This might be the key to understanding how and why Raspail wrote a novel depicting the armed uprising of the ‘Français de souche’ (Native French) against non-Europeans. In February 2011, Raspail gave an interview to the Far-Right FM station Radio Courtoisie in Paris. He explained that he refused to talk openly about race because of the existing legislation but that according to him, «true French diversity made French richness, but only when immigration led to ‘a Whites-only melting-pot’ ».
Raspail, who was in regular contact with the New Right despite being a diehard Monarchist and Catholic Traditionalist, certainly shared Renaud Camus’ belief that that ‘Great Replacement’ was on its way. As a reactionary pessimist, he believed that it was probably too late for ‘White Europe’ to reverse the trend of immigration, thus his ethno-nationalist stand and his idea that European civilization of old could perhaps remain in isolated White enclaves.
Raspail was driven by the nostalgia of traditional France as he knew it before World War II. His entire literary career bears testimony to his refusal of the modern world. This is why he devoted several books to the romantic myth of the ‘King of Patagonia’, among others the 1981 ‘Moi, Antoine de Tounens, Roi de Patagonie’ (I, Antoine de Tounens, King of Patagonia).
Drawing from the real story of the short-lived independent kingdom set up between 1860 and 1862 by a French adventurer, Raspail was a self-proclaimed general Consul of Patagonia in France. He led a fan-club of devotees who shared his dream, appointed vice-Consuls in various French cities but although the flag of Patagonia was draped around his coffin, all this fantasy was not about gaining political power in a faraway land, it was but a means to escape what he perceived as the doomed future of Europe and the dullness of everyday life, the paradox being that Raspail and his friends had a real interest in the Mapuche people whose way of life is subject to constant repression in their native country.
Jean Raspail was buried on 17 June. A crowd of about 1,000 people attended the funeral among them many figures of the far and mainstream right such as Marion Maréchal, former Minister Philippe de Villiers, former MEP Bruno Gollnisch from Front National, journalists Gabrielle Cluzel and Ivan Rioufol, as well as Jean, Comte de Paris. Marine le Pen also paid tribute to Raspail in a tweet, so did Bruno Retailleau, senate leader of Les Republicain conservative party, and other concervative politicians.
Raspail was also eulogized by the mainstream conservative newspapers Le Figaro and Valeurs Actuelles. The author who is considered an extremist and racist by the left, has attained the status of a prophet of ‘identity politics’, and his influence has expanded beyond the small world of the radical right.
Source: – Open Democracy
Source link
Related