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Jan. 17, 2015 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:01:45
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie

Roman joins Richard to discuss the “Charlie” massacre, the “surreal normalcy” that follows violent spectacles, Western elite’s “kettle logic,” and the literary achievement of Michel Houellebecq. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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Romain, welcome back.
Hi, Richard.
Well, Romain, tell us what it has been like living in Paris this past week in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
So, actually, it's been a hectic week, as you can imagine, and I'm sure I'm going to forget some interesting events.
Let's say that one week ago, because we are recording on the 14th of January, and on the 7th, there was a huge event that was expected.
It was the release of Michel Welbeck's book, Submission in English.
And Charlie Hebdo's issue that very day, because it's released on Wednesdays, was about this novel.
So the last, the latest and sixth novel by Michel Welbeck.
Sorry to interrupt.
Is Charlie Hebdo, is it all a totally cartoon magazine?
Or does it have satirical writing?
Is it kind of like The Onion in the United States?
What would it talk about?
It's reputation.
Actually, it started in the 70s.
There was harakiri.
So harakiri is what Westerners used to talk about Japanese seppuku.
Suicide.
And then it evolved and became Charlie Hebdo, which is both Cartoonish and satirical, it used to be more serious than what it is now with great writers actually having columns.
It's not really the case today.
It's more provocative cartoons and not very well-written articles.
And it's, of course, left-wing, but it's...
Of the anarchist strain of the left.
So there are some issues with the collectivist and authoritarian left, especially about Islam, of course, but not only.
And it used to be a left libertarian magazine, but which became more and more leftist with time.
And in the 90s, for example, they petitioned against the Front National when it was an interesting party, which is not the case as of today.
I have to remind our listeners about that, because if they read Patrick Lebrun at Countercurrents, they won't know it.
Anyway, it used to be more interesting, but with time, it was, you know, swept away by, you know, the cultural tsunami of the left-wing baby boomers, which came of age and started taking over everything and become.
And Charlie Hebdo, which was at first a kind of non-conformist publication, became growingly conformist.
And so in the 90s, which was maybe The time when they were the most aligned with the left, the establishment left, they were petitioning against Front National.
They were asking the government to ban this party.
So, you know, so much for freedom of speech.
But then there happened something at the turn of, you know, these very decisive years of...
2004, 2005 and 2006, there were many events which were related.
So there was the assassination of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands about Islam.
There were riots in France in 2005.
There were the Muhammad cartoons at the end of 2005, but which...
Elicited riots in the Muslim world, including the West, in 2006.
And these three years, which were maybe the hate of Islamophobia in the West, that's when Charlie Hebdo, at least on Islam, departed from the rest of the left.
Because they were still attached to secularism, which was a left-wing tradition, but that the left abandoned in favor of, you know, third world and immigration and, of course, keeping its Muslim constituents in Europe.
So Charlie Hebdo started with his Mohammed cartoons and then, you know, it's...
You could say Schmittian, but once you depart from your side, you are forced to take another one.
And that's what Charlie Hebdo increasingly did.
And they even had some cartoons that could be described as racist in maybe the basic sense of the word.
For example, last year when...
You know, these 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria were kidnapped and turned into sex slaves by Boko Haram, this Muslim sect.
They had this cartoon with pregnant black women saying, we want to keep our social benefits.
And which, of course, was seen as racist.
And it was, actually.
And so, increasingly, there was, you know, the left was not really at ease with Charlie Hebdo, and there were voices on both the phony right and the left that maybe they shouldn't release all these cartoons, especially those about Islam.
And the real threat was, I think it was in 2011, when there...
Headquarters were arsoned by Muslims.
And it was the first warning, but then it was forgotten because there was officially at least a police protection and they received threats, but not more than before.
And so it was almost forgotten.
And ironically, in last week's issue, there was a cartoon.
The day that the shooting happened, a cartoon in the issue with, it was Sharp, one of the guys who were murdered.
His cartoon was, you see a Muslim guy and the text above his head says, still no attack this year.
And he says, Happy New Year wishes, you can make them until the end of January.
Wow.
And so I guess he drew this cartoon maybe, let's say, the 2nd of January.
