Ален Сораль: Француз саяхатшысы және идеологының өмірі мен қызметі

French essayist and theorist

Alain Bonnet, known as Alain Soral (alɛ̃ sɔʁal; born 2 October 1958), is a far right Franco Swiss ideologue, essayist, filmmaker and actor. Having been a member of the French Communist Party in the 1990s, Soral worked for the National Front before leaving in 2009. In 2007 he founded his own political association, Égalité & Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), with former GUD members. At the same time, he also launched a publishing company, KontreKulture, which he uses to publish contemporary controversial authors. In 2019, Soral received a prison sentence in France for using anti semitic slurs to label the Pantheon in a video. incentive to racial hatred, apology of crime against humanity and Holocaust denial. In 2023, he received another prison sentence, this time in Switzerland, for defamation, discrimination, and incitement to hatred.

Soral was born in Aix les Bains, Savoie and grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (department of Haute Savoie), where he attended a local primary school. When Soral was about 12, his family moved to Meudon la Forêt so that he could go to a private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris. Soral spent two years doing small jobs before being accepted into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts at 20, where he studied for two years. Soral was then taken in by a family of academics, who encouraged him to enroll at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he attended lectures given by Cornelius Castoriadis. Following his studies, and working with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Soral wrote a book on the sociology of trendiness, Les mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, as well as a fictionalised autobiography, Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien. The latter work sold badly, and this led Soral to turn away from writing for a time. Soral then focused on cinematic techniques, and after 2 promotional films, wrote and directed his first short film, Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie glaces. After a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe, Soral wrote and directed his second short film, Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière sur Seine. Around that time, Soral had joined the French Communist Party. He became interested in the works of Karl Marx and other Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács, Henri Wallon, Lucien Goldmann and Michel Clouscard. He published Sociologie du dragueur ("Sociology of the womaniser"), his most successful sociological essay to date. This book was later turned into a feature length film, Confession d'un Dragueur, in 2001, starring Said Taghmaoui, Thomas Dutronc, Catherine Lachens, François Levantal and Cloe Lambert. Soral performed in Catherine Breillat's 1996 film Parfait Amour! in the role of Philippe. He then published another polemical essay, Vers la féminisation? – Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique ("Towards feminisation? – Analysis of an antidemocratic plot"), and spent the following couple of years writing and directing his first full length movie, Confession d'un dragueur ("Confessions of a womaniser"), which was a commercial and critical failure. Disgusted by what he called "a lynching", Soral gave up cinema altogether and returned to writing. He published Jusqu'où va t on descendre? – Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("How far down are we going? – ABC's of ambient stupidity"), followed by Socrate à Saint Tropez (2003) and Misères du désir (2004). In 2007, he became part of the central committee of Front National, trying to place social issues and even elements of Marxist analysis in the program of the party (historically strongly opposed to Communism); but this proved to misfire as the score of candidate Jean Marie Le Pen at the 2007 election turned out to be significantly inferior to his 2002 breakthrough as second round finalist. He left the party in 2009. He has a dysfunctional relationship with his family. According to his sister, they had a tyrannical father and he hasn't spoken to his mother for 20 years after he said he wanted time to reconstruct himself.

Alain Soral has denounced communitarianism as a "poison". He has been especially critical of the rise of communitarianism in the gay community, a term that he has sharply criticised, arguing that many homosexuals have nothing to do with Gay Pride ideology. For Soral, Gay Pride involves promotion of the "Gorgeous Guy" model, youth, parties, drag queens, etc., and obscures homosexuality as experienced by older or working class homosexuals. However, Soral is currently supporting the homosexual community Fistinière directed by French sociologists Brice and Alexis. The association Act Up rounded on his publisher, Éditions Blanche. Act Up stated that through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès (himself a homosexual activist and advocate of barebacking), Éditions Blanche spreads negative feelings and even hatred towards homosexuals. Act Up asked the director of publication at Éditions Blanche to stop publishing books by Soral and Rémès, and vandalised Éditions Blanche's offices. The head of Éditions Blanche claimed that members of Act Up physically assaulted his executive assistant, and threatened to press charges. Act Up denied those accusations. No legal action has so far been pursued.

In his book Vers la féminisation? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Alain Soral argues that women have always worked (in trade or agriculture, for example), and that housewives were mis sold the idea of having their own careers by neoliberal capitalists. To him, feminism was invented by rich women and results in poor women working double "8 hours in the home and 8 hours at work" and would be better off just working in the home. Soral distinguishes two types of feminism: that of the "flippées" ("freaked outs"), and that of the "pétasses" ("bitches"). Soral claims that the most problematic inequality is not between men and women, but between rich and poor, and that feminists, who generally come from the upper classes of society, attempt to distract attention from this struggle.

On 15 April 2019, after years of regular prosecutions and financial condemnations for his declarations, he was sentenced to a year in prison for Holocaust denial as a result of a drawing published on Egalité et Réconciliation, a parody of a Charlie Hebdo cover which made fun of the Rwandan genocide. Arguing that he was not the author of the drawing, and that the drawing was merely showcasing strong black humor in the same vein as the satirical journal, without actually expressing negationist views, Soral stated that this was a demonstration of the double standard regarding the freedom of speech when it comes to the Jewish community, and of the persecution it entails, therefore validating the "serious" of his struggle, for it means that the powers that be are "taking [him] seriously."

Alain Soral argues that Yugoslavia was dismembered by the United States, which saw an opportunity to gain political ground and influence in South Eastern Europe by arming Albanian separatist movements in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Soral further argues that communitarianism in France could have a similar effect, if the French Republic fails to apply 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State, which is enshrined in the French constitution. According to a recent TV interview (Direct 8 / 88 minutes), Alain Soral stated: "Today, no one was surprised to see French presidents, prime ministers and other high French political figures meet elusively with the Jewish representing body every year in Paris, meetings that go against the laws of France and send mixed signals to the Republic." Soral contested the sentence in court and was initially able to avoid jail time, but was convicted in court of defamation and ordered to pay 9000 francs. However, the Vaud public prosecutor's office lodged an appeal and Soral was convicted of discrimination and incitement to hatred and sentenced to 2 months imprisonment in October 2023.