Translation by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s note: Éric Zemmour is a Sephardic Jewish French journalist and pundit, no doubt the “most nationalist” voice allowed on French television, all but telling people to vote for the Front National. I found his bestselling book Le Suicide français, while sometimes false or circumspect, surprisingly frank on certain issues. The title is taken from the text. Given the length of the text, I have bolded admissions that are significant for a mainstream publication.
The following is taken from Éric Zemmour, Le Suicide français (Albin Michel: 2014), “De Gaulle raflé au Vél d’Hiv,” pp. 379-385.
[French President Jacques Chirac, July 16, 1996:] There are, in the life of a nation, moments which hurt the memory and the idea one has of one’s country. . . . France, the fatherland of the Enlightenment and of the rights of man, land of refuge and asylum, France, on that day, committed the irredeemable. Betraying her word, she delivered her wards to their tormentors . . .
It was Brutus, his adoptive son, who returned, according to the legend, to finish off Caesar, stabbed with dagger strikes; it was Jacques Chirac, the self-styled heir of Gaullism, whose role it was to destroy the Gaullian mystique. The latter was founded upon the distinction between a legal but illegitimate Vichy [regime], a de facto but not de jure authority, and Free France, incarnation of national legitimacy, of the only France, of the France which fights . . . Read more