So the issue can be printed and rooted and be read on the day of the 7th.
And on that day, his prediction was actually turned true.
And what's interesting again is that this issue was dedicated to Welbeck's novel, which was released the same day.
And the columnist who reviewed the book was murdered that day.
So it was really...
Saying it was a special day would be, you know, a kind of understatement because it was really a kind of climatic moment.
It was, you know, some columnists said it was Francis 9-11 and I think it's right.
There were Muslim attacks three years ago and it didn't have the same effect.
So maybe we can talk about the effects now, but maybe you want to jump in about that.
Well, yeah, I definitely want to talk about the social effects and the lasting effects, but first I want to give our listeners a sense of the whole atmosphere of it, because you've long been our Paris correspondent, and so you need to do your duty.
So talk a little bit about...
Just living in Paris.
I think a lot of people, you know, because we have listeners certainly in America, but all over Europe, all over the world really, they've probably seen images of this rather disgusting parade of horrible, degenerate politicians.
They've probably seen images of that.
So maybe talk a little bit about that demonstration, but also just about the whole atmosphere in this week.
So I have to say I couldn't bring myself to going to this demonstration, although it's only 10 minutes by foot from where I live, so I had an hesitation.
I told myself maybe I should go there and take pictures, but really I couldn't.
I didn't want to add another...
Figure to their body count of 3.7 million.
But actually, maybe it's not so figurative because these people were committing a kind of cultural suicide.
But to get back to the atmosphere in Paris, you know, it's funny because, not really funny, but it happened at 10.30.
In the morning, I think.
And I don't live near.
I was at work.
I don't walk near where it happened.
It was 2.5 kilometers.
But, you know, the atmosphere was, as always, and as I said in my review, it's a colleague who came to me and told me, so 30 minutes later.
What happened there?
And then I started hearing all these, you know, police and ambulance sirens and fire brigades and all that stuff.
And then I really realized.
But when I went out at noon or maybe at one to buy my lunch, The atmosphere was, you know, like in Woolwich in London, you know, in 2013 when there was this British soldier who was beheaded by two Muslim blacks.
And people on the street were, you know, minding their own businesses as usual.
That way that the atmosphere was at noon or one.
Yeah, I was actually in, just to jump in really quickly, I was actually in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact, not Lower Manhattan, during 9-11.
But I was actually working in a very famous building in Brooklyn that overlooked the Twin Towers.
Anyway, but I...
I had the same impression.
It was almost...
It was surreally normal, to put it that way.
There was a weird normality about people going about their business, but then everyone was aware that something shocking had taken place.
But they act even normal.
You know, they have to play normal.
To reassure themselves.
You have to be normal.
You can't be running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
I did the same, actually.
In the evening, I had to...
I know it's small talk, but I had to go to buy some food to a grocery store.
Everyone was, you know, smiling.
And there was a Muslim cashier who was saying, hello, sir, goodbye, sir, which you would never have told, you know, normally you would just say hello and goodbye and that's it.
And then I could be dignified with a monsieur twice, which was actually quite unusual.
And so people have to play so normal to, you know, pretend things.
Are normal, but you could feel the tension as sport commenters like to say.
You could really feel the tension, but you really feel it the day after, you know, when there is a hangover and people really...
Start being afraid, and rightfully so.
I think it might very well be one of those moments.
When you first said, "This is France's 9 /11," I was thinking, "Oh, that's an exaggeration, obviously." Symbolically, not political implications.
Of course not, but it's...
But it might be, in terms of geopolitical implications.
You need symbols.
Snowden, for example, it was not a big news to know that the state is spying on us.
We all know that.
But it was a crystallized moment when everything becomes bright and clear.
Even if everybody knew it, now everybody knows that everybody knows it.
And that's when it becomes different.
You see what I mean?
Right.
It's kind of the man who only suspects his wife of having an affair on him.
Once he knows for sure.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse, but it's different.
I agree.
I'm sorry if we're going off on a tangent, but these things are worth talking about.
There are these events.
Again, it's not really a question of body count.
It's really a question of collective unconscious.
And they change us.
And they change the way we think about things.
