The Finkielkraut Question: what happens when the gilets jaunes turn nasty?

On Saturday morning, in the run-up to Act XIII or XIV (I’ve lost count) of the gilets jaunes insurrection, I was sitting in our local café with my wife ploughing through an interview in Le Figaro with the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. The 69-year-old, who later that day would be accosted outside his Paris home by pro-Palestinian zealots, is one of France’s go-to guys when it comes to what everything means. You name it, he’s got an opinion on it, often expressed on TV alongside others from the band of usual suspects made up of academics and opinionated journalists of left and right.

The son of a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, Finkielkraut is a libertarian, left-leaning zionist, who, as it happens, supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question. He distrusts multiculturalism and positive discrimination. Notoriously, he criticised France’s World Cup-winning football squad for being not “black, blanc, beur” (black, white, Arab), but “black, black, black”. Anti-semitism gets his goat, as do violent attacks on the police in France. But when the gilets jaunes began their protests last November, he spoke out in their favour because he felt that ordinary French people were getting a raw deal from their government.

The original protesters, he told Figaro, borrowing from views expressed by the British pundit David Goodhart, were people from “somewhere”, not people from “nowhere”. They were like the “deplorables” cited by Hillary Clinton during her ill-fated run against Donald Trump. In recent days, however – and this is what got him into trouble on Saturday – the protests had got out of hand, with a hard core bent on violence and destruction, hinging on a hatred of the police.

I waded through Finkielkraut’s reponses to the various questions posed, remarking to my wife that he was one of those intellectuals, so beloved of the French, who relish controversy without ever getting their hands dirty. In other words, he could criticise, or approve, everyone, from the rural peasantry gathered around their local roundabout to demand cheaper diesel or an increase in the basic wage, all the way up to Emmanuel Macron, the Jupiter President, safe in the knowledge that it was all the same to him and he would be included in the TF1 panel discussion no matter what happened or who won or lost.

All that changed when he opened the front door of his home on the Boulevard Montparnasse on Saturday lunchtime. Waiting for him, dressed in their ceremonial yellow vests, some wearing crash helmets, was a mob of angry protesters, few of whom would have read the Figaro interview but all of whom, it seemed, were aware that the great man, formerly their champion, had turned against them and become a traitor to the cause.
The confrontation, caught on video, was nasty, brutish and short. They shook their fists at him and gathered menacingly as he was hastily escorted to safety. As he slowly disappeared from view, a raucous chorus of abuse followed him down the street.

“Barre toi, sale sioniste de merde! … Grosse merde sioniste! … Allez à Tel-Aviv! … Nous sommes le peuple! … La France elle est à nous!”

“F*** off, you dirty Zionist shit! … You big shit Zionist! … Go back to Tel-Aviv! … We are the people … France belongs to us!”

Can anyone imagine a similar outrage in Britain, with Simon Schama, say, or Howard Jacobson, the victim? I doubt it. Not even the Labour Party would indulge such atrocious language. At the very least, they would look into it.

What happened in Paris on Saturday was the ugliest example of “licensed” anti-semitic thuggery seen openly in France in recent days. President Macron was incensed, and genuinely so. He tweeted that Finkielkraut, as the son of an immigrant who had risen to be a member of the Académie Française, was a symbol of what could be achieved in the modern Republic and that the anti-semites who had attacked him would not be tolerated. Christoph Castanet, the interior minister, already up to his eyes with the gilets jaunes, revealed that the mob’s leader was a known islamist who would be made to answer for his behaviour.

Throughout the coverage of what took place, two themes quickly emerged. The first was the disgust felt by many – probably most – French people of all political persuasions and none, along with acute embarrassment that such an abomination could occur in 2019. But in parallel with the disgust were the excuses. Leaders, so-called, of the gilets jaunes rushed to underline the fact that the demonstration against Finkielkraut had nothing to do with the movement as such – this in spite of the fact that the mob was dressed in yellow vests and defined itself as part of the weekly protest. The leaders’ chief concern was that they might have to carry the can for something they neither knew about or approved.

Later, inevitably, the suggestion emerged out of nowhere that the philosopher had provoked the protest, or even organised it in some bizarre way. Finkielkraut had only himself to blame for what had happened. If he had kept his mouth shut, the unpleasantness could have been averted.

No doubt there were those in Nazi Germany who argued similarly. If the Jews had only stuck to tailoring and steered clear of banking and commerce, there would have been no need to send them to the gas chambers.

Finkielkraut himself, though obviously shaken, told journalists that he would not be pressing charges, leaving it to Castanet and the public prosecutor’s office to decide on what should happen next. So all I can say is, watch this space.

Anti-semitism in France has been on the increase in recent months. The number of incidents recorded across France went up last year by 74 per cent. It is probably fair to say that much of the hatred displayed is traceable to extreme Muslims and Islamists, but not all. Many of those who shouted abuse at Finkielkraut on Saturday looked to be “blanc, blanc, blanc,” though as most wore masks, hoods or helmets, it is difficult to be certain. The issue for the political Establishment is that France, with its five-hundred-thousand-strong Jewish community, cannot afford to be seen as anti-semitic, or tolerant of those who are. A worryingly large number of younger French Jews have moved to Israel over the last 20 years, fearing the antagonism of a Muslim population that now exceeds five million.

As far as the rank-and-file gilets jaunes are concerned, the writing may already be on the wall. They have achieved their basic aim, that of making Macron and his government aware of their distress over falling living standards and the sense that they have been forgotten by the money-men and their political allies who they believe now run France. They have made their mark and changed the direction of an autocratic regime.

The President, meanwhile, has done what he is best at, by touring the country and telling the people at great length that he is listening to them. His poll numbers are rising and those of his rivals on the far-right and far-left are falling. As a bonus, 58 per cent of the French are now said to favour an end to the yellow-vest protests and a return to normality. If Finkielkraut speeds that process, he can surely expect further elevation as a commandeur of the Legion d’honneur. It will be under the red carpet rolled out for the occasion that all guilt and remorse will be concealed.