It was ten o’clock in the morning, and I was on my way to the National Assembly as a guest of the Unbowed Legislative Group for the last meeting of the parliamentary session. I opened my messages between Strasbourg-Saint-Denis and Invalides, line 8. There I found friendly words expressing personal solidarity. This is how I found out about the robbery and rampage of my house in the Loiret, 18 hours after it had been reported and already well documented in the morning news.

This house is a farmhouse on the edge of the forest. I bought it 26 years ago and have been working on it ever since. For a generation. I share the garden with two squirrels, a robin, a magpie and several of my neighbours’ cats. We had a hind and her fawn graze my young plantations. I’ve noticed that rabbits regularly hold councils there. Finally, a mole (at least) really feels at home there. I’ve given up arguing with her because she’s so stubborn. It’s my regular refuge, whether in stormy weather or when the family is resting. How many of my loved ones have been there! Yesterday’s children have returned as adults. My missing ones are still here. On this bench, I had my dialogues with François Delapierre. Here I planted this laurel tree with Bernard Pignerol. And all those of you, my friends, who have come to see me here so many times, with or without your children who are still fascinated by bamboo. I’ve experienced ordinary moments here that memory has made vital to me. These places never remain silent after the events they have hosted. Happiness may speak in a minimalist version. But you can still listen to it for a long time to come.

How many of my books have I finished writing here? For instance, « En quête de gauche » (in search of the Left), from which I made a papier-mâché statue using the spoilt sheets. Or « Qu’ils s’en aillent tous » (may they all go away), my first writing exercise whose length of 180,000 characters had been agreed upon in order not to cost more than 10 euros a copy. Just how many times has the sun risen on how many pages of work, since I’m a night person rather than a morning one?

So my farmhouse was floating out of time, made up of visiting animals, insects, friendly plants, memories, and projects. I always came here as if to an island on the brink of the continent of my turbulent life. Now the sinister present has inflicted its assault on it.

This kind of aggression is always experienced as a form of desecration. Even more so this time, when I’ve had outrageous slogans written on my walls. This time, my books were smashed, my drawers emptied onto the floor and all the other vile things were done by people who are capable of damaging books. On the walls, the words « vive Marine » (long live Marine) are too coarse to be true. More indicative are « Nique les arabes » (fuck the arabs, with a spelling mistake), « on ta trouver » (we found you, again with a spelling mistake) or the swastika. They all resemble the vocabulary and the anonymous leaflets and phone messages of the attacks we’ve had to endure over the past year. I find in them the vocabulary of those racists who attack our stance against the genocide in Gaza. Yes, the attack is a political one, otherwise why such slogans? But I’m not sure who to attribute it to in the constellation of fascist or supremacist groups that have been hounding so many of us for months. They could be the same commandos who have attacked a dozen of our public events without any judicial or police consequences, even when the names of the violent troublemakers have been identified. But no doubt they are too petty bourgeois to write « suck my dick » on an interior wall. But their political beliefs are even more vulgar. It could be some of those swarms on the net. In fact, they immediately jumped into action. Like this one, for example, to publish photos of « one (sic) of Mélenchon’s second homes ». And yet his name and his X account had already been reported to the relevant authorities in July. As usual, no action was taken.

I don’t believe in a sudden burst of violence in a local environment that has welcomed me without any problems for so many years. It’s true that political and electoral rifts are very sharp here, but they’ve never resulted in any violence whatsoever. The locals are calm, the neighbours peaceful and benevolent, even when journalists try to get them to say bad things about me. Because that’s been done to me too.

The bottom line is that for the past year we have all had the feeling that we were protected neither by the courts nor by the police. Everything ends up in the quicksand of nothingness or acquittals in nine cases out of ten. The harassing telephone operators, the physical attacks, the smearing graffiti artists, all go unpunished, the walled-up or ransacked parliamentary constituency offices where the police don’t take fingerprints, where the prosecutors don’t pursue anyone as zealously as they would for ordinary yellow vests, or young people at protests. The arsonists are never identified, as was the case in Étampes. The list goes on and on. Like the assassination attempts that I discovered in the press months after the perpetrators were arrested. Like the judge who ruled that he was not competent to say whether « anti-Semitic scumbag », which was repeatedly used to attack me on « Radio J », was a public insult or not. Or another, who concluded that he was ‘not certain to see any intention to do harm’ when a disturbed individual, who had already been expelled from the police, posted his threats against me in the street on the Internet. And neither when he then spreads the address of the door I’m entering. And the video of « Papacito » pretending to murder members of France Unbowed? « Within the limits of satire »: our collective complaint is thus dismissed! The demonizing media harassment to which I have been subjected is further adding fuel to the fire. Weak-minded people, convinced that they belong to the supreme race (all racists are supremacists) then soil the books and that say it all about them. They ransack my house and accuse me on my walls: « tu pouries le pays » (you are rotting the country, yet again with a spelling mistake). Their defence of France however does not include usage of the national language. They even forget that « les Arabes » (the Arabs) take an « s » in the plural form or that tu « pouries le pays » (you are rotting the country) is not conjugated like a verb of the first group and needs two « r ».

I’m finishing this post written to drain my sorrow so that it lets me sleep tonight. But how can you not see the timing at work? Between four o’clock in the afternoon, when the mayor of the village noticed the problem in my house, and ten o’clock the next morning, no one could get in touch with me! Then it occurred to someone to call the headquarters of the movement to get in touch with me! But the same amount of time was enough to warn Europe 1 and then the JDD and start the media tom-tom. That’s how politics is lived in France. In this new banana republic, where the prince makes a mockery of elections and his chamberlain makes a mockery of the National Assembly, the authorities informed of a crime make a mockery of their duties towards the victim. But first, they warn the media, which is at the mercy of the hatred of polite society.

I know it will end badly because that’s what our demonization is all about. And the experience I’ve gained with the two assassination attempts that have already been condemned by the courts has shown me the kind of material this type of aggressor is made of. Hallucinated and ideologically stuffed with racist and supremacist stereotypes, they are just puppets. But the strings that manipulate them reach right through to the fingers of those who provide the environment that drives them to their crimes. Those who have been left apathetic by this aggression, or even entertained by the misfortune of others, should understand that they are helping to unleash these moronic freaks. And each time they go unpunished, their arrogance grows stronger.