Alain Soral

Alain Soral (born October 2, 1958) is a French sociologist, essayist, and film maker, author of several polemical essays. He is the brother of the actress Agnès Soral. He lives in the Basque Country and since June 2004, is also Federal Instructor in boxing. Alain Soral considers himself in the political "avant garde" scene (threshold) of French society, where his remarks and comments always get the first condemnations, but with time become widely acknowledged by the mainstream French public.

Biography

Raised in the suburbs of Annemasse (department of Haute-Savoie), he went to a suburban elementary school. According to him, he was beaten by his father during his childhood and suffered from his mother "cold passivity". When he was about 12, his family moved to Meudon, so that he could go to a reputed private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris.. At the age of 18, he spent two years doing menial jobs before being accepted to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he stayed for two years. He was then fostered by a family of academics who allowed him to be a training pupil to the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he followed the courses of Cornelius Castoriadis.

Following his studies, he published a book of sociology about trendiness : Les mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, in collaboration with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche and a fictionalized autobiography : Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien the bad sales of which kept him off writing for a couple of years.

He then focused on cinematic techniques, and after 2 promotional films, wrote and directed his first short film : Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces and, after a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe, wrote and directed his second short film : Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine.

Having meantime made his entry in the French Communist Party he became interested in the works of Karl Marx and others Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukacs, Henri Wallon, Lucien Goldmann and Michel Clouscard.

This and his former past of "dragueur" (a man who hit on women ceaselessly) lead him to the writing of his most successful sociologic essay to date : Sociologie du Dragueur.

Following this relative success, he played his own role (through a character named Philippe) in Catherine Breillat's 1996 film Parfait Amour !.

After another polemical essay : Vers la féminisation ? - Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, he spent the next couple of years writing and directing his first full-length movie : Confession d'un dragueur which turned out to be a huge flop both commercially and critically. Disgusted by what he called "a lynching", he gave up cinema altogether and refocus on writing, first with a book designed partially to set his scores : Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre ? - Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante

Followed in 2003 by Socrate à Saint-Tropez, and Misères du désir in 2004.

His most recent book, CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce subtitled Roman (novel), was published in France on April 6, 2006.

Views

Besides the sociological marxist analysis of the modern-day society, his books tend to focus on 6 main themes :

• criticism of communitarianism -- communautarisme as it is called in France
• criticism of feminism, especially neo-feminists movements
• criticism of the media and the society of the spectacle in general
• criticism of capitalism and American imperialism
• criticism of the mainstream culture
• Arab-Israeli conflict
• Dismantlement of Yugoslavia and France

Notably, he has written: "En France, tous les communautarismes montants : gay, islamique... se créent et se renforcent par imitation, hostilité et opposition au communautarisme judéo-sioniste, dont le statut privilégié constitue la jurisprudence communautaire sur laquelle s'appuient leurs revendications face à la république" ("In France, all of the growing sectors of communitarianism : gay, Islamic... create and reinforce themselves by imitation, hostility and opposition to Judeo-Zionist community-ism, whose privileged status constitutes the communitarian jurisprudence on which their protests against the Republic rely").

His analysis of society dissects the mechanisms of what he terms "la société du désir" , praised by the media, feminist publications and the cult of celebrity. He has especially criticised monthly women's publications, which he believes alter the conscience and relegate women to the status of "femme-objet".

As part of the debate on 'laïcité' in French schools, Soral compares the Muslim veil to thong underwear : the thong, a form of clothing that has arisen from this "société du désir", is a manifestation of a society which, despite its claims of female emancipation, is a society that relegates individuals to the same level as objects.

Defining himself as a Marxist; he's been a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90's but left it, opposed to the renunciation of the revolutionary content. He supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election.

However, in 2005 he turned himself toward the far-right, joining the National Front's campaign committee, charged of the social issues and matters concerning the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. His personal itinerary has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain. He supported the Bloc identitaire's distribution of popular soups including pork in January 2006.

Since November 18, 2007, he's member of the central committee of the National Front.

Controversy

Alain Soral and the "gay communitarianism"

If Alain Soral denounce the noxiousness of all communitarianism , he's been especially critical of the rise of community-ism in the gay community, a term, besides, he sharply criticized, arguing that many homosexuals have nothing to do with the Gay Pride ideology. An ideology which involves, to him, promotion of the "Gorgeous Guy" model, youth, parties, drag queens in order to obscure the reality of homosexuality, of aged or working-class homosexuals.

The association Act Up rounded on his publisher , the éditions Blanche, whom they claimed, through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès spread negative prejudices towards homosexuals and even, hate. They asked the director of publication to stop publishing these two authors and they vandalized the bureaux of the publisher. The head of the editions Blanche claimed the members of Act Up physically assaulted his executive assistant and threatened to press charges. Act Up denied such accusations . And be it as it may, no legal action have been intended.

