Richard Millet - A Furor over Freedom of Speech

About ten days ago a reader sent a link to an article describing the furor over statements made by writer Richard Millet, who has been copiously discussed in the French news sources recently. In the past Millet aroused controversy when he said he did not feel safe in the Châtelet district of Paris, something no decent egalitarian is ever supposed to think, let alone say.

Because I have not read his books or his political pamphlets, I must rely on what others say about them. Briefly, he regards Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as a product of multiculturalism, and his horrible deed as the result of loss of national identity in Norway. And while he does not condone the deed itself, he feels it was a predictable outcome of the ghettoization of the country. If this is his view it is very debatable, since Breivik's act seems to be the result of mental illness, but the point is that the French media, intelligentsia and anti-racist organizations are on the offensive and calling for Millet's head. He is not the first French celebrity author/teacher/journalist to endure such a witch hunt. Before him, Louis Chagnon, Robert Redeker, Renaud Camus, Eric Zemmour, among others have been sent to the gallows, metaphorically speaking. The metaphor may become reality as more and more high-ranking Socialists are talking about censoring the Internet, the primary source, they claim, of racist speech.

One more thing about Richard Millet: he is anti-American, and blames America for the moral failings of the French today. I will try to have more on his blind spots later.

These passages from the Time-World article will give you an idea of what happened:

“Multiculturalism, as it has been imported from the United States, is the worst thing possible for Europe … and creates a mosaic of ghettoes in which the [host] nation no longer exists,” Millet told France Info radio on Aug. 27. “Breivik, I believe, perceived that and responded to that question with the most monstrous reply.”

Little wonder that such views — published just as Breivik was being sentenced Aug. 24 — have sparked controversy in France. As word of Millet’s writing spreads, so too may the objections it has inspired.

If so, that may only serve to reinforce Millet’s accusations that most of Europe — and indeed the West — is dominated by the same attitudes that motivated Breivik’s attack. Breivik, Millet writes, is “an exemplary product of Western decadence” and a “child of the ideologico-racial fracture that extra-European immigration has introduced in Europe.” Because he sees the resulting “loss of national identity” and “Islamization of Europe” decaying “Christian roots” everywhere, Millet appears to believe acts similar to Breivik’s may be replicated outside Norway as well.

“Within this decadence, Breivik is without doubt what Norway deserved, and what awaits our societies that won’t stop blinding themselves in denial,” Millet writes in “Éloge Littéraire d’Anders Breivik,” one of three essays published under the collective title Langue Fantôme (Ghost Language) on Aug. 24 by publisher Éditions Pierre-Guillaume de Roux. “European nations are dissolving socially at the same time as they’re losing their Christian essence in favor of general relativism.”

(…)

Though such views are regularly championed by the extreme right, their association with Breivik’s massacre is something leaders like Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front party have assiduously avoided. Indeed, Le Pen has attacked efforts to explain or justify Breivik’s killing spree as a consequence of extreme-right views put into action. Given the enduring taboo of seeking to explain Breivik’s acts as anything short of madness, Millet’s essay may not only lead Le Pen to deny any ties to the author or his work — but may also force the venerable Gallimard to do likewise.

(…)

Neither the controversy surrounding his essays nor calls for his ouster from Gallimard seem to bother Millet. Indeed, the man who described Breivik’s 77 victims as “mixed-raced, globalized, uncultivated, social-democrat petit bourgeois,” appears to take a certain pride in the anger and consternation his essays have provoked.

“I’m one of the most hated French authors,” he told France Info on Monday. “It’s an interesting position that makes me an exceptional being.”

Note: I'm not sure saying that Norway got what it deserved was a very good argument. If Norway has become a totalitarian pro-immigration anti-racist society, then of course the way is open for all kinds of violence. The type of violence Norway is asking for is violence against ethnic Norwegians, perpetrated by immigrants. Brievik was not an immigrant. Nor was he an avenging angel, acting on behalf of traditional Norway. His so-called Manifesto is a wild mix of quotes from right and left-wing sources as well as non-political writers. He seems to have been the product of a dysfunctional "progressive" upbringing that caused his normal desires and need for values to become perverted into a taste for blood, something not very unusual in young males of broken homes. His behavior was similar to that of many a postal employee who is fired and returns to kill everybody in the office where he worked, rather than that of an ideologue committed to a specific cause. What is the cause here? He killed his own people, plus a few foreigners in a murderous rampage.  And because of this the media call him a product of the extreme-right, which is totally untrue. The so-called "extreme right-wing" patriots do not indulge in gratuitous mass murder. They are not the descendants of Adolf Hitler, but of the traditional European peoples that are today in the throes of cultural decomposition. These traditional nations were not racist xenophobic entities feeding off the flesh and blood of the oppressed as the Left portrays them, but countries with multiple minorities and various religions, that prospered, above all, under a dominant European culture and dominant Christian religion that influenced, informed and protected everybody. And they were countries that put their own survival ahead of some destructive suicidal ideology based on white guilt. Did Breivik help the cause of nationalism? Of course not. Did he respond, as Millet says, to the "mosaic of ghettos in which the host nation no longer exists"? Maybe. More likely, he responded to his own rootlessness, his own need to feel important, the result of excessive reading without a moral foundation, the result of rotten upbringing on the part of "parents" who are not ready for the rigors and responsibilities of family life. In which case his action did not derive specifically from any right-wing factor at all, but more directly from leftist relativism itself. 

As indicated, I will have more on Millet, since the case goes far beyond the particular idea he has of Breivik, and threatens the right to speak one's mind in France.