Two books that, with the benefit of a few years' hindsight since their publication, can now safely be described as visionary, so powerfully and lucidly do they anticipate the new divisions emerging in contemporary societies—particularly in France—even if these divisions have yet to be fully acknowledged.
In Les petits Blancs, published in 2013 (a date that underscores just how ahead of his time the author was), Aymeric Patricot—already the author of several novels dealing with difficult and sometimes transgressive subjects—focuses on the concrete reality and the complex, often conflicted feelings of an emerging figure in France’s anthropological landscape. Long ignored and sometimes outright denied, this figure is one he seeks to fully recognize through his work: that of the "petit Blanc," a specifically French version of what Americans know as the "white trash," or more broadly, the embodiment, within the stratified social space of multicultural societies, of a distinctly white form of poverty.
Patricot offers a precise definition of the "petit Blanc," without ever essentializing it: a "poor white who becomes aware of his color in a context of racial mixing, and realizes he is as miserable as minorities presumed, a priori, to be less well treated than himself."
Far from being a cold, detached sociological essay, and without hiding behind the mask of scientific dryness, the author rigorously explores—with a depth of vision characteristic of literature—a phenomenon that remains a blind spot in the social sciences, doing so with the remarkable courage required to confront taboos.
Through the intersecting testimonies of various types of petits Blancs—men and women, left-wing whites, right-wing whites, whites indifferent to their own fate, battered working-class whites, fragile cultured provincial petty bourgeois whites, single white women attracted to Black and Arab men, exhausted underclass whites, precarious whites worried about their country's future and anxious about becoming a minority, resigned whites, and angry whites—Patricot captures the phenomenon in all its diversity and complexity, alternating with pages of analysis that subtly blend empathy and intellectual rigor.
This original structure gives the book its great singularity and, according to the author’s own words, draws inspiration "from a certain French tradition of the short opinion piece interwoven with testimony and reflection, as practiced by Sartre, Gide, and Césaire," aiming to capture in a multidimensional way—possible only through literature—the troubled emotions and frustrated desires of what, as the pages unfold, appears to be the embryo of a community in the making.
It is also through this gallery of portraits that the geography of a rural France—long overlooked by the political class and official sociology—emerges: a France marked by unemployment, deindustrialization, depopulation, and territorial relegation. It becomes clear that when the structures of work collapse, cultural differences resurface more starkly, in a landscape stripped bare, freed from the once-structuring economic issues.
While hostility toward immigration does appear at the heart of some testimonies, it points to a deeper, more intimate, and painful reality: the widespread feeling among nearly all the characters of being subjected to a new form of racism, specific to the liberal, post-racial societies born of globalization and urbanization: anti-white racism.
Indeed, within the new dynamic of racial mixing, and in a context where racial discrimination was thought to have been largely overcome, "one may feel," in the author's words, "that the overcoming of segregation here comes at the cost of a new type of contempt, softer in appearance but just as radical at its core."
This refers to the intertwining, both unconscious and at times explicit among the privileged urban classes, of two forms of symbolic violence: social contempt, and another, more unspeakable and shameful, based on an undeniably ethnic criterion, sometimes openly directed at these provincial whites, perceived as a rearguard and branded with disgrace.
This phenomenon is identifiable in certain expressions that have entered everyday speech in major city centers—especially Paris—and among so-called educated circles, to describe the white populations of peripheral France: "rougeauds" (ruddy-faced yokels), "consanguins" (inbreds), and other sordid prejudices evoking the notion of "France rance" (stale France) or "France moisie" (moldy France), mocked by Philippe Sollers, in opposition to the "new France," the multiracial France of major urban centers concentrating the financial flows of global trade.
This reinvented and socially tolerated form of racism is particularly evident in the prejudices regarding the supposedly lower cultural level of rural areas, and in the stigmatization of rural working-class whites through clichés about obesity, "toothlessness," alcoholism, and other brutal labels exposing the physical and mental scars of poverty—the disfigured faces of misery, which the author dares to confront unflinchingly, without false modesty, and with humanity.
Voici la traduction en anglais de cette nouvelle partie :
From a critical perspective on the narcissism of small differences—promoted by minority rights movements that emerged in the 1980s—Aymeric Patricot also manages to move beyond the strictly republican and universalist mainstream viewpoint, which is blind to particularisms and prevents the recognition of a community that is nonetheless very real in France.
He succeeds in carving out a new analytical space, maintaining a reasonable distance from inauthentic identity postures and from all rhetorical artifices that tend to mask the existence of these petits Blancs whom no one wants to see for what they are.
In a context where everyone increasingly feels they belong to a race, the arrogance of the universalist white individual—who believes himself good and generous for denying his own racial identity, thereby claiming a form of preeminence over others—appears as a hypocritical way of evading an uncomfortable issue.
Aymeric Patricot deserves credit for having, five years before the Yellow Vests movement, documented the existence of these petits Blancs, too poor to interest the right and too white to appeal to the left, thereby daring to expose the concrete consequences of a sensitive and rarely confronted reality, yet one that is inescapable: that of what the author simply calls "the ethnic diversification of the French people."