Alain Soral and feminism

In his book Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Alain Soral argue that women have always worked (in trade work or agriculture, for example). To him, they would have invented feminism by lassitude of their role as mothers. Out of provocation, Alain Soral distinguish two sorts of feminism, those of the "flippées" (freaked-out) à la Simone de Beauvoir and those of the "pétasses" (sluts) à la Elisabeth Badinter. In addition, he writes that the problem is not inequality between men and women but between rich and poor and that the feminists who generally come from the upper-classes of society, attempt to distract attention from this struggle.

Anti-Semitism accusation

In a reportage of the show Complément d'enquête devoted to the controversial French humorist Dieudonné, and broadcasted on the French television channel France 2 on September 20, 2004; Alain Soral said: «Quand avec un Français, Juif Sioniste, tu commences à dire qu'il y a peut-être des problèmes qui viennent de chez vous. Vous avez peut-être fait quelques erreurs. Ce n'est pas systématiquement la faute de l'autre, totalement, si personne ne peut vous blairer partout où vous mettez les pieds. Parce qu'en gros c'est à peu près ça leur histoire, tu vois. Ca fait quand même 2500 ans, où chaque fois où ils mettent les pieds quelque part, au bout de cinquante ans ils se font dérouiller. Il faut se dire, c'est bizarre ! C'est que tout le monde a toujours tort sauf eux. Le mec, il se met à aboyer, à hurler, à devenir dingue tu vois. Tu ne peux pas dialoguer. C'est à dire, je pense, c'est qu'il y a une psychopathologie, tu vois, du judaïsme sionisme qui confine à la maladie mentale…»

("When you're talking with a Frenchman (a Zionist Jew) and you start to say, well maybe there are problems coming from your side. That maybe you might have made a few mistakes, it's not systematically the other one's fault if no one can stand you wherever you go. - Because that's basically their general history, you see? - For 2500 years, every time they got themselves somewhere; every fifty years or so, they get "rusted out". - From there you can only ask yourself well, that's not right! - It's like everyone is wrong except them. - And of course the guy will start shouting, yelling, going nuts, you know? You won't be able to carry on with the conversation. Which, to sum it all up, tells you that there's a real psychopathology issue there with Zionism and Judaism that verges on a mental illness...")

These comments sparked much controversy and led to the coventry of Soral from mainstream media. This is, for that matter, the subject of his last book - CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce. Soral defended himself some days later on the website oumma.com, claiming that his words had been taken out of context.

Following this programme, on September 29 2004 Soral and several other people were the victims of an attack, by about twenty people with baseball bats, while signing his book Misères du désir in a bookshop called Au pays de cocagne in Paris's IIIe arrondissement. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the police inquest has found no leads so far. Soral himself believes the action to be the work of an extremist Jewish group such as the Betar or the Jewish Defense League.

In a 2005 interview given to the magazine VSD, Soral announced his intellectual support for the equally controversial Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, with whom he worked on the Euro-Palestine list for the European elections of 2004, before his withdrawal led M'bala M'bala to do likewise. The latter is visible in the background, listening to Soral, during the France 2 incident mentionned above.

Break-up of Yugoslavia and France

Alain Soral believes Yugoslavia was dismantled by the United States who saw the opportunity to gain political ground and influence in Southern Europe by arming Albanian separatist movements in the Serbian province of Kosovo. A US strategy seen in Afghanistan in the late 80's when arming the Talibans forces against the Soviet Union.

- Alain Soral believes community-ism in France could have similar effect, if the French republic fails to apply its prestigious 1905 law of Separation of church and state in its constitution. According to a recent TV interview (Direct 8 / 88 minutes) Alain Soral stated that today, no one was surprised to see French presidents, prime ministers and other high French political figures meet with only Jewish representing bodies (le CRIF - Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) every year in Paris, which goes against France's laws and sends mixed signal to the Republic.

Alain Soral finished by stating that such a mistake could only push other minorities to form political religious movement in order to be heard. A step likely to divide France amongst its divers religious communities, which would then weakens the independence of the country. Weaken a nation, the way Yugoslavia (under its various religious entities) was divided into mini-states (defined by religion in part) by foreign governments who funded third parties to gain greater influence on the ground against Belgrade. A move seen recently in France, with the recent involvement of Americans developing strong ties by seducing and funding political figures in "les banlieues" (suburbs).

Bibliography

• Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Robert Laffont, 1984

reissued by France Loisirs and Le Livre de Poche

• Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien, roman, Calmann-Lévy, 1991

reissued under the title La vie d'un vaurien, Éditions Blanche, 2001

• Sociologie du dragueur, Éditions Blanche, 1996
• Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Éditions Blanche, 1999
• Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre ? Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Éditions Blanche, 2002

reissued under the title Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Pocket, 2003

• Socrate à Saint-Tropez : Texticules, Éditions Blanche, 2003
• Misères du désir, Éditions Blanche, 2004
• CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce, Éditions Blanche, 2006

Filmography

Actor

• 1996 : Parfait Amour ! de Catherine Breillat : Philippe.

Director

• 1990 : Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces (5 minutes)
• 1993 : Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine (10 minutes)
• 2001 : Confession d'un dragueur, avec Saïd Taghmaoui et Thomas Dutronc.

References

External links

• www.alainsoral.com - Site officiel - Official site (in French)
• Alain Soral at the Internet Movie Database