Obviously, 9-11 did that.
But I think the 2008 economic collapse really wounded us collectively.
We kind of thought about...
We looked at the world differently.
And I think Snowden did as well.
Even more than WikiLeaks.
Because WikiLeaks was about the war machine.
And Wikileaks was more complex to understand than Snowden.
Snowden was very...
That was different.
Even a moron can understand that the state is paying on him.
Yeah, it's the state's reading.
Wikileaks, it was more about confidential documents, about geopolitical risk games.
It was more complicated, but of course, both are interrelated.
To get back to this shooting, the thing is, so first people play so normal, over normal to keep, you know, being, to avoid being too terrified.
And then the day after, the hangover, and people could not be brought to peace because the day after, there was a first, there was another attack.
Actually, a city which is called Mont Rouge in the southern suburbs, it's not the kind of suburb that you can hear about on Fox News or CNN.
Actually, I went there last summer when I was looking for apartments.
And I don't know if it's really funny, but it makes me laugh because it's schadenfreude, I think.
So I went there last summer.
And I thought to myself, well, it's a good place to settle.
But finally I went to Paris downtown.
And so there was this shooting in a normal city and a policewoman was killed, actually, by a black Muslim.
And the day after, the day after, so two days after the Charlie Hebdo shooting on Friday, There were two events.
First, the two shooters, the two Charlie Hebdo shooters were surrounded in the countryside and killed.
And at the same time, in a Jewish grocery store, there was...
This black guy who killed the policewoman on Thursday, who killed four Jewish customers in the supermarket, and then he was killed.
And so what's interesting in this course of events is that people tried to, you know, there is this bad event and then...
You go back to normal, but it was three days in a row.
And then you can't evade it and say that it's just a remote event.
And then you just have to go back to day-to-day life and that's it.
It means that the threat is present everywhere and every time.
And then it gets different.
The important part of the reaction since the attack took place a week ago is that the reaction of the political and media class was easy to expect.
Of course they want to...
Thank you.
nothing to do with immigration and Islam, and that the worst we could do, just like after Fort Hood in Texas, the worst we could do would be to undermine diversity.
And the reaction of the French government was very close to the reaction of the U.S. Army after Nidal Malik took the...
12 lives, something like that, in Fort Hood.
So, it could be expected, but what was really mind-boggling and interesting at the same time was the reaction of the people.
So, everybody was putting, you know, as a Facebook avatar, Je suis Charlie.
So, obviously, I am Charlie.
And so, people were saying they would demonstrate on Sunday.
Of course, it was something that was unacceptable.
But the question that could be raised is that, so you are Charlie, but do you support the fact that people publish cartoons of Muhammad?
And I'm sure if you just ran a poll among the crowd on Sunday, just asking...
Should we have the right and should we publish Muhammad cartoons?
I'm sure you would have maybe one third or one half of the people present who would say no.
And you can't avoid asking yourself.
So if people are Charlie but don't want to talk about Islam and immigration, does that mean that they want to die just like...
Charlie cartoonists and journalists.
I agree.
I think you brought up a lot of interesting points.
Maybe too much, but there are many things to say.
I want to just talk about this issue a little bit.
You brought up a lot of interesting points in your short article on the Charlie attacks that you wrote almost immediately afterwards.
I'm always reminded of this.
And it's a joke that can fit a lot of different circumstances.
There's many versions of it, like a folktale, but it's the broken kettle joke.
So, a neighbor borrows a kettle from his other neighbor.
And after a month, he goes and returns it.
And it has a massive crack in the kettle.
And it's now unusable.
And the neighbor basically tells...
The borrower, you know, what's going on here?
And the guilty neighbor says, well, first off, there's not a crack in the kettle.
Second off, the crack was there before I borrowed it from you.
And third off, I never borrowed that kettle.
You know, it's an over-explanation of some event.
But I think you can get at that with these politicians.
It's a kind of like, well, we've brought brought in all of these people who are now...
Which is good.
Perhaps.
Who are now destabilizing society.
Oh, but we can't actually rethink that decision, or we can't do something to remit it, because there is no crack in the kettle.
We didn't bring them in here anyway.
