A prominent left-wing academic has sparked controversy for declaring that mass migration from Africa will serve as a “great irrigation” of French society.
While the establishment media and political classes have long sought to demonise and delegitimise those who warn about the demographic displacement of European peoples in Western nations through government-backed mass migration, the French left remains at the vanguard of openly embracing the idea and publicly celebrating the phenomenon.
Appearing on the Libre à Vous programme on Figaro TV, French academic and former politician Erik Orsenna said that France should embrace mass migration from Africa, given the “vitality, humour, music, art” that has come from the continent.
Host Guyonne de Montjou questioned the Académie Française member: “Should old Europe be irrigated by this? Would you like old Europe to be renewed from the inside?”
“In my opinion, this is what will really happen. It’s not the Great Replacement, it’s the Great Irrigation!” Orsenna responded.
The turn of phrase from the French academic, who previously served as a confidant and political ally of former President François Mitterand, was a play on the concept developed by French philosopher Renaud Camus, which argues that Western elites view their countrymen as mere economic units who can simply be replaced with little consequence by cheaper foreign labour.
In response to the comments from the writer, French journalist Arthur de Watrigant remarked: “When Erik Orsenna speaks of ‘great irrigation,’ it is from the summit of a world that has never paid the price for what it celebrates and that loves France only on the condition that she changes her face. It is fascinating, these people who are so close to power and so far from the country.”
Former French presidential candidate and leader of the Reconquête! (Reconquest) party, Éric Zemmour added: “In 2022, the entire politico-media class, from LFI to the (National Rally), accused me of ‘conspiracy-mongering’ when I denounced the Great Replacement.
“Today, the left doesn’t lack inventiveness in theorising it: great irrigation, new people, new France… Vote for the only lucid ones ready to fight against this very real phenomenon,” he said.
Fellow former presidential candidate and leader of the La France Insoumise (France in rebellion/LFI) party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has also been at the forefront of the leftist attempt to own the Great Replacement as a beneficial movement, often casting “old” France as something in need of revitalisation by the influx of millions of foreigners from his native Morocco and other Maghreb nations.
Last year, one of Mélenchon’s acolytes, LFI National Assembly member Carlos Martens Bilongo, openly boasted that Africans and other immigrant groups are outbreeding the native French population.
“If we’ve had more children than them, too bad for them. If they wanted to have children, they should have just loved each other, made love, and had children. We managed to have them. Our mothers managed to raise us properly,” the Angolan-heritage Val-d’Oise MP said.
However, there also appears to be a growing pushback against mass migration in France. According to a survey earlier this month, six in ten French people said their country was being “progressively replaced by non-European populations, primarily from the African continent.” Nearly seven in ten of those who agreed with the statement felt that it was an entirely bad thing for France.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
Read the full article here