Eric Zemmour is a popular (and politically incorrect) French commentator who appears regularly on television discussion panels. In the following clip Mr. Zemmour discusses the fourth anniversary of the Islamic terror attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | The Insolences of Eric Zemmour | |
| 00:04 | Good day Eric Zemmour. —Good day. —And happy New Year. — Thank you, back at you. | |
| 00:08 | This week we are celebrating, well “celebrate” a figure of speech, we’re rather commemorating | |
| 00:12 | the four-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Is France — in your opinion — | |
| 00:16 | still “Charlie”? — Well, less and less. | |
| 00:20 | I think increasingly that Charlie, “je suis Charlie”, | |
| 00:24 | the famous slogan that was picked up by everybody, what did it mean, for starters? | |
| 00:28 | It meant freedom of expression, freedom of opinion; even more | |
| 00:33 | than that: this type of very Gallic irreverence, insolence, | |
| 00:37 | anti-clericalism as well, OK, all this spirit, very straightforward, | |
| 00:41 | this mixture of gavroche [from Victor Hugo — mischievous boy, street urchin] | |
| 00:46 | and Voltaire. Meaning — more or less — of the popular speech | |
| 00:49 | and aristocratic bons mots. That used to be France. This spirit was concentrated | |
| 00:53 | — with its imperfections — in Charlie. And I am under the impression, | |
| 00:57 | that, on the contrary, it only served as a screen | |
| 01:01 | to get rid of this very French spirit and | |
| 01:05 | of this freedom of opinion. Which means that never, I think, for a long time, | |
| 01:09 | has freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of irreverence | |
| 01:14 | been as constricted as today. —For example | |
| 01:18 | related to Islam, first of all? —Well, it started with Islam. We said at first | |
| 01:22 | “Je suis Charlie”, OK, but no amalgam! Fine, at the beginning we said, | |
| 01:26 | naïvely, “Of course, it’s normal, we can criticize Islam, but we won’t attack | |
| 01:30 | all the Muslims at the same time”. It was logical. In fact we realized very quickly that it was | |
| 01:34 | a muddle. And that this “no amalgam” allowed us to revive | |
| 01:38 | the crime of blasphemy. And as soon as someone touched Islam he was told | |
| 01:42 | “oh, no amalgam, we have no right,” and so on. And then we | |
| 01:46 | left Islam alone and there were other sacred cows that were introduced: | |
| 01:50 | There were women, homosexuals, migrants. We had no more right to criticize anybody; we had | |
| 01:54 | no right to make fun of people any longer, immediately we were “against the values of the Republic”; | |
| 01:59 | we were “carriers of hatred”, we were… you know… | |
| 02:03 | So therefore we had to hold our tongues. And the media on one side were accusing, were | |
| 02:07 | putting us in the pillory and — very often — a judge who sentenced us. — You went up to say | |
| 02:11 | that #MeToo is contrary to Charlie spirit. The movement #MeToo | |
| 02:15 | for the protection of women. — Listen, I invite you, I invite you to | |
| 02:19 | have a look at Charlies from ’70 and you’ll understand | |
| 02:23 | that today, not one, I want you to hear me, | |
| 02:27 | NOT ONE would be allowed and they would be attacked for misogyny, | |
| 02:31 | “femicide” as they say nowadays… | |
| 02:35 | Sexism… — Sexism, we would hear all of that. They would ALL be forbidden! | |
| 02:40 | Those Gallic bawdy jokes that make fun | |
| 02:44 | of traitors in a cassock also make fun of women, | |
| 02:48 | and of female romanticism, and so on. It’s the spirit of this type of sense of humour. | |
| 02:52 | And today, when you have a TV chronicler who says that he prefers young women | |
| 02:56 | to those less young… —Yann Moix, but let’s not name names — …which is | |
| 03:00 | true of 90% heterosexual men, he is attacked | |
| 03:04 | as if he had killed his parents. | |
| 03:08 | There you can see well that the current time is revealing its deep Puritanism. | |
| 03:12 | Thank you, Eric Zemmour! |
“This week we are celebrating…”
Interesting ‘mistake’….