They've always been here.
Yeah, it's schizophrenic.
And there were even politicians in France who said there's no problem with immigration because these three shooters had French citizenship.
Oh, yeah, right, of course.
You can have something like that in France.
They're not immigrants.
They're not immigrants.
They were born in France.
So it has nothing to do with immigration.
And, of course, it has nothing to do with Islam because...
Islam being a religion of peace, you know, it's kind of like a mass exercise.
So you have the data and you have to work with this data, even if it's false.
But the politicians and media reaction is not really surprising.
I mean, if we were in power, we would do anything to cling to it, even if I think it's desperate as of now.
Nevertheless, there's a difference between clinging to power, and I agree that anyone in a position of power will cling to it.
It's just human nature.
But there's a certain both mendacity but also a certain blindness.
It's almost like they're lying to themselves.
Another aspect of this, to go back to the broken kettle joke, is the connection with geopolitics.
Both of these people had connections with Iraq and Syria.
You can see this broken kettle thing occurring with the...
With the Arab Spring of a few years ago, and the sense of, it's like, oh, look, there are these people, and they're on the street, and they're kind of scary.
Oh, well, that's, you know, what should we do?
Oh, wait, they want democracy, or at least they're against these.
corrupt leaders.
Oh, so we'll...
They want Islamic democracy.
Right.
So we'll get behind them.
We'll say they support them.
And then, uh-oh, watch out.
They actually don't like us.
And it's this, again, it's this very, it's a kind of diluted cycle that the American and Western establishments seem to go through.
Is that, you know, they're apparently, they believe there'll be no consequences, bad consequences to their actions.
And then when these predictable bad consequences occur, they, you know, want to distract everyone by talking about, you know, some vague notion of free speech rights or the dangers of extremism or something.
Even though, again, I mean, there are dangers of extremism.
Sure, that's obvious.
But again, some of these things, they're very predictable.
You can't predict...
But you can predict that something's going to happen.
There are going to be consequences to all of these things that American and Western European elites are supporting.
Especially when you give weapons and money and training to people who are going to train terrorists.
Which is exactly what happened.
You know, these guys went to...
So some went to Yemen and another one to Syria, but, you know, it's no longer a national conflict.
It's more a regional one.
And so with borders, which are porous, you have...
All these weapons and guns that cross the borders and so what you give to so-called moderate activists will end up in the hands of real terrorists.
And that's exactly what happened.
And there was this cartoon that was On Facebook last week, so you see, it was a French one, you see François Hollande saying that it's a horrendous act of terror, and then you have Assad saying, you don't say that when you send them my way.
And so terrorists are bad when they're in the West, but in Syria it's fine.
Oh yeah, they're moderate radicals.
And they did far worse there.
I mean, we are not talking about 12 people.
We are talking about dozens of thousands of people who were killed by guys who were funded and trained by the West.
Or the West, if you can keep calling it that way.
But yeah.
But about the elite, I mean, the fact that they're blind is, you know...
If you're wounded and you have to finish a race, you will close your eyes and run as fast as you can and even stop breathing.
It's not really surprising.
What's more, if I were still a reactionary, I would say it's depressing, but I really mean it when I say keep calm and ride the tiger.
It's a reaction of the population.
So it's all about free speech, but...
Nobody wants to talk about Islam, which is obviously there are two topics at hand here.
It's Islam and immigration, or Muslim immigration, one subject.
So we don't talk about the elephant in the room, but it's all about free speech.
We embrace the vague value of free speech, which, again, I don't want to seem American-centric here, but which is not really present in France, to be honest.
But that's even in America, not to bash...
And in America, we have other forms of pressure that stifles free speech.
But anyway, no one actually wants to hear things that they don't want to hear.
But they kind of love to talk about free speech as this vague, gooey, abstract concept.
I want to go back to the First Amendment in the U.S. because it's precisely the problem.
So some voices, but we are minorities, say that we should have a First Amendment in all countries of Europe.
It was not a state or a government or a judge that sentenced these cartoonists and journalists to death.
It was terrorists who were acting outside of the law.
And so you could well have a First Amendment in France and still have these terror attacks.
