While it is debatable whether the moniker “Great Replacement” should be used, the demographic changes in France are very real and “obvious,” philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said in a political talk show on TV channel Europe 1.
“This is in fact a fragmentation and yes, this risk does exists and in any case, I think the demographic change of Europe is extremely spectacular. The historical peoples in certain municipalities and regions are becoming a minority,” Finkielkraut said. “A whole part of French people now live not in the suburbs, but beyond the suburbs, because they are no longer the cultural reference they used to be, because all the butchers are, for example, Halal.”
The term “Great Replacement” was coined by French author Renaud Camus to describe the phenomenon that the indigenous French population is being gradually replaced by Ara, Berber, Turkish and Muslim populations.
Finkielkraut, who is Jewish, is one of France’s elite public intellectuals, and one of 40 lifetime members of the 400-year-old Académie Française, which serves to safeguard the French language and culture.
“We are pasting the racist and Great Replacement theory over this phenomenon as if it were a different matter. It is not. A very serious demographer, Michèle Tribalat was speaking about the demographic substitution in the (French department of) Seine-Saint-Denis and while I think these expressions should be taken with a lot of precaution, but demonizing it is absurd and once again testifies to the fanatical denial of reality,” Finkielkraut said.
Presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has become one of the most influential voices around the topic of the Great Replacement,
“I think the anguish felt over the end of France as it was, the anguish of the Great Replacement, has become a global feeling,” said Zemmour last year. “The fear of no longer being France, the fear of the famous Great Replacement. A lot of people are starting to think that Islam is going to replace us. It has become a massive feeling, a mass of 70 to 80 percent of France.”
Finkelkraut recently met with Zemmour on the Europe 1 TV channel, and they debated about what the Great Replacment means along with other subjects.
“I think his (Zemmour’s) findings may be too radical, and, by the way, Zemmour himself has backed down a bit, as instead of the Great Replacement he has been talking about the risk io Islamization in France, and now his image, his concept and his metaphor is the ‘Balkanization’, which is an entirely different matter,” Finkielkraut said.
In the United States, the term Great Replacement — used to describe the massive demographic changes in a country where the White majority is rapidly becoming a minority — is taboo. However, in France, there is currently a rigorous debate occurring about the topic despite extreme pressure and claims of racism from the left.
