FRENCH DECADENCE

There is an interesting book review here about the fall of France to the Germans in 1941. The combined British and French forces were in fact larger than the German forces so the defeat of the French, like the defeat of the Iraquis, happened so quickly mainly because the French did not want to fight. It argues that the French emphasis on culture, philosophy and the soft life made them unwilling soldiers and also made them arrogant towards everyone non-French. Not much has changed.

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FRENCH RACISM

A recovering Francophile tells us that antisemitism and racism generally is widespread in France with antisemitism being pervasive among the French Left:

There is little anti-Semitism among French conservatives today. They certainly do not make alliances with, or excuses for, people who cite the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as evidence of anything. Alas, this cannot be said for the old and young left that once prided itself on its principled animus to racisms of all sorts. La Nouvelle Judeophobie, written by Director of Research at the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique Pierre-Andre Taguieff and published in 2001 by Fayard, painstakingly documents how the core expressions of the self-described "anti-racist" left-- its intellectuals, academics, journalists, bien-pensants, and artists-- are downright anti-Semitic.... And their views are echoed by the polled public opinion of ordinary Frenchmen.

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