Especially because I was following the trends on Facebook.
I saw American contacts remind their audience that there's no freedom of speech in France and implying that there was still one in America.
But they should know about, I don't know, someone like Jared Taylor or Kevin MacDonald who don't really enjoy freedom of speech.
So, granted, they can't be prosecuted for their writings and their speeches, but they can feel social ostracism or, you know, you can be out of a job.
So, it's more about, you know, all this Jus-Ri-Charles thing is about preserving the appearances.
Yeah, I think you actually hit the nail on the head because I was joking about how there really isn't free speech.
As you were saying, this is not even a free speech issue.
I mean, no government was arresting Charlie Hebdo writers for criticizing the state.
establishment.
They were part of the establishment.
And they, even though they were probably a little, you know, a bit on the, Let's say extreme or scatological or outrageous side of things.
Nevertheless, they put forth establishment values.
We have a lot of similar things to that in the United States, these people who think they're outrageous while they're just reiterating things that Barack Obama and George Bush both agreed on.
But it's not even that.
They're missing the whole point by even talking about free speech.
It's not about free speech.
It's about the consequences of the establishment.
And, you know, it's the consequences of mass immigration, the consequences of, say, Islamic immigration, the consequences of these geopolitical, these foreign policies of arming moderate rebels and training them.
I mean, it's just, that's what it's about.
And yet that's exactly what no one wants to talk about.
When you see, you know, Angela Merkel and Sarkozy and Moulin holding hands and Bibi Netanyahu is there and some Palestinian...
With Mahmoud Abbas.
The two guys were standing next to another, which was hilarious, you know, because it all means that they're part of...
A global elite, and again, I don't want to sound too conspiratorial, but it's really for the elite now about clinging and strengthening their power.
And they have to do what it takes.
And what it takes is for Angela Merkel to demonstrate supposedly for free speech in Paris and then to demonstrate in Germany against Pegida, which is...
Which is a form of free speech, actually.
Oh, without question.
Angela Merkel embracing free speech is ridiculous.
You have people who are in jail in her country who have unorthodox opinions about the Second World War.
I mean, these are people who have committed no crime.
Yeah, they've committed no crime in the real sense of the word of harming someone else or their property or something like that.
They simply have an unorthodox opinion.
Whether it's right or wrong, that's irrelevant.
And they are in jail as we speak in Germany.
And yet Angela Merkel, comes from a good little religious communist family, but she's now a good conservative.
And she's talking about free speech in Paris.
What a joke these people are.
And Cameron.
Cameron, who is at the head of a police state, one of the worst in the world, with CCTV everywhere and children in school being sacked for racism at the age of six.
And he has a goal to talk about free speech.
It's something to be expected from them.
Oh, yeah.
I'll just mention it.
I just wish more would see through it.
I feel that sometimes these events, they always serve to rally around the establishment.
9-11 did, of course.
That was the era of flag-waving.
Nevertheless, that made a little more sense in that it was an act of war directed against the society of government.
The fact that people would rally around Olan...
Even Sarkozy was there for whatever reason, and Angela Merkel.
That they would rally around these people is just truly appalling.
Just to also mention one more thing about David Cameron.
I think I saw this and I tweeted it yesterday, but he's actually promised that if elected, re-elected, he's going to ban all encrypted communication.
So that basically includes iMessages, We're going to listen in and perhaps even arrest you if we decide
that...
It reminds me that there's a very good series about Big Brother, let's call it like that, in Britain.
It's Black Mirror, which is on Channel 4, I think.
And, of course, you can find it by legal or a little less than legal means on the Internet.
And it's really about that, and it's excellent.
But to get back to this demonstration, so there were 3.7 million people, not only in Paris.
I think in Paris it was 2.5 million and 2 million.2 million remaining was in the other cities.
And for American listeners, to imagine what it means in American terms.
France's population is one-fifth that of the United States.
So imagine a demonstration with 18.5 million people in the US.
So that means really something important.
Of course, it means that you still have 60 million people in France who didn't demonstrate.
In a way, I felt orphan of a country on Sunday night because, you know, I was seeing all these people, even people I know and I used to, you know, have a good opinion of and, you know, changing the avatar and, you know, talking about this free speech thing when the rest of the year when I send them.
