For some time now, Michel ONFRAY’s speeches have left me feeling a mixture of surprise and irritation. In his eagerness to be everywhere, our philosopher no longer seems to know where he is going, though that does not stop him from wanting to get there come what may.

Whilst it is no longer entirely clear whether Mr ONFRAY is still an atheist or whether he still defends the values of the Enlightenment, a few strong ideas do emerge from a discourse that I find increasingly confused. What is beyond doubt is that Mr ONFRAY is a sovereignist and an opponent of the Maastricht Treaty. His obsession with this treaty leads him to make intellectual leaps that are at times astonishing. This was the case with the publication of the latest issue of the quarterly  ’POPULAR FRONT’[1] which he controls and uses as a weapon against the European Union; the mere label of ‘Maastricht-style’, which he systematically attaches to it, serves as a final condemnation.

This issue brings together some fifteen contributions under the general title Europe Demystified: The Life and Death of an Empire. Unsurprisingly, all these articles have been written by sovereigntists who regard the European Union as the root cause of all Europe’s woes – and, above all, France’s.

It is, of course, Mr ONFRAY who is leading the charge in two lengthy articles. The editorial, entitled The Totem is taboo, new occupation, new resistance, new collaboration[2], It takes a rather surprising angle of analysis and describes a rather bleak journey.

The aim, of course, is to expose the sheer perversity of the European project and to hope for its imminent demise. We must therefore begin by recalling that all civilisations begin with a murder that has fertile consequences. We shall therefore invoke Cain and Abel and Christ, leading on to Louis XVI and his son.

This historical overview, which I have summarised, leads us to the Europe of Maastricht and allows us to accuse it of having done better (or worse) than in the past. Its founders would, in fact, be the self-satisfied heirs of all the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

Whilst the EU was thus built on a mountain of corpses, it also, according to Mr ONFRAY, benefited from the cultural void created by the deaths of numerous intellectuals during the First World War, who were poorly replaced by othersbroken brains by the war, which will give rise to ideas that Mr ONFRAY probably does not share. Surrealism, Dadaism and dodecaphonism are all labelled with the same term: nihilist. From there, our philosopher can gradually drift towards fascism and Nazism, which, on closer reading of the text, is the ultimate aim of the argument. By taking a long detour via REBATET, the aim is to demonstrate that Europe has only one true father, Walter HALLSTEIN, and that the first President of the European Commission was an avowed Nazi.

The accusation, the seriousness of which is clear, is repeated almost word for word from an article in *Le Figaro*[3]dated 4 March 2019, signed by Eric RIOUFOL, which repeats statements made in a book by Philippe de VILLIERS[4]. It is based on at least one factual falsehood, since ONFRAY accuses Wikipedia of concealing this truth, even though the page on Hallstein very clearly refers to his activities during the war.

This argument is reinforced by the accusations levelled against Jean MONNET and Robert SCHUMAN. The former is accused of being a Vichy collaborator, because he is said to have attended the Pétainist management school in Uriage, but ONFRAY does not explain how MONNET could have managed the feat of being in France and London, and then in Washington, all at the same time during that period. The source here is, once again, Philippe de Villiers, and may not have been thoroughly verified. In any case, if he did spend any time at Uriage, it was brief, and it should also be noted that the school was closed down by the Vichy government because it had quickly become involved in opposition to the regime and subsequently in the Resistance.  As for SCHUMAN, whilst it is true that he was declared unfit for public office at the Liberation (which is the argument used to portray him as a quasi-collaborator), the truth requires us to point out that this was because Schuman had been appointed minister by Pétain on 16 June 1940 without having been consulted, and that he had resigned without ever having taken up his post!

What is also curious is the selectivity Michel ONFRAY displays in his choice of targets. If we are to believe him, there would therefore be only three ‘fathers of Europe’, all three of whom are suspected of scandalous sympathies. Others, who all have in common the fact that they resisted fascism or Nazism, are curiously absent. Not a word, then, is said of GASPERI, MANSHOLT, SPAAK or SPINELLI. They no doubt get in the way of his argument.

But none of this really matters because we haven’t got to the end of the argument yet. The fact that the EU was created by former collaborators comes as no surprise, since these former collaborators have in fact placed themselves at the service of new occupiers. Once a collaborator, always a collaborator – even if it means changing masters.

And, therefore, to denounce AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories) which everyone has forgotten. Clearly, in Mr ONFRAY’s view, this short-lived American project to place the liberated countries under its control is still ongoing today, as he has no hesitation in writing that «De Gaulle opposed this plan; Mitterrand did his utmost to make it happen.». The idea, which originated in a few American circles and was supported by ROOSEVELT, hinged on whether or not there were legitimate governments in the liberated countries and on their ability to administer their devastated territories. However, whilst the case of France did indeed pose a problem, the AMGOT was never actually required to be established in other countries, such as Belgium, where the government returned from London a few days after the liberation of Brussels.  At the very least, one would like to understand how a project that was never implemented could have exerted its influence nearly forty years later, but the power of fantasy lies in the fact that it requires no serious evidence. And, whilst we know that the Americans feared potential communist coups, our author has no criticism to level at de Gaulle, who brought them into his government in 1944, even though they were great admirers of the great Stalin, whose love of freedom is a well-known characteristic.

The ‘Maastrichtians’, as Mr ONFRAY calls them, are also responsible for another misdeed. Not content with subjecting the EU to American dictates, they are misappropriating Victor Hugo’s famous speech, delivered in 1849, for the sake of European integration[5] and which called for the creation of a United States of Europe. If you thought this text was the starting point for a noble humanist project that would come to fruition through the reconciliation that followed the end of the Second World War, you are mistaken. Mr ONFRAY is going to open your eyes.

