The Paris Olympics Aren’t Representative of the France I Know

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, particularly the appalling mockery of The Last Supper, has been roundly condemned, and deservedly so. The ridiculous “Bacchic Tableau” and the even more ridiculous post facto claim that this was innocent fun were disgusting. In offering such a lame apology, the International Olympic Committee and the Paris Organizing Committee have fully earned our scorn. This, however, was all of a piece with a literal parade of insult and bad taste, exemplified by the repeated “beheadings” of Marie Antoinette, among other outrageous nonsense.

These Olympics have earned the contempt of every thoughtful person, and not just for the opening ceremonies. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government spent over a billion euros to make the Seine swimmable, and the left-wing mayor of Paris made a show of herself bobbing along in the famously polluted river, carefully keeping her head above water. But a hard rain on the opening night flushed more sewage into the river, forcing the postponement of various aquatic events. Controversy has erupted over the apparent inclusion of two men in the women’s boxing events. Even the meals offered to the Olympic athletes have become an occasion for climate change virtue-signaling rather than appropriate athletic nourishment. And each day seemingly brings more reminders that these are truly the “woke” Olympics.

Unfortunately, however, some conservative critics have taken this as an excuse for trotting out the same tired criticisms of “the French” that have become common coinage among Anglo-Americans since at least the Second World War. Don’t get me wrong. I have no patience for Macron’s extravagant pretensions to European, even world leadership. France, once again, and sadly, teeters on the edge of riotous insurrection, requiring the deployment of some 55,000 police and soldiers to protect these games from unassimilated Islamists and hardcore leftists — Antifa, for example, has now taken root in France.

But here’s the thing. When conservative commentators conflate the values of these Olympics with the values of France, they are as much off the mark as those who would lump Alabama or North Dakota together with San Francisco or New York City. These are, fundamentally, the Paris Olympics, and the values on display are very much those of an urban progressive “elite” wholly similar to our own. 

There are many in France — and not exclusively within the ranks of Marine Le Pen’s “National Rally” — who have forthrightly condemned the Last Supper display, along with much of the other egregious leftist virtue signaling. Moreover, they see in this and other similar displays stark evidence of how American academic preoccupations have, in effect, “colonized” their country’s cultural discourse. They see “woke” as an American import, not something native.

Certainly, it’s not something native to most of France outside of the Paris “bubble,” which has more in common with New York than with the French hinterland. “Flyover country” may have emerged to describe the vast swath between our own East and West coasts, but it applies quite nicely to much of France. The “yellow vest” movement might not have exactly been MAGA, but the animating impulse, a revolt against both Paris and Brussels, closely mirrors our own rejection of rule by unelected D.C. bureaucrats, enabled by a compliant mainstream media. So, too, the massive vote for the Right (not, one should insist, the “far right”) in the recent elections to the European and French national parliaments. And the French Catholic conference of bishops categorically condemned the display.

The Last Supper tableau, predictably, found defenders not only in France, but also, loudly, from our progressive culture warriors. Predictably, the New York Times leapt to its defense, noting that “art historians are divided” with respect to its meaning. Newsweek went looking and, after some apparent effort, found a handful of Christian “leaders” willing to “counter conservative fury” about the performance. We shouldn’t be surprised by this since the so-called “Bacchic” tableau represented a convergence between the worst aspects of French and American progressivism. A “revolutionary and transgressive” sexuality, after all, pioneered by French philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Bataille, found its most energetic proponents within the ranks of Ivy League language and philosophy departments, from which it spread and was magnified by our own progressives.

So, properly, the story should be about the sins of international progressivism rather than the deficiencies of “the French.” And we might also take a moment to divest ourselves once and for all of such phrases as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” to take the most unworthy of many contemptuous tropes. French casualties in World War I totaled some 1.3 million killed or missing, more than 10 times those suffered by the U.S., and this in a country whose population at the time was less than half that of the U.S. It was the French Army at Verdun, after all, that embodied the famous phrase, “They Shall Not Pass.”

In World War II, the French generals were outmaneuvered by the German blitzkrieg, and a feckless political elite simply gave up. But “the French,” in the words of an American military historian, fought “doggedly and well” in 1940, suffering over 90,000 killed in action and some 200,000 wounded. Outmaneuvered, yes, surrounded and cut off frequently, but outfought — maybe not so much. And, reequipped in 1942 and 1943 by the U.S. and the U.K., French forces made an impressive comeback in North Africa at Bir Hakeim, during the Italian campaign and the invasion of southern France, and, famously, with Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division in its service as part of Patton’s Third Army.

In a few weeks’ time, I will be returning to eastern France once again, renewing my acquaintance with a French World War II commemorative group, “ThanksGIs,” who for decades have worked to preserve the memory of their region’s liberation by searching old battlefields to recover the remains of American MIAs and preserving the history of those desperate days with annual ceremonies, lavish public displays, and beautiful memorials. These good people are not particularly political. I honestly do not know if they are “left” or “right,” and I do know that an American gloss on these categories is scarcely relevant to how most French people see themselves. 

What I do know is that the members of this and other similar groups — there are many — are united by an appreciation for the ordinary American GIs who brought freedom from Nazi oppression to their parents and grandparents in 1944, an appreciation that they’ve energetically passed on to a younger generation, who turn out regularly to celebrate the U.S. 5th Infantry and 7th Armored Divisions and who lovingly restore the battlefields on which they fought.

As the son of one of the “liberators,” I was given the honor of speaking at one such ceremony in 2017. This time, my daughter and I will be attending alongside hundreds of French men and women and some 20 other Americans, also descendants of the soldiers who fought the bloody battles for the Moselle bridgeheads. (Sadly, the soldiers themselves are no longer available to attend.) But my dad and his comrades would be deeply honored, and so, too, should all Americans, for these French friends truly appreciate us and share much with us.

Two cheers for France, then, two cheers for those with whom we share so much, and one cheer withheld for the noxious French progressive elites whose woke idiocy has been on full display during these Paris Olympics. Noxious progressivism, after all, is an international phenomenon, very much promoted from our own country, and by our country’s official representatives. 

I’m told that our State Department will attend September’s liberation ceremony, someone from the U.S. consulate in Strasbourg. I’m sure that his or her remarks will have been carefully vetted to be appropriate for the occasion. But thereby hangs the final tale. During our most recent “Pride Month,” this same consulate posted a picture on Facebook of the consulate adorned in the usual rainbow colors. The post also included a message celebrating the consulate’s efforts to promote LGBTQ+, etc. That, sadly, is our official U.S. government message to “the French.” So before we treat the obscenity of The Last Supper tableau as peculiarly French, we might, as a nation, take a moment to look in the mirror. 

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