By: Dr Andrej Fink
I have written several times in these pages about the fate of Europe, usually in connection with specific events in EU member states. This time, it is France that raises concern, and not for the first time. Spain is also in a worrying condition, although that is a subject for another occasion. Yet it is not only these two countries that are struggling. Italy, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, and others face similar problems. The causes vary, but they all seem to share a kind of pandemic of self-satisfaction. These societies have become weakened and fragmented and are therefore unable to respond adequately to the challenges confronting them.
France is one of Europe’s largest countries and a founding member of the European Community. Alongside Germany, it has long been regarded as one of the “locomotives” of European integration. Historically, it stood at the centre of European affairs as a political and military power that helped shape the continent’s destiny. For several decades, however, it has been undergoing a process of gradual internal decay, which is a consequence to persistent public nihilism, resulting ideological confusion, and the influence of migration and Islamism.
To avoid oversimplification, however, it should be said that there are several different Frances, which can be distinguished in various ways. One is the culturally and spiritually rich France that still exists, though less visibly than before. Spiritually, France was once known as the “eldest daughter of the Church.” Another France is secularised and, after two centuries, spiritually emptied. The third France, visible in its streets today, has little in common with the country’s brighter historical moments.
After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, France emerged wounded. Through the revolution, it spent two centuries undermining its own foundations. By exporting revolutionary ideas around the world, it appeared to help many nations that accepted those ideas unquestioningly. Liberté, égalité, fraternité – liberty, equality, fraternity – are beautiful words and ideals, but they can also become empty slogans. Throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, France was celebrated as a land of enlightenment, not only Paris but the country as a whole. It attracted admiration through its brilliance. Yet, that brilliance was misleading and reflected only the remnants of past greatness. Politically, France became weaker during the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly after the Franco-Prussian War. Although it emerged among the victors of the First World War, it was weakened again. The same happened after the Second World War. France continued living on the memory of former glory. It lost its colonies in Africa and Indochina. Even permanent membership in the UN Security Council and possession of nuclear weapons did not halt its internal decline.
Where is the France that only a few weeks ago warmly welcomed Pope Leo XIV? Where is the France of Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Vincent de Paul, Lourdes, and so much else? Today, a fourth France has emerged, one that is increasingly influenced by Islam. In 2015, French novelist Michel Houellebecq stirred controversy with a novel depicting a future France governed by Islam. We are not there yet, but reality is telling. In France, with a population of more than 60 million, there are 6 million Muslims (some estimates put the figure as high as 10 million), with varying degrees of identification with the Islamic faith and without integration into secularised French society.
There is also the ever more disintegrating and impotent leftism at work, a fifth France, which still presents itself as a messianic idea and invites overly comfortable and well-fed young and old alike into meaningless “action” that is supposedly meant to solve everything. Yet from the Paris Commune to the present day, it has solved nothing.
In the suburbs of major cities, alongside the poverty that has become commonplace there, drug abuse and crime are also omnipresent. The second, fourth, and fifth Frances are now merging into a common crisis that is spilling across borders. Some will still remember May 1968 in France, when President de Gaulle threatened to deploy the army, though in the end it was not necessary to do so.
If, amid this crisis, Marine Le Pen wins the elections next April, there will once again be “fire on the roof.” Similar unrest is taking place across Europe. Is this simply a contagious social illness, or is there some revolutionary plan being devised in a certain centre of power for the entire European Union, with the aim of making it even weaker than it already is?
