“France is a strange country,” says Michel Houellebecq on the phone, half pessimistic and half resigned to what might happen after Sunday’s legislative elections. “I speak as a Frenchman, but sometimes there are catastrophes and then things get better, and there is no problem.”
Houellebecq (68 years old, La Réunion), possibly the most widely read and influential of the 21st century French novelists, has been credited with prophetic gifts or, at least, an ability to capture the deep currents of Western societies and in particular of the French. This malaise is now surfacing with the electoral success of the National Rally (RN), the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen. He has described in his novels the malaise, the feeling of decline. And this Thursday, in a conversation with Morning Express, he spoke about the campaign, about what may happen next, about Marine Le Pen and her candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, and about France fractured between what he calls “the elites” and “the people.”
“Unpleasant things can happen,” he says, before explaining to the journalist that he has health problems and contemplating a worrying scenario: “There could be an unpleasant moment, there could be deaths.”
Chat with the author of Platform and of Annihilation forces you to listen carefully. He speaks in a murmur, leaves long pauses between sentences, and after making a resounding statement he expresses his doubts about what he has just said. For some he is an oracle; for others, a simple brother in law; for many, the Balzac of our time, a genius of contemporary letters, or a punk and a hooligan; a reactionary.
“If we talk about the current political situation, the most likely scenario is that the National Rally Front will only have a relative majority and will give up on coming to power, then things will go as normal,” he says, citing the former name of Le Pen’s party, the National Front. “If they have an absolute majority and take power, then there will be problems.”
President Emmanuel Macron, who awarded Houellebecq the Legion of Honour in 2019, spoke of a “civil war” to warn of the consequences of a victory of “the extremes”. Does he agree? “He is right,” replies the writer. “But for him to say that this could end tragically is not right. It does not inspire confidence. A president of the Republic should say: ‘I have the situation under control, everything will be fine’. He is not supposed to say: ‘There will be a civil war’… It is like being in a car and the driver saying that he no longer controls the vehicle.”
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—But you, do you say that too?
—I say that things are heading towards a confrontation.
Here are the sides of the conflict that Houellebecq sees coming: “It is a revolt of the people against these elites. Elites in every sense of the term. Political, economic, intellectual elite.”
Houellebecq draws on his recent experience: “There are things that have really deteriorated in France. I finally bought a house in the country. There are no more doctors. I still have the doctor in Paris, every time I have an appointment I go to Paris. It is a huge failure. There are geographers who have theorized about it. Now the world will be a network of megalopolises, and the rest of us don’t care, there people live as they can.”
He is concerned about what he sees as the abandonment of rural France: “Since I have been living in the countryside, I have noticed… They have abandoned a part of the country and this is the part of the country that is rebelling at the moment.” He cites the work of the geographer Christophe Guilluy, theorist of the France of the yellow vests, and also that of the political scientist Jérôme Fourquet, author of The French Archipelago.
The label of reactionary, which is sometimes applied to Houellebecq, seems to him “a category of the past”. “On the other hand,” he admits, “I am a populist, this is not false.” And he declares himself influenced by the American Christopher Lasch, author of The rebellion of the elites and the betrayal of democracy.
From Bardella, prime ministerial candidate Of Le Pen, she says: “He makes so many efforts to appear to be someone without rough edges, this boy… He is so obsessed with the idea of not saying anything that would be perceived badly, that he says nothing.”
Marine Le Pen? “I think she is not very intelligent or very competent. But it is not necessarily very serious, because you always find intelligent and competent people. When you get close to power, people come to you.” “On the other hand,” he adds, “I think she really loves people, she is close to the people.” Even if she is a bourgeois from Paris, the daughter of a rich man? “That is what is strange,” he replies. “I think she had a revelation when she was elected as a deputy in Hénin-Beaumont. [un distrito obrero en el norte desindustrializado]and there he sympathized with the poor.”
Is the RN far right? “This is nonsense. They have nothing to do with each other,” he says. He argues that what is important in the history of the National Front and its successor, the National Rally, is not collaboration with the Nazi occupation, but the “trauma” of the Algerian war: “They are not anti-Semitic at all. On the contrary, they are indeed anti-Muslim.”
Houellebecq is unhappy with the creation of a republican front ahead of Sunday’s second round: the union of the left, Macronism and the centre-right to prevent the far right from gaining an absolute majority of seats and being able to govern. In the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, Macron won thanks to voters with ideologies other than his own who wanted to prevent Le Pen’s victory.
“The entire elite is mobilizing against the National Front,” he says. “Macron has won this way for two elections now. People are tired of this argument. It doesn’t work anymore, although it still works a little. This time they will still get away with it, but I don’t know if it’s good news. Sometimes you tell yourself that it would be better if the conflict had broken out now.”
—And you, are you with the elite or with the people?
—Mmm… Sociologically, I’m with the elite. At heart, I’m more with the people. I’ve been voting for the elite for a long time: the elite is supposed to do things right…
But he adds that he has not done things correctly, with “a monstrous debt and deficit”, and that is why he says: “If you vote for the elite and the elite is not an elite, we are screwed… So now I don’t know.” In his constituency, one deputy was already elected in the first round by exceeding 50% of the votes. Therefore, he will not have to vote this Sunday. He voted last Sunday.
—May I ask who?
—No! I am totally in favour of the principle of secret voting.
—Excuse me, we journalists asked…
—It’s normal, it’s their job. But I think the secret ballot is a good start.
—But you just told me that you vote for the elite…
—Ah, I have betrayed myself. I have not said anything.
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