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Clines Trifles for a MassacreRobert Brassilach

from http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/celines-trifles-for-a-massacre/

Theres a book you wont hear a word about on the radio. Theres a book the right-thinking newspaperswill not speak about, except to refer to it prim and reproachful terms. Theres a book about which thetabloids of the left will say nothing, except the most inept of them, which only have words of scorn.Theres a book the sale and distribution of which is quite possibly forbidden.[1] Theres a book againstwhich there will be more a conspiracy of silence than of attack. Isnt it a crying shame that, before anyreservations, we cannot praise boldness, courage, ardor?

This book is the outrageous volume by the famous author of Journey to End of the Night, namelyTrifles for a Massacre. Let us be completely frank: one might be a bit shocked, one might be a bitannoyed, one might declare it unreadable or idiotic, but it is impossible for a native born Frenchmannot to read at least some of its pages without relief.

One starts out slightly stunned. Cline begins, as always, with invective, with what he himself called inpart obscene lyricism. For four hundred pages, one wonders: Can he stop? Can he even change tone?But no! Without progression, without lapse, without rise, he remains on the same register. These arefour hundred pages of invective, four hundred pages of bold print insults, a veritable truckload, no, atidal wave of filth directed against the new enemies whom the lampoonist has discovered, i.e., againstIsrael. Literature, politics, cinema, theater, Communism, finance, all are surveyed. Jews, Jews

everywhere, a monotonous, gigantic obsession that ultimately snares even the least biased.

I know exactly what reasonable people will say to me: Cline exaggerates. He will harm the most justof causes. One might support an anti-Semitism of reason, but not an animal anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism of violence. The Jews will eagerly mine this book to find the best arguments against thosewho attack them. And I know very well all the excesses of this work. But so what! When one wishesto hang out with a lion, one does not feed him spinach. And on my honor, as of this reading, I do notregret my time with Cline, not one bit.

Admittedly, he exaggerates. His account of the literary world is falsein short, quite worthy of a man

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of letters, equipped with all the failings of his kind. There was always something precious about Cline,in spite of appearances. His title proves it clearly, as do his descriptions of symbolic ballets which openand close the book. He is the Giraudoux of the gutter. And in his Semitic obsession, he sees Jewseverywhere. The critics? All Jews or Judaized. Famous authors? All Jews! Cezanne? A Jew! Racine? AJew too! (It is all spelled out, and Cline analyzes the Semitic spirit of Racine!) The pope, the Church,priests? Jews! The Kings of France? Dont you think they have funny noses?

Quite clearly it would be difficult to have a serious discussion of the Jewish question based on suchopinions.[2] And I do not deny that in the end such excesses harm the cause that Cline claims todefend a little more seriously than the author thinks they will. If I reasoned like him, I could (with farless verve, I grant) argue that this work with its excesses was composed by certain Clinestein whoclaims to be Cline in order to discredit the anti-Semitesexactly as the Jews say that the Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion were manufactured by the Tsarist police force to discredit Israel . . .

But that is not the only way to look at this book. First of all, it is filled with captivating details (taken,for example, from the Univers isralite), small facts that make one think. For example? To defendZionism, Lloyd George stated in 1936: In 1917, the French Army mutinied, Italy was demolished,Russia was ripe for the revolution, and America was not yet on our side. From all sides, we wereinformed that it was of vital importance for the Allies to have the support of the Jewish community. For my part, I admit that a sentence like that sends a chill down my spine.

And as for Clines plans, they are almost always presented in an outrageous, buffoonish form thatshould not prevent us from seeing their profound seriousness. Thus, we all know that the medicalprofession is absolutely overrun by Jews. Cline makes a small calculation: 9,950,000 Frenchmen weremobilized during the [First World] War, and 1,750,000 were killed; there were 45,000 Jews mobilizedand 1,350 killed. That means that one Jew died for every 1,300 Frenchmen. I think that the 1/1,300thkilled exactly measures the full extent of Jewish rights on our territory. I would gladly give them1/1,300th of our rights to practice in each profession, thus, for example, in medicine where there areapproximately 30,000 French practitioners, well we would happily accept 23 Jewish colleagues!Doesnt this quota, at first glance, seem agreeable, tempting, and quite humane?

Cline paints a striking and admirable portrait of the miseries of Soviet Russia, where he traveled, aseveryone knows. He also describes Hollywood and its merchants of human flesh with prodigious verve.And above all, he marvelously mocks our good antifascist intellectuals, with a great carnivore laugh, acannibal laugh, if you will, which comforts and consoles us: I recently received a book from J.- R.Bloch, he writes, dedicated To Louis-Ferdinand Cline, because over there, they kill! And Clineadds coldly: Possibly! But they never kill J.-R. Bloch. Do you have the heart to complain?

