7 October 1998
Alain Finkielkraut is professor of philosophy at the elite École
Polytechnique outside Paris. He is the darling of a certain Parisian
intelligentsia. I remember having personally encountered him in
1987 in the Latin Quarter. An anti-revisionist conference was
being held at the Sorbonne; groups of young Jews roamed the area
on the lookout for potential revisionists. A. Finkielkraut was
accompanied by one of these groups. With three or four young Jews,
he came into the café where I happened to be. I greeted
him with: "They're done for, your gas chambers!", a
rashness for which I was to have to pay an hour later. But, at
that moment, taken aback, he made a mumbled reply and, with his
friends, quickly left the café.
Since that day I have observed his doings. He has steadily made a speciality of denouncing the Lanzmann-style Jewish maximalism. Today, on the occasion of the attacks against the person of Mgr Stepinac (1896-1960), accused by some of having collaborated with the wartime Croatian nationalist Ante Pavelic's Ustachis and suspected of anti-semitism, A. Finkielkraut defends both the late Cardinal's memory and the Croatian Roman Catholic Church. He recalls that, from 1941, the Church took up the defence of the Jews against the Ustachi regime. He reckons that Mgr Stepinac had had to suffer personally in life from "Europe's two griefs", which for him were first Fascism, then Communism. The article that he has written for today's Le Monde bears the title "Mgr Stepinac et les deux douleurs de l'Europe" ("Mgr Stepinac and Europe's two Griefs"). The piece's content is not lacking in interest but its beginning especially catches the reader's attention. Here is a translation:
Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century! We are no longer History's accused, but its darlings. The spirit of the times loves, honours, and defends us, watches over our interests; it even needs our imprimatur. Journalists draw up ruthless indictments against all that Europe still has in the way of Nazi collaborators or those nostalgic for the Nazi era. Churches repent, States do penance, Switzerland no longer knows where to stand... (Alain Finkielkraut, « Mgr Stepinac et les deux douleurs de l'Europe », Le Monde, 7 October 1998, p. 14).
Obviously, it is sweet to be Jewish at this end of century but only a Jew has the right to say so. In effect, it is no longer possible to publish anything at all without the Synagogue's imprimatur. In effect, I might add, the Jew reigns unopposed.
In France, year after year, the Interior Ministry and certain specialised and generously subsidised bodies make an inventory of all acts which might, in our country, be termed anti-semitic. Try as they may to bloat their statistics, the result is clear: practically no anti-semitic acts are ever detected in the land.
If it is true that it is so sweet to be Jewish, then what right have the Jews to complain of a near non-existent anti-semitism, and what right have they to demand and to obtain a harsher and harsher repression of revisionism, which they have succeeded in assimilating to anti-semitism?
The very same issue of Le Monde announces that Front National president Jean Marie Le Pen is once again paying dearly for having had the temerity, at a gathering in Munich in December of last year, to state that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the second world war. The European Parliament, by a huge majority, has just voted to remove his parliamentary immunity. A German court will perhaps be able to sentence him to five years' imprisonment. In the European Parliament, the German member Willy Rothley, speaking for the Socialist group, pointed out that his country's penal code had the goal of "protecting the young against falsifications of history". "If Mr Le Pen does not answer the summons of my country's courts", he warned, "he will be imprisoned as soon as he sets foot on German soil".
In Germany, repression has reached new heights. Even Americans travelling in Germany or in a neighbouring country can be thrown into a German jail for revisionist felonies. I shall add that, for the same statement, Mr Le Pen has been, and is again being, prosecuted in France. In 1991, he was ordered to pay FrF1,200,000 (more than $200,000/£120,000) for having made it in its original form. In accordance with an emergency interim ruling of 26 December 1997 he is at present "under investigation" in Paris for his remarks made in Munich. Thus, for the same statement, he is being charged at the same time in Munich and in Paris.
Day by day, I follow with interest this mighty rise of Jewish power. For my humble part, I have today, as every month, sent my tribute of FrF 5,000 (about $900/£500) to the "Paris Fines Receiver" in charge of collecting the sums which I am regularly ordered to hand over for revisionism, that is to say, for having annoyed the Synagogue1
. The day after tomorrow, new charges await me in Paris 2.
On the 14th of October I shall know the result of a case brought against me in Amsterdam for what I wrote, more than twenty years ago, about the imposture of the Diary of Anne Frank. Two very rich Jewish organisations there have sued me for the moral and financial harm caused to them by my work. Still in Paris, I have yet another revisionism case coming up.
In France, in Germany, in Palestine,... indeed, when one looks closely, everywhere in the world, including Japan, it seems best not to offend, even indirectly or unwittingly, those who, like A. Finkielkraut, can sigh: "Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century!"
As for us, bound and gagged, we have
no rights left, not even the right to mutter: "Ah, how grievous
it is not to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century!"
Addition
(14 October 1998): A. Finkielkraut has today testified against
Roger Garaudy, author of The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics,
in the 11th chamber of the Court of Appeal of Paris. He sees in
R. Garaudy an anti-semite and a "Faurissonian". He declares
his approval of the anti-revisionist law known as the "Fabius-Gayssot"
Act ; the State, says he, must punish hatred.
1
The first to call for the introduction
in France of an anti-revisionist law on the model of the Israeli
law of July 1981 were a group of Jewish historians including Pierre
Vidal-Naquet and Georges Wellers, united around René-Samuel
Sirat, Chief Rabbi of France (Bulletin quotidien de l'Agence
télégraphique juive, 2 June 1986, p. 1, 3).
This law, called the "Fabius-Gayssot Act", was passed
on 13 July, 1990.
2
In 1982, at the time of one of my very first trials, A. Finkielkraut published a muddled work entitled L'Avenir d'une négation (The Future of a Denial), at the éditions du Seuil. Revisionism worried him. On the first page of his book he bravely described me as being "of the ilk of Big Brother". On page 66 he wrote: "In terms of method, the deniers of the gas chambers are the spiritual children of the big Stalinists."
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Adelaide Institute Newsletter on line, December
1998, No 84.
First displayed on aaargh: 17 April 2001.
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