{"id":9297,"date":"2017-03-05T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/the-titanic-of-the-french-left\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T09:15:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T09:15:04","slug":"the-titanic-of-the-french-left","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-titanic-of-the-french-left\/","title":{"rendered":"The Titanic of the French Left"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

France\u2019s left-leaning media have recently been hit by an embarrassing revelation: Mehdi Meklat, a twenty-four-year-old Muslim blogger turned media star by sympathetic journalists, was exposed on Twitter as a rabid anti-Semite, homophobe, and misogynist. While still in high-school, Meklat started a blog on life\u2019s harshness in French banlieues<\/em> (suburbs). He caught the attention of journalists and, within a few years, the articulate and soft-spoken wunderkind became the poster child of moderate Islam and of successful integration. Until, in February 2017, old tweets he published under a pseudonym between 2011 and 2015 were dug-out and exposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Meklat\u2019s rants are jaw-dropping. Charlie Hebdo\u2019s journalists? \u201cThey should die.\u201d Jews? \u201cBring back Hitler to finish them.\u201d Bin Laden? \u201cI miss him.\u201d Mohamed Merah\u2019s apology of death? \u201cMovingly beautiful.\u201d Whites? \u201cYou must die ASAP.\u201d Marine Le Pen? \u201cI\u2019ll slit your throat in accordance with Muslim rites.\u201d French journalists, many of whom turned Meklat into an icon, are divided. Some disowned him; others are circling the wagons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Pascale Clark, who hosted Meklat for years on her radio show, took his defense and praised his \u201cintelligence and humanity.\u201d Veteran journalist Claude Askolovitch poo-pooed Meklat\u2019s tweets as \u201ca kid\u2019s silly jokes.\u201d Radio anchor Xavier de La Porte blamed himself and his listeners for not getting it: \u201cThere must be something in Mehdi Meklat that is too complex for us to understand.\u201d M\u00e9diapart<\/em> (an online opinion journal) and Lib\u00e9ration<\/em> (a daily newspaper) took on Meklat\u2019s critics: for them, the fachosph\u00e8re (a French idiom for \u201cFascist blogosphere\u201d) is to be blamed for unearthing Meklat\u2019s old tweets in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cMeklat Affair\u201d not only exposed, once again, the moral bankruptcy of the French left. It also confirmed its stubborn refusal to face the fact that there is such a thing as Muslim anti-Semitism. French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has described the Meklat Affair as \u201cthe Titanic of the yuppie left.\u201d As Bruckner explains, the French left will not let go of the axioma that former colonized people are always innocent by definition. They cannot possibly be racist, anti-Semitic, or oppressive. Impossible. In addition, Islam has acquired a special status in France: it is the only religion that cannot be scrutinized or criticized, and which enjoys a de facto protection from blasphemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0If the Meklat Affair is the Titanic of the yuppie left, the upcoming presidential election may turn out to be its Berezina. France\u2019s left-leaning media, as well as key figures in the judicial system, have declared a war of attrition on Fran\u00e7ois Fillon. The once front-runner conservative candidate is now fighting an uphill struggle for political survival. Fillon did nothing illegal by hiring his wife as a parliamentary aid, and the claim that she did not actually work has yet to be proven. But the accusation is sticking, and Fillon\u2019s likely indictment might be fatal. According to most polls, the presidential election\u2019s runoff will likely be between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Macron is the darling of France\u2019s media. He gets a free pass over his political Ponzi scheme. An Ivy League graduate and former banker, he claims to be running \u201cagainst the system.\u201d A former senior cabinet member in Fran\u00e7ois Hollande\u2019s government, he now disowns his former boss\u2019 legacy. Less than two months before election day, Macron still hasn\u2019t published a program and he tells voters to just trust him. There are savory rumors about his private life, but the media are mum about them. France\u2019s left-leaning media, in other words, are promoting a political charlatan because he is not a Thatcherite and a conservative like Fillon, and because he is the most likely to beat Le Pen in a runoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0This strategy may backfire. In a recent poll published by Le Figaro, Le Pen would get 45% of the vote in a runoff against Fillon, and 42% in a runoff against Macron. Considering that polls predicted the defeat of Brexit and of Trump, a Le Pen victory can no longer be ruled out. If Le Pen wins, she\u2019ll partly owe her victory to the defenestration of Fillon and to the promotion of Macron by the French left. Don\u2019t expect French left-wing journalists to take the blame, however. Instead, a Le Pen victory will give them another reason to excuse Meklat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(First published in The Times of Israel<\/a>, Mar 1, 2017).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cMeklat Affair\u201d not only exposed, once again, the moral bankruptcy of the French left. 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