Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and a member of the Middle East Forum who writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
In the gauche caviar, in the end, it was the caviar that prevailed.
Jack Lang, untouchable for half a century, fell because of Jeffrey Epstein. At parties Lang used to say: “French culture is me".
And now the party is over. Lang tried to save himself by becoming the de facto ambassador of Qatar, praising the role of the emirate-sponsor of Hamas-in “spreading Islam in Europe" and “defending Palestine."
In 1987, as French Minister of Culture, he founded the Arab World Institute in Paris, which he has since directed thanks to Qatar’s support and money.
At the Bataclan they had not yet finished counting the dead when Lang was already in the media defending Qatar against accusations of financing Islamic terrorism.
To say Lang is to say Mitterrand: the era of champagne-and-caviar socialist leftism. He was its symbol and its bard.
Historian Pierre Vermeren explains the fall of “cultural leftism."
Lang wanted to bring Arabic everywhere, from the Avignon Festival to public schools. A character worthy of Houellebecq’s novel “Submission".
He was the symbol of an era in which courteous servility toward power masqueraded as progressivism, and public money flowed freely to finance festivals, exhibitions, and client networks.
Laurent Joffrin gave the best definition of the “gauche caviar":
“A left that says what must be done but does not do what it says; that loves the people but avoids sharing their fate; that votes with workers but dines with the bourgeoisie."
Then the old egalitarian fervor, once sumptuous opportunism disguised as cultural refinement, turned into complacent submission to oil powers and authoritarian regimes.
The last survivor of the dynasty is Ségolène Royal.
First adviser to Mitterrand, then partner of François Hollande, then minister, then presidential candidate, then Arctic ambassador. Later, icon of environmentalism before Greta and now champion of decolonization.
Last week, Royal paid a high-profile visit to Algeria, a country holding a French journalist hostage and having imprisoned a French writer.
She received a warmer welcome than diplomats. She met dictator Tebboune, avoided mentioning the hostage, and told Algerians what they like to hear: France must apologize again and again.
No surprise: her solution is total submission.
Royal is no stranger to praising authoritarian regimes.
She praised China’s justice system and later called Fidel Castro a “historic monument."
She shares with her friends a passion for dictatorships, especially anti-Western and Islamic ones. Champagne and Quran, Islam permitting.
How is it possible that all these libertines ended up working for the crescent?
Dominique de Villepin became a consultant for Arab sovereign funds. Laurent Fabius became “Qatar’s best ally in Paris."
When Martine Aubry, another icon of this gauche caviar, met an imam in Roubaix, he demanded the meeting be held in the Muslim neighborhood. Her daughter later voted against freeing Boualem Sansal.
One positive aspect of the Epstein scandal is the fall of this monarchy of nepotists and opportunists who helped destroy Europe.
What remains is an emptied-out progressivism: indignation toward the West, indulgence toward its enemies.
Caviar has won-and left a bitter taste for those who served it too long. All that remains is the stale aftertaste of a vanished Western era.