Ernest Renan
A rather long passage from Renan’s work, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France, is quoted near the beginning of this text. Renan is one of those historical figures from the 19th century who is difficult to pin down with just one descriptive title for what he did. He is one of those hyphenates: historian-philosopher-scholar-critic-etc. As the passage quoted in the text reveals, he was also profoundly racist and nationalistic. It is therefore little surprising that he is used as a link to the poster boy for 20th century racist nationalism.
Adolf Hitler
Does Hitler really any explication? Considering the size of crowds in descending on Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. around the end of the second decade of the 21st century, apparently so. Hitler was the democratically elected leader of Germany who shortly therefore told big lies often enough to get enough Germans to support his becoming first a dictator, then a power-mad invader of foreign countries, and then one of history’s worst mass murderers. He also espoused a philosophy that, startlingly, has not been eradicated from the earth so far.
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre is also introduced with a passage from his writing, though the extract is mere excerpt compared to the extensive sample taken from Renan’s work. Of course, one need not delve more than a few sentences into the philosophy of de Maistre to get at his core philosophy. He was a fervent believe in the idea that the only form of government that made any sense was monarchy and that the citizens of any country that could become colonialized deserved it because they were anathema to the idea of humanity. The astute observer will notice a trend developing in the characters whose ideas populated this discourse on the invasion and occupation.
Jules Romains/Louis Henri Jean Farigoule
Another character who introduced by introduction of an extended passage from his own writing. Romains (who also wrote under the name M. Farigoule). Though nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, Romains is all but unknown in America though he was highly regarded and his works much praised by some American contemporaries. Still, it seems hard work hardly worth doing to bother finding out if this praise was warranted from a writer quoted in the Discourse who had the confidence to predict in writing (though using yet another pseudonym): ‘The black race has not yet produced, will never produce, an Einstein, a Stravinsky, a Gershwin."