Links about things that are important.
They don't, you know, they don't bother to read.
And I really felt that, you know, when we talk about riding the Tiger or letting the car, you know, the Tyler Durden thing to stop trying to control everything and just let go.
You know, we are really at this point now and it doesn't mean that we should do nothing or don't try to convince people that can be convinced but there are people who can't be, you know, you can't resolve them because it's not about free speech, of course.
It's not about being safe from Islamic terror.
It's about reassuring oneself.
And when there are disturbing truths, you can't reassure people without, you know, first telling the truth and then bringing solutions to the problems that the truth underlines.
And so first you have to, you know, to be aware of that.
And with people who refuse to be aware of that, you can't really do something.
That's the day, I have said it before, but this time it was really official, that's the day when I felt I didn't have a citizenship.
I saw this kind of national fervor about something that is not only ridiculous, but also immoral to demonstrate behind all on Merkel and Sarkozy and Cameron.
It's really, you know, and Netanyahu funded these terrorists and then he's happy to have, you know, a citadel state that can expel them, but then he's happy to send them in Europe and Sweden is happy to take them, you know.
It was, you know, I prefer focusing on more constructive things, which maybe in this podcast lead us to Bring us to Welbeck's novel.
Yes, let's talk about Welbeck's novel.
He's someone who is fairly well known in the United States.
I remember I read a few reviews of his work a number of years ago, and I decided to start to dive in.
And I've actually read the Elementary Particles and Platform.
Which are both really worth reading.
Platform is probably the one that has affected me the most and has kind of stuck with me the most, maybe because it included so much sex.
Let's just talk a little bit about who he is.
Maybe the best way to jump into it is to talk a little bit about this kind of long-term scandal that was occurring.
Before anyone could have possibly even read his latest novel, Submission.
So first, I have to say it's funny, but before Submission was released, actually, I read the five first novels last year.
Before 2014, I had never read Welbeck because...
I don't know, but when something is, you know, it's like when a movie is too popular, I have the contrary and tendency to be wary of it.
And so I waited until last year to read the five novels in maybe the matter of one month.
Five weeks.
One a week.
I read the five ones last year.
Of course, I was expecting the sixth one.
In December, I went on Amazon and pre-ordered the book to get it on the official day of the release.
The 7th of January.
There was this controversy going on for weeks.
And I referred to it in my article because first I wanted to talk about the controversy and what it reveals about what I termed the age of tweets.
So the book was not released and there were still people praising it and criticizing it.
So of course the establishment types were...
Criticizing it because it was about France's Islamization and there was the Identitarian movement which is referred to in the novel explicitly.
The Identitarian bloc, the bloc identitaire is mentioned explicitly in the novel.
And so, of course, since I knew them for a time, I found it interesting.
And there was this controversy going on for weeks when even the leaked copies were not available at that time.
And then they were, but it takes a while to really read a book and be able to analyze it.
And so there was this controversy going on about...
Not the content of the book, but just the title.
Submission, which, as we know, the Arabic word for submission is Islam.
So people knew it was about Islam, and it would bring some uncomfortable subjects.
In an Ulubeckian way, submission also has very strong sexual connotations.
You're right to mention it.
There are maybe two common themes in the six novels by Welbeck.
His first, sexual misery in the West.
And the second one, which is related, is the fact that the Western software of humanism The seek to, you know, human individual happiness on Earth has come to an end.
And he says that in, you know, the famous interview he gave just before the novel was released, he said that the Enlightenment was dead, which, of course, is true from our perspective.
So these themes are always common in the six novels, and especially in platform, of course.
So you have a main character, which, of course, is Welbeck himself, at least in the elementary particles, it's true, and then it's at least partly himself.
Who is, you know, sexually dissatisfied.
And then you have the relation there is between the sexual misery, which is not only concerning the character, but also Western society at large, and the fact that the West is dedicated to earthly human happiness, which can't be fulfilled and then leads to temptations of...
Other things.
And so in a novel released in 2005, which was in English, it was a literal translation, I think.
It was the possibility of an island.
