[The European Conservative] Alain Finkielkraut, Unwoke Maverick

Standing athwart the emergence of a ‘literal society’ which no longer appreciates irony, nuance, or sarcasm, the intellectual Alain Finkielkraut’s embrace of high culture makes him a reactionary in today’s France.

The ‘trigger warning’ system in France just about melted down: “Rape! Rape! Rape! There you go! I say to all men: rape women! In fact, I rape mine every night. Really, every night. She’s so sick of it.” This burst of angry sarcasm came from Alain Finkielkraut, France’s most eminent ‘un-woke’ intellectual, on November 13, 2019. He was responding to feminist activist Caroline de Haas’ unhinged accusation that he was “banalizing rape” by defending filmmaker Roman Polanski. (Polanski was then facing yet another round of accusations despite already having been convicted in the 1970s of the statutory rape of a 13-year-old model.) Finkielkraut’s ironic rejoinder to Haas was to simply ‘double down.’

Continue reading the entire piece on The European Conservative here.