsistencies of Houellebecq and the contradictions of Onfray.
“Your works present themselves as documented essays, but above all they are pamphlets full of humbug,” he concludes his work. What drives them is less the desire to understand the nature of the phenomena under discussion than the desire to attack the hated object. »
Alain Roy is not the first to denounce the xenophobic, even racist, theses of these contemporary intellectuals. In France, left-wing newspapers and media continue to sound the alarm as we witness an unstoppable rise of the far right there. But it has the advantage of condensing the filming into a single work, thus facilitating our overall vision. The argument is simple and understandable, even if the author sometimes gets carried away by his own subjectivity and personal judgment. If the petticoat sticks out too far, you run the risk of preaching only to the converted…
Finally, we might be surprised that the exercise was carried out by a Quebecer. However, it must be remembered that declinist theories are not unique to France. According to a survey published in 2022 by the UNESCO Chair for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremism, about 15% of Quebecers adhere to the “great replacement” theory.
According to the latest census (2021), the Muslim population in Canada is about 5%.
extract
“The declinist discourse is characterized by increased emotionality, which prevents a calm and thoughtful discussion of the questions raised. Balancing between hysteria, paranoia, hatred, fear and depression, this speech creates the impression of liberation for troubled, even unstable minds. »
Who is Alain Roy?
Alain Roy is founder and director of the magazine L’Inconvénient, author of five books published by Boréal and winner of the 2012 Governor General’s Award for his translation of Glenn Gould’s biography.
The Declinists
Eco-society
152 pages