And there are two parallel stories between a guy who is outwardly successful at the beginning of the 21st century, successful in sexual...
But also sexually in his career and he's gotten rich and he's famous and socially respected.
So he shouldn't be worried and he can even get women when he wants.
So it's not really an issue for him but he's dissatisfied anyway because...
The sexual liberation is only about carnal satisfaction, which he less and less gets because, you know, it's like a drug and you need higher and higher doses.
And then you're not getting it, especially when you're getting older.
And then the other story is the story of his clone.
Actually, it's kind of, you know, a journal.
Written by his clone centuries later when humanity has become a kind of...
Mankind is living in a kind of matrix, a kind of big honeycomb where everyone has their own shuttered space and the only contact with the other human beings is through internet.
And of course, it's a metaphor of the world we live in.
When we talk about the future, we're always talking about the present.
And so, an alternate ending this time was this desire of going out of history, this desire of an end of history finds an answer with Islam, which is a...
You know, the central topic of submission.
And so the main character finds a way to be satisfied with women through the conversion to Islam.
But it's more general.
It's not only about sex.
It's just that the West has extinguished.
You know, itself, the Enlightenment project, the humanist project, which dates back to even further, it's the early 16th century and even the late 15th century, actually.
This, you know, desire to be at peace and, you know, not care about having a higher purpose.
Right.
I mean, I think it's this contradiction where Islam is the flip side of the end of history, or Islam is the nightmare of the end of history, but in a way that it's the end of history's nightmare.
It's something that is peculiar to the end of history and is almost a consequence of it.
I mean, I think the platform novel...
And it's funny, I haven't posted this podcast yet, but we actually did a podcast with John Morgan on Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut, and we talked about Platform for a little bit, because the Ulebeck controversy was in the air at the time when we recorded it.
So I'll talk about it again, because it's a very relevant novel.
And again, I read a lot.
This thing I wrote, this novel I...
I read about seven or eight years ago now, but I still remember it quite vividly.
But anyway, it's a story about the kind of average, decadent Westerner who goes on business junkets to Southeast Asia and, of course, patrons, prostitutes, and all this kind of thing.
But he goes to poor, traditional societies and symbolically rapes them, you could say.
He also has this love affair with a Parisian woman, and then they experience all sorts of carnal desire and all new ways of having sex.
And again, like a drug, any drug, the marginal return keeps diminishing, and you need more and more and more in order to get back to that original high.
And that's certainly the case for him.
But it's kind of interesting of, by the end of the novel, it's like sexuality is transfigured to...
It's seemingly opposite.
What I mean by that is that in the end of the novel, they start to transform his girlfriend's travel agency into just a full-on sex tourism agency.
So they're going to drop all pretenses and just say, this is about experiencing...
Eroticism with other races and traditional societies.
But it becomes, in a way, the kind of ultimate expression of the Enlightenment project and the end of history.
And so they actually have a saying, which is...
Pleasure is a right.
And I think at one point in the novel they talk about, oh, this will really resonate after all of the humanitarian interventions in Serbia.
It's all about human rights now.
And of course, if you have a human right to a fair wage or to health care or to what have you, then why not?
You also have a human right to orgasm and to orgasm in various exotic ways.
And so it was kind of like, go to Kenya and find African boys, go to Thailand and screw these people.
But again, it's just the fact that it's wrapped up in human rights dogma is just in a way so perfect.
And again, spoiler alert, if you haven't read it, then I don't want to ruin the novel for you, so please avert your ears.
But at the end of it, essentially, they all get blown up by Muslims.
There's a sense to it of this kind of needs to happen.
This is the out.
This is the reaction to it.
Gotham must be destroyed.
Yeah, but in another way, on a whole other level, being...
Getting your limbs blown off by Muslim terrorists is almost, in a way, the ultimate act of sadomasochism.
You've already been gangbanged and whatever.
The next step is to die.
Having a bomb thrown at you.
Yeah, it's like the ultimate orgasm is death.
And Shakespeare actually talked about that.
Sex and death are linked in language throughout his plays.
But anyway, all I'm saying is, I think Ullebeck, I don't think he's not on our side.
