Jean Raspail published The Camp of the Saints in 1973. In the novel he describes how mass third world immigration to France leads to the destruction of Europe.

The current issue of the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles features an interview with Jean Raspail.

What do you feel about the current situation?

You know, I’ve no wish to join the big group of intellectuals who spend their time debating immigration… I have the impression that these talks serve no purpose. The people already know it all, intuitively: that France, as our ancestors fashioned it centuries ago, is disappearing. And that we keep the gallery amused by talking ceaselessly of immigration without ever saying the final truth. A truth that is moreover unsayable, as my friend Jean Cau noted, because whoever says it is immediately hounded, condemned then rejected. Richard Millet came close to it, look what happened to him! [See here for more on this].

Is the seriousness of the problem being kept from the French people?

Yes. Starting with the politicians in charge first of all! Publicly “everything’s going well, Madame Marquessa”. But behind closed doors, they acknowledge that “yes, you’re right: there is a real problem”. I have several edifying letters on this subject from prominent leftist politicians, from those on the right too, to whom I sent the Camp of the Saints. “But you understand: we can’t say it …” These people have a double language, a double conscience. I don’t know how they do it! I think the distress comes from there: the people know that things are being hidden from them. Today, tens of millions of people don’t buy into the official discourse on immigration. Not one of them believes that it is an opportunity for France “une chance pour la France”. Because reality imposes itself on them, every day. All of these ideas boil in their heads and don’t come out.

You don’t believe it’s possible to assimilate the foreigners welcomed into France?

No. The model of integration isn’t working. Even if a few more illegals are escorted to the border and we succeed in integrating foreigners a bit more than today, their numbers will not stop growing and that will change nothing in the fundamental problem: the progressive invasion of France and Europe by a numberless third-world. I’m not a prophet, but you see clearly the fragility of these countries, where an unbearable poverty is established and grows ceaselessly alongside indecent wealth. Those people don’t turn to their governments to protest. They expect nothing of them.

They turn to us and arrive in Europe in boats, ever more numerous, today in Lampedusa, tomorrow elsewhere. Nothing discourages them. And thanks to the demography game, by the 2050s, there will be as many young indigenous French as there are young foreigners in France.

Many will be naturalised.

Which doesn’t mean they’ll have become French. I don’t say these are bad people, but “naturalisations on paper” aren’t naturalisations of the heart. I cannot consider them my compatriots. We need to drastically toughen the law, as a matter of urgency.

How can Europe deal with these migrations?

There are only two solutions. Either we accommodate them and France – its culture, its civilisation — will be erased without even a funeral. In my view, that’s what’s going to happen. Or we don’t accommodate them at all – that means stop sacralising the Other and rediscover your neighbour, that means those next to you. Which means that we stop giving a damn sometime about these “Christian ideas gone mad”, as Chesterton said, or these depraved human rights, and that we take the indispensable measures to distance ourselves, without appeal, to avoid the dissolution of our country into a general métissage [literally race-mixing but used as a sort of equivalent of the English diversity]. I don’t see any other solution. I travelled a lot in my youth. All peoples are fascinating but when you mix them too much, it is much more animosity that develops than sympathy. Métissage is never peaceful. It is a dangerous utopia. Look at South Africa!

At the point where we are now, the measures we would have to take would necessarily be very coercive. I don’t believe it will happen and I don’t see anyone who has the courage to do it. They would need to put their soul in the balance, but who is ready for that? That said, I don’t believe for an instant that the supporters of immigration are more charitable than me: there probably isn’t a single one of them who intends to welcome one of these unfortunates into his home… all of that’s just an emotional pretence, an irresponsible maelstrom that will engulf us.

Is there therefore no solution other than submission or coercion?

There could perhaps be one, but it will only have one chance: isolates where a population that is ethnically and culturally threatened by other communitarianisms could find refuge. Besides, it’s already happening: we can see already that the French “de souche” [indigenous] are fleeing the so-called “sensitive” districts. The demonstrations against homosexual marriage are also a form of communitarianism: they testify to the rejection by millions of French people to the “change of civilisations” promised by the Left and by Christiane Taubira. Today, everyone condemns communitarianism, but it could be a solution, at least temporarily. These opposed communitarianisms will reinforce themselves mutually by the animosity they will convey and that will end, finally, in extremely severe confrontations. Even if we don’t need to wish that adversity occurs.

You don’t believe in a sudden new beginning, as has occurred many times in the history of France?

No. It would require an epic spirit, an appreciation of an elevated destiny for a sudden new beginning to be possible in France. It would require people to still believe in their country. I don’t see many of them left. At least reforming from top to bottom the national education system and the audio-visual media, taking away the platform from the teachers and the journalists who are participating in the disinformation… We have desacralised the idea of the nation, the exercise of power, the past of the country. We have put cracks in the statue of France, we have disfigured it (expecially the Left!) to the point where nothing inspires respect any more. The power of the false ideas disseminated by the national education system and the media is boundless. But as for me, I have lived in France for 1500 years, I’m OK with what is mine, and I’ve no desire for it to change…