Hugo, very much in keeping with the spirit of the times, was ill-advised enough to say that his project aimed to ‘to bring civilisation to barbarism’. One might argue that, like those of most intellectuals of the time, these remarks are paternalistic, and that seeking to bring happiness to others against their will is questionable. But it is a huge intellectual leap to conclude from this – as our philosopher has no hesitation in putting it – that «This Europe, extolled by the Maastricht supporters, clearly represents a colonialist, racialist and Eurocentric project.».

ONFRAY thus brings his argument full circle. The EU was founded by Nazis and collaborators and drew inspiration from Victor HUGO – a racist – to build a detestable project. The only alternative is sovereignty: «Sovereignty refers to resistance to this new AMGOT. Anyone who refuses to resist is a collaborator.’[6].

One might think that anything so excessive is insignificant and simply leave ONFRAY to his delusions. One might also hope that he would leave it at that. But no, Mr ONFRAY has other targets which he attacks in a second article entitled ‘The New European Man’[7].

The first victim of our chief sovereignist’s wrath is a surprising choice. It is Abbé Grégoire, a leading figure of the French Revolution, known for having – in principle – campaigned to improve the status of Jews in France. I say ‘in principle’ because, like many others, I naively believed that Abbé Grégoire was a humanist. But Mr ONFRAY has opened my eyes. Grégoire is, in fact, an anti-Semite, since in writing a «An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Regeneration of the Jews’, it clearly shows that they are … degenerates!

In many of his writings, ONFRAY lambasts ‘wokism’. It is curious, in this instance, to see him fall into the trap of a typically ‘woke’ line of reasoning. When he criticises the abbot’s text and writes «The less Jewish the Jews are, the more they rid themselves of their Judaism and Jewishness, the more acceptable, defensible, acceptable and legitimate they will be. In short, the less Jewish the Jews are, the more they will be republican citizens […].», it forms part of the ‘woke’ logic of categorisation. Abbé Grégoire’s ‘crime’ would therefore be to have sought to lift the Jews out of their condition and make them citizens like any others – a grave crime indeed.

In reality, Mr ONFRAY couldn’t care less about Abbé Grégoire; this historical reference is merely a pretext. Robert BADINTER wrote the foreword to the abbot’s essay, and BADINTER is a lackey of MITERRAND, our philosopher’s sworn enemy; this certainly justifies many intellectual contortions.

This second text, which I shall not analyse in detail, is revealing of Mr ONFRAY’s technique. A thick layer of erudition, but few detailed arguments. The argument progresses in successive leaps that confuse the reader, allowing the author to jump from Cain and Abel to AMGOT via the miserable fate of Louis XVII; from Abbé Grégoire to Elon Musk via Guy Deleuze and Françoise Dolto. All these detours, moreover, always lead back to the same point: Maastricht and the EU, the cause of all our ills. Added to this zigzag approach is the selective spotlighting of the figures under scrutiny. ONFRAY leaves no room for nuance. Whilst he accuses Abbé Grégoire of anti-Semitism, he is careful not to mention that the latter was also a pioneer of the anti-slavery movement, just as he is careful not to place Hugo’s remarks in the context of the time. What he says about Monnet or Schuman is one-sided, biased and poorly researched. He also takes care to conceal anything that would contradict his arguments.

Nothing in all this makes it possible to clearly identify Mr ONFRAY’s political agenda. His sovereignist stance is purely rhetorical, like that of most of the contributors to this issue. Everyone is entitled to support Frexit, but the very least its advocates could do would be, for example, to explain the practical consequences of leaving the euro or the CAP. The intellectual and moral well-being of the French people, having finally wrested their name and flag from the clutches of the accursed Maastrichtians, is one thing; informing them of the state their wallets will be in is also a matter of interest.

With three months to go before the European elections, Mr ONFRAY has resolutely aligned himself with the EU’s opponents – that is his right. But is it sensible to weaken the EU when it already has more than enough enemies from outside? Just a few hours’ flight away, there are other countries and other political models. Whilst I may well consider that the Europe of the 27 is far from being paradise on earth, what Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China have to offer me is far less appealing. To each their own. Helping to develop an interesting, albeit imperfect, European model is a civic duty; fuelling conspiracy theories is a dangerous game when it comes to freedom.

Claude WACHTELEAR, Past Chairman

[1] Europe demystified, the life and death of an empireFront populaire n°16, March, April, May 2024.

[2]  Op. cit. pp. 2-9.

[3] RIOUFOL, Ivan, European Union: a stinking past <https://www.lefigaro.fr/blogs/rioufol/2019/03/la-peste-brune-racine-aux-raci.html>

[4] de Villiers, P., I pulled at the thread of the lie and it all came out, Fayard, 2019. The book provoked controversy, and a group of historians published a reaction in Le Monde under the title :"Philippe de Villiers has no right to falsify the history of the EU in the name of ideology". In an article published in Le Monde, a group of European academics specialising in contemporary history denounced the latest book by the former MEP, a convinced Europhobe, on the origins of European integration as "a tissue of pretence typical of conspiracy theories"., 17/12/2020

[5] Speech on the United States of Europe at the International Peace Congress in Paris in 1849,https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_sur_les_%C3%89tats-Unis_d%E2%80%99Europe_au_congr%C3%A8s_international_de_la_paix_en_1849_%C3%A0_Paris

[6] Op. cit, p.9.

[7] Op. cit. pp 54-63.