Houellebecq, Moix, Tesson… “a literary extreme right,” according to François Krug

It’s a novel-like investigation with its share of secrets, betrayals, and sinister demons. Its main characters? Michel Houellebecq, Jan Moix and Sylvain Tesson. Three well-known writers with different styles and backgrounds, but who share a common point long in the shadows: each of them has maintained, and sometimes continues to maintain, links with the alt-right, without explicitly affiliating with it and without claiming it at all. On the contrary, everyone sought to hide their traces. to erase even the most serious traces that could harm their careers or cost them Goncourt.

Thus Welbeck hid for a long time behind the author/narrator distinction to escape accusations of racism and Islamophobia that some of his books might have caused. For his part, Yann Moix defended the wrongness of youth when his anti-Semitic and revisionist works resurfaced in 2019. As for Sylvain Tesson, this patented anti-modernist whose “black paths” were today adapted to cinema with Jean Dujardin, he took the position of a writer The apolitical traveler, shrugging off the partisan meanness from the top of the snowy peaks.

All the merit of meticulous journalist François Krug in “French Reactions” is to identify the positions taken by each of the three writers, by meticulously retracing their paths, by reconstructing their companions and by revealing rare texts.