He's not an identitarian.
He's not...
Maybe I should say a little more about that submission.
I'll let you talk just real quick.
No, Lubek is not on our side.
He's not coming from our wavelength.
He's not of any side, actually.
He's not on anyone's side.
I think that's good.
He's an anarchist.
And he's such an expression of the zeitgeist that I think he's powerful and important.
He seems to get at our nightmares.
We talk about free speech.
He talks about those things that, in a way, we don't want to talk about the ultimate implications of our society.
So, in that sense, I think he, without question, should be read.
Let's do this.
Romain, I'm going to let you have the last word and then we'll put the proverbial bookmark in it.
Oh, so soon.
Well, yeah, Welbeck is not of any side, but as you said, he's expressing the zeitgeist and it even shows in his physical appearance because he has really been Rotting off these last years because of alcohol abuse and I think he smokes a lot.
And in submission, so the identitarians who don't read books enough, they quote Ebola but they don't read them or any other author for that matter.
They read maybe blogs and I'm not even sure of it.
No, that's a fact.
So they thought that Welbeck was on their side and they wrote him a letter saying that at least they found someone who agreed with them.
First, I have to say that an artist and a novelist is an artist.
You know, he's not a politician, so he doesn't have to be pro or...
Contra, you know, it's just about writing a novel, even if there are political implications.
And then in the novel, which I read entirely from first to last letters, what I read is that the identitarians are trying to prevent France from electing a Muslim president and they fail.
And then you have a Muslim president and France is, you know, trying to build a new Arabian civilization with Near and Middle East and North Africa.
And that's an answer to many problems, according to Welbeck, especially regarding feminism.
Because, you know, Western women are...
Finally, they are disappointed by sexual liberation and they want to get back to being, you know, household maids and please their husbands.
And men are tired with hookups and they want to...
They can have several wives if they're rich, but they want to get back to a normal life.
It's not truly what an identitarian could expect, at least regarding Islam, maybe not about feminism.
So submission ends on this note, and it's the first time Welbeck states such a thing, because even in Platform, it ends on an Islamic terror attack, but there is a character who tells the main character that...
Eventually, Islam will be defeated by modernity and he goes even further in the possibility of an island because it's about the future several centuries from now and all mankind has adopted a new sect that is about, you know, a kind of New Age sect that is about reincarnation and so it's...
Basically something that goes against Islam.
So Islam is defeated in the possibility of an island.
And so Welbeck is not on our side, whatever that means.
But what, I mean, it couldn't be more topical, you know.
And what really struck me, and it's good to end on this note for me, Is that, you know, when you read this novel and you know what's happening today in France, not only regarding the attacks, but also what's happening with the National Front and the Identitarian Movement, so on the right and on the left, the parties that are...
You know, that have more and more difficulties to keep their secular platform because of Islam and the fact that Muslims vote for them.
And, you know, it's really well informed.
And I even recognized some people I met on the far right.
For example, there's a hooligan, Paris football, as we say in Europe.
So you say soccer.
A Paris football hooligan who has got the first name of a knight, a medieval knight.
Actually, I met a guy with the first name of a medieval knight and was one of the leaders of these Paris hooligans.
So, something tells me that maybe he met people he shouldn't mention publicly.
Or maybe he knew them, or maybe he got information about them.
But what's really interesting is that, you know, it's not really a novel.
It's more like he takes the situation now and just accelerates it.
And even if it's not really realistic that a Muslim regime is imposing...
You know, 2022, so only seven years from now.
What's interesting is that not even if it's not realistic, it's what more and more people are talking about, especially since last week.
So it's a kind, Welbeck is a kind of messenger and his solutions are not our concern.
He doesn't really provide solutions, actually.
Just that...
If you want to find a novelist today that really describes what's happening today, it's maybe the best one.
I have to mention before closing that a platform that you referred to was published only two weeks or maybe ten days before 9-11.
And it ends with an Islamic terror attack.
I can't say more than that.
Some of these writers who even delve into parody, they in a way delve into prophecy.
But let's just put a bookmark in it.
This certainly won't be the last thing we have to say about this matter.
But Romain, thanks for being on the program once again.
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