The Atlantic Gift Article – What an apocalyptic French novel about a migrant invasion reveals about the worldview of nationalist conservatives – “Not long ago, a book party like this would have been unthinkable: a Washington celebration of one of the most notorious French novels ever written.
But on a frigid December night, some 50 people crammed into Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill restaurant favored by the MAGA elite, to celebrate the rerelease of The Camp of the Saints, which had gone out of print in English decades ago.
The dystopian novel by the French author Jean Raspail depicts the destruction of European civilization by barbaric migrant hordes that arrive, uninvited, by boat. It has been mostly reviled since its publication, in 1973. But prominent figures of the French right have hailed it as prophetic, including Marine Le Pen, who first read it at 18 and keeps a signed first edition in her office.
The novel has also influenced two architects of Donald Trump’s immigration policies: Stephen Miller, the current deputy chief of staff, recommended it in emails to Breitbart News reporters, and Steve Bannon, the president’s former consigliere, makes frequent reference to it…I do not believe in suppressing books, this one included. The Camp of the Saints is not a good novel, but it is an important one. Dystopian fiction helps structure political myth; political myth helps structure policy. In the same way that The Handmaid’s Tale looms over abortion politics, or The Terminator lurks over artificial intelligence, The Camp of the Saints hangs over immigration politics—for a small but important stratum of right-wing thinkers and politicians. It illuminates much about the worldview of nationalist conservatives who are ascendant in America, France, and many other democracies.
The problem is what that light shows: the profound fear that European-American civilization, which in this view is inseparable from whiteness, faces an existential threat from migration—and that extraordinary measures can be justified in response…”
