‘I take it you’ve been part of the nativist movement.’ I hit just the right note — that of an interested, merely curious man of the world. I was benevolently neutral. I was dashing. He gave me a big unguarded grin.
‘I knew they’d been talking in the department. Yes, I belonged to a nativist organisation, years ago, when I was writing my dissertation. These nativists were Catholic, in many cases royalists, nostalgics, romantics at heart — most were drunks. Then everything changed, and we fell out of touch. If I went to a meeting now, I doubt I’d recognise anyone there.’
I maintained a tactical silence. When you maintain a tactical silence and look people right in the eye, as if drinking in their words, they talk. People like to be listened to, as every researcher knows — every researcher, every writer, every spy.
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘the so-called nativist bloc was actually anything but. It was divided into various factions, none of which got along with the others. You had Catholics, followers of Bruno Mégret, royalists, neo-pagans, hard-core secularists from the far left … But all that changed when the “Indigenous Europeans” came along. They started out as a direct response to the Indigènes de la République. They had a clear, unifying message: We are the indigenous peoples of Europe, the first occupants of the land. They said, We’re against Muslim occupation — and we’re also against American companies and against the new capitalists from India, China, et cetera, buying up our heritage. They were clever, they quoted Geronimo, Cochise and Sitting Bull. Above all, their website was state of the art. It was really well designed, with catchy music. It brought in new members, younger members.’
‘You think they actually want to start a civil war?’
‘Think? I know. Here, I’ll show you something they put online …’
He got up and went into the other room. Ever since we’d sat down in his apartment, there had been no more sounds of shooting — or else we were out of earshot, in the deep calm of that dead-end street.
He came back and handed me a dozen sheets of paper, stapled together and covered in small print. Sure enough, the headline read: GET READY FOR CIVIL WAR.
‘The Web is full of this kind of thing, but here’s one of the better overviews, with the most reliable statistics. There are lots of numbers, because the article looks at all twenty-two EU member states, but the conclusion is the same in every case. Basically, they argue that belief in a transcendent being conveys a genetic advantage: that couples who follow one of the three religions of the Book and maintain patriarchal values have more children than atheists or agnostics. You see less education among women, less hedonism and individualism. And to a large degree, this belief in transcendence can be passed on genetically. Conversions, or cases where people grow up to reject family values, are statistically insignificant. In the vast majority of cases, people stick with whatever metaphysical system they grow up in. That’s why atheist humanism — the basis of any “pluralist society” — is doomed. Monotheism is on the rise, especially in the Muslim population — and that’s even before you factor in immigration. European nativists start by admitting that, sooner or later, we’ll see a civil war between the Muslims and everybody else. They conclude that, if they want to have a fighting chance, that war had better come as soon as possible — certainly before 2050, preferably sooner if possible …’
‘I see what you mean …’
‘Yes, from a political and military standpoint they’re obviously right. The question is whether they’ve decided to go from talk to action — and if so, in which countries. Every country in Europe is more or less equally hostile to Muslims, but France is a special case because of its military. The French armed forces are still among the strongest in the world, and their strength has been maintained, in the face of budget cuts, by one government after another. That means no uprising can take hold if the government sends in the troops. Which is why there has to be a special strategy for France.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Soldiers have short careers. Right now, we have three hundred and thirty thousand troops in the French armed forces, land, sea and air, if you include the gendarmerie. Annual recruitment is roughly twenty thousand. So within fifteen years or so, we’ll see a complete turnover in military personnel. If young extremists — and they’re almost all young — enlist en masse, it won’t be long before they seize ideological control. That’s always been the strategy of the political wing. But two years ago they faced a challenge from the military wing, who want immediate armed struggle. Now, I think the political wing will stay in power — the military wing won’t attract anyone but juvenile delinquents and gun nuts. But in other countries, who knows? Especially in Scandinavia. Their multiculturalism is even more oppressive than ours here in France, plus you have lots of seasoned extremists, and a negligible military. Yes, if there’s going to be a general uprising any time soon in Europe, look to Norway or Denmark, though Belgium and Holland are also zones of potential instability.’
At two in the morning all was calm, and I had no trouble getting a cab. I complimented Lempereur on his brandy — we had practically finished the bottle. Like everyone else, of course, I’d spent years, decades, hearing people talk about these things. The expression ‘Après moi le déluge’ has been attributed alternately to Louis XV or to his mistress Madame de Pompadour. It pretty much summarised my own state of mind, but now, for the first time, I had a troubling thought: What if the deluge came before I died? Obviously, it’s not as if I expected my last years to be happy. There was no reason that I should be spared from grief, illness or suffering. But until now I had always hoped to depart this world without undue violence.
Was he being alarmist? I didn’t think he was, unfortunately. The kid struck me as a deep thinker. The next day I looked on YouTube, but there was nothing about Place de Clichy. All I could find was one video, and it was scary enough, though there was nothing actually violent about it: fifteen guys in black, hooded, armed with machine guns, marching slowly in V-formation through what looked like the estates in Argenteuil. This was no mobile-phone video: the resolution was very high, and someone had added a slow-motion effect. Static, imposing, shot from below, the clip could only have been meant as proof that boots were on the ground, that the territory was under control. If there was an ethnic conflict, I’d automatically be lumped together with the whites, and for the first time, as I went out to buy groceries, I was grateful to the Chinese for having always kept the neighbourhood free of blacks or Arabs — of pretty much anyone who wasn’t Chinese, apart from a few Vietnamese.
Still, it would be prudent to come up with an evacuation plan, in case things took a sudden turn for the worse. My father lived in a chalet in the Massif des Écrins. He had just moved in with someone (at least, I’d just found out about her). My mother was living out her depression in Nevers, alone except for her bulldog. These two baby boomers had always been completely self-centred, and I had no reason to think they’d willingly take me in. Occasionally I found myself wondering whether I’d ever see my parents again before they died, but the answer was always negative, and I didn’t think even a civil war could bring us together. They’d find some pretext for refusing to let me stay with them. They never had any shortage of pretexts. I’d had a handful of friends over the years, kind of, but we weren’t really in touch. There was Alice. I supposed I could call Alice a friend. All in all, now that Myriam and I had broken up, I was very much alone.