He takes very seriously theProtocols of the Elders of Zion, which some believe dubious: such was theopinion of Jacques Bainville. But I must say that the passages that he quotes make me wonder. If it wasa Tsarist police officer who envisaged democracys continuing collapse, the class struggle, the Ministryof Leisure, the strikes and incitements to murder, the false reports, the role of the press and theater (thecinema and the radio did not exist), let us acknowledge that this police officer was from the race of theprophets. And we remain more than a bit surprised when he adds to the details of the Stavisky ministry:Intrigue so that the most important stations are entrusted to characters who have someunmentionable secrets to hide, in order to dominate them by the fear of a scandal, to hold them by thepolice. Dubious or not, one can understand why Cline read these prophecies with some interest. Atfirst glance, one laughs at theProtocols; one finds them insane, incredible, abracadabrant. And yet themadmans prediction is verified. Our stupidity, continues Cline (who does not usually saystupidity) is not entirely a matter of credulity, one must agree, but also a matter of skepticism.

Thus we do not hasten to shrug by perusing these pages. Among the most absurd and seemingly

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ridiculous ideas, there is sometimes a great truth hidden, but hidden under the laughter of Rabelais.Clines city planning projects (the true suburbs of a great city like Paris is the sea) are not ridiculous,but healthy, exact, creditable. And his invectives against the Exposition, composed in a style that lacksbourgeois elegance, end up taking on a quasi-grandiose allure like the invectives of Pre Ubu.

I even find that Clines rhythms achieve a rather splendid force: TheExposition of Arts andTechniques, it is the Jewish exposition of 1937.All of France must come to admire Jewish genius, bow

down before Jews, eat Jews, drink Jews, pay Jews! Read this book, do read it: it will bring you joy andconsolation.

There is a rather striking phrase in Clines book, this book that we will be prevented from discussing.He announces his invectives as a kind of revolt of the natives. And I think of those Arab townsalways situated next to a Jewish onewhich, from time to time, in a fit of popular anger, throwthemselves in fury on the Jewish quarter and plunder it.

We do not want any violence. But when one has a Jewish Prime Minister, when one sees, clearly andsimply, France dominated by the Jews, it also should be understood how this violence is prepared, andwhat explains it. I do not even say what legitimates it, I say what explains it. Have any opinion youwant. On the Jews and on Cline. We do not agree with him on all points. But I am telling you: this

enormous book, this splendid book, is the first sign of the revolt of the natives. Perhaps this revolt isexcessive, more instinctive than reasonable: after all, the natives are us . . . [3]

Notes

1. Indeed, the next year, Clines book was removed from sale.

2. This is, of course, what is most easily imitated. Consider, however, a curious finding. Cline hasnever praised any French writer, past or present. Literature, as he tells it, is a vast shooting gallery,quite tedious. The only exception to this fury: one day Cline granted his praiseand this is quitefunnyto an Italianoid wog, to use his language, a man of suspect ancestry, a passionate defender of theJew Dreyfusin a word, Zola.

3. Thats what we wrote in January 1938. Since then [this was written in 1943--trans.] it becamefashionable to say these things, and more. The following year, in 1939, Louis-Ferdinand Clinepublished a book just as extreme, The School for Cadavers. I confess that I hardly understood this bookwhen it appeared. I saw a repeat of Trifles for a Massacre, a sequel to the pamphlet against the Jews,terribly monotonous. Granted, in its epileptic style, I discovered dark and sordid pages of unrivaledpower, but on the whole it seemed useless, burdened with excesses of all kinds, of excessive pessimismin regard to my country. I was not alone in thinking so. We were quite wrong. The School for Cadaversis only quite secondarily a pamphlet against the Jews. It is above all, an astounding book of prophecy,on the eve of the catastrophe, and it took precisely a disaster for us to see its brutal accuracy.Everything is there: the defeat, the responsibility of the most powerful, the sundry lies of the modernworld, various remedies that Cline predicted in advance that they would be useless because nobodywanted them, the most tragic trumpet of Jericho before the collapse. One cannot deny that this book,like its predecessor, is monotonous and abuses an exclamatory style of juxtaposed unconditionalsentences: but one does not argue with Ezekiel. For some extraordinary pages, which are a veritablebreviary of present and future disasters, we can say that Bardamu proved the last of the great prophets.