It is, moreover, the phenomenon of the Yellow Vests that, by confirming much of his earlier thesis, led Aymeric Patricot to publish a second essay, this one in a more classical form, La Révolte des Gaulois (The Revolt of the Gauls), in which he revisits some of his earlier analyses, expanding and sometimes surpassing them in light of a range of more recent events and the critical reception of his first work.
Through this social movement of unprecedented dimension and nature, the author sees the emergence—on the roundabouts and in the marches that stormed the capital—of a new character, hitherto absent from sociological radars: the Gaulois, whom he defines with striking precision and truth: "Not merely poor whites, but modest provincial whites—all those whites who, consciously or unconsciously, rise up against central authority in the name of a dignity that has been trampled, an attachment to their land, and a set of values that, for better or worse, define something like a culture."
He explores the genealogy of the 2018 uprisings, analyzing them as a form of French-style whitelash, and identifies their complex, multifactorial causes. Among them: the rise in fuel prices and the reduction of speed limits to 80 km/h, policies implemented by a government that could not have been unaware of their disastrous effects on populations for whom car use is a vital necessity.
At a deeper level, he points to the violence of the class contempt emanating both from globalist liberals and from the left. "We have been witnessing for thirty or forty years now," writes Aymeric Patricot, "a genuine reversal in the political field: those who express the most brutal form of class contempt often belong to the very camp that claims to represent the aspirations of the most modest—that is, the left."
Voici la traduction fidèle en anglais de cette nouvelle partie de ton article :
There was also the identification of the white working class with Marine Le Pen during her widely criticized 2017 debate performance against Emmanuel Macron, and the consequent humiliation felt by her voters.
More subtly still, there was the stigmatization experienced by the French-with-no-other-origins-but-French—his transition, in the eyes of the elites, from being seen as an incomplete French citizen to being a guilty one. And finally, the silent, nearly unacknowledged suffering that stems from this.
The author puts very precise words to the evolving attitude of the left toward the white working class, as well as to the class-based racism of Parisian multicultural elites toward provincial whites, whom they accuse precisely of racism, carefully avoiding, according to Bourdieu's principle of distinction, any association with these Gauls.
For these elites, says Patricot, "in a certain way, the criteria for judging the good race have been inverted: the good race is no longer the pure race, it is the mixed race." Thus, one can observe among the elites—sometimes explicitly and unapologetically—a growing temptation toward secessionism, and even a fashionable, increasingly widespread fantasy: the disappearance of whites.
The violence of the government’s repression, and of editorialist rhetoric directed against the popular emotions of these Gauls, was the most glaring illustration of this shift. For unlike the petits Blancs, who are simply ignored by sociology, the Gauls are not merely scorned but actively fought against.
The book also addresses—another delicate and incendiary topic, handled with great finesse—the issue of the Yellow Vest movement’s recovery or infiltration by suburban groups, symbolizing the fact that the voice of provincial whites can never truly be heard on its own terms.
In a memorable passage, the author draws a striking parallel between the two figures most feared by the French urban bourgeoisie: the defiant peripheral proletarian Gaul and the small-time ethnic delinquent, more or less re-Islamized. He highlights their points of convergence while acknowledging the impossibility of any long-term alliance between them:
"Alongside the suburban youth, here comes the white man from the countryside. (...) He doesn't wear a baseball cap but a yellow vest, he's not a minor but already mature, he's not doomed to unemployment but to hard labor, he doesn't listen to Booba but to Johnny, he doesn't shout 'F*** your mother' but 'Bastard,' he doesn't torch police cars but smashes up Porsches, he doesn't control housing projects but blocks roundabouts, he doesn't throw Molotov cocktails but overwhelms police lines, he doesn't fire live ammunition but throws back grenades, he doesn't burn down media libraries but marches toward the Élysée, he doesn't avenge brothers fallen under police blows but grandparents suffering from poverty, he doesn't write rap lyrics about raping white women but slogans urging Macron to 'screw his old lady instead of the Bretons.' Their anger takes different forms, the words are not the same, and their demands differ, but both rise up against the State to express their defiance."
Voici la traduction en anglais de cette dernière partie :
With a dialectical agility of which the author has become a master, he updates the objective alliance that took place during the Parisian demonstrations between the suburbs and the grande bourgeoisie, an alliance explained by the fascination that wealthy elites have for delinquents—a way for them to expiate their class guilt.
Finally, drawing on the writings of North American philosopher Charles Taylor, he sketches the still unexplored path of a new form of identity-based liberalism, a possible solution for a liberal democracy facing unprecedented challenges in history—challenges whose dead ends and internal contradictions were laid bare by the Yellow Vests movement.
Through these two works, Aymeric Patricot makes an essential contribution to public debate and to the understanding of our time, thanks to his unique way of observing and approaching the social world—a perspective he himself describes better than anyone else:
"The time of my writing is therefore not that of the historian, the sociologist, or the political scientist: it has its own rhythm, that of the writer, seemingly more modest because it appears more personal and does not rely on statistical tables, electoral analyses, long-term historical considerations, or detailed portraits of political careers. But it is no less legitimate because, being less detached, it is more embodied; being more urgent, it captures something of the spirit of the times."
For all these reasons, I can only recommend reading these two essays, whose importance will, I believe, become increasingly evident in the years to come.
