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SOS Racisme is a French anti-racist NGO, founded in 1984. Its Spanish counterpart, SOS Racismo, is based in Barcelona.

Activities[link]

SOS Racisme's main goal is to fight racial discrimination. Often the plaintiff in discrimination trials, the organization also offers support to immigrants and racial minorities that are facing discrimination. It is also heavily involved in protesting and publicising examples of discrimination in society and in the law.

SOS Racisme uses testing as a method to expose racial discrimination by finding where racial double-standards may exist. For example, two identical work applications might be submitted to a prospective employer, with the only difference being the name of the applicants. One with a name of French origin, the other with a name suggesting the one of an immigrant. Other testings could take place at a realty office, where two people whose only difference is race would both look for housing, etc.… This tactic has led to numerous law suits for racial discrimination, especially against nightclubs.

SOS Racisme advocates making CVs anonymous when filing for employment but is firmly against affirmative action.^{[citation needed]}

History[link]

SOS Racisme is very close to the French Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste). Several important members of the party, as well as other leftist movements, helped create the association. The guiding principle of the association, brotherhood, is represented by the yellow hand logo upon which is written Touche pas à mon pote. This slogan, which means "Hands off my pal!", was adopted upon the creation of the organization in October 1984. Indeed, SOS Racisme benefitted from open support from the PS in the 1980s, and many members of SOS-Racisme became high-level PS politicians: Harlem Désir, president of SOS Racisme from 1984 to 1992, is today a Member of the European Parliament for the PS; Fodé Sylla, president of SOS Racisme from 1992 to 1999 was at that time a member of the PS (he is now member of the Communist Party, PCF); his successor, Malek Boutih, is national secretary of the PS in charge of social issues (including immigration-related issues); finally, current director of SOS Racisme, Dominique Sopo, started political activism in the UNEF-ID socialist student trade-union, before taking membership in the youth organisation of the PS.

SOS Racisme believes that, to put an end to racial discrimination, changes must be made to methods of urban planning and to education. Since the early 1990s, it has denounced the ghettos that are on the outskirts of big cities. The association advocates integration, and often cites examples of successful immigrants or their descendants.

At the turn of the century, the anti-racism movement was in turmoil due to the situation in the Middle East. SOS Racisme declared support for the peace process in Israel that was interrupted by the Second Intifada. It also denounced a resurgence of antisemitism in a book jointly published in 2002 with the UEJF, a Jewish student organization. Since then, the two organizations have continued to collaborate. Their Rire contre le racisme event (Laughing against racism) is held annually since 2004 at the Zenith concert hall in Paris, where it has featured performances by comedians such as Michel Boujenah, Dany Boon, Jean-Marie Bigard and Gad Elmaleh. In 2003, they also founded a joint student association called FEDER (Fédération des Enfants de la République) which runs for office in university elections.

In February 2006, during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, SOS Racisme organized public meetings to defend their publication.

Criticism[link]

While often coming under fire from the far right, SOS Racisme is often criticized by the far left as well. Immigrants' associations and far left movements have often decried it as a puppet of the PS socialist party, and have in particular criticized its reformist and assimilationist stance, based on a classic Republican vision of a "meritocratic society," where social ascension is held to be favored by the Republic — a vision already denounced in the 1970s by the works of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

Malek Boutih, president of SOS Racisme between 1999 and 2003, was often criticized for statements supporting immigration quotas when he was the Socialist Party's point man on immigration affairs.

Presidents[link]

• Harlem Désir, 1984–92
• Fodé Sylla, 1992–99
• Malek Boutih, 1999–2003
• Dominique Sopo, 2003–present

See also[link]

• SOS Rasisme

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Serge Malik, L'Histoire secrète de SOS-Racisme; Albin Michel, 1990; 185 p., ISBN 2-226-04818-9

External links[link]

• (French) Official website
• "We all love the same land" - SOS-Racisme 1990 campaign ("On aime tous le même pays")

Alain Soral
Born	(1958-10-02) October 2, 1958 (age 53) Aix-les-Bains, France
Occupation	Essayist, journalist, film maker
Nationality	France
Alma mater	École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Subjects	Capitalism, communitarianism, feminism

Alain Soral (born October 2, 1958) is a French essayist, and film maker, as well as being the author of several polemical essays. He is the brother of the actress Agnès Soral. Soral lives in the French Basque Country. Since June 2004, he has been a boxing coach. Alain Soral considers himself to be in the political "avant garde" of French society, claiming that his remarks and comments are always at first condemned and later widely accepted by the mainstream French public.^[1]

Life and career[link]

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 so that he could go to a reputable private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris.^[2] 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 enrol 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 focussed 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.

In the mean 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^{[citation needed]} sociological essay to date.

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^{[citation needed]}. Disgusted by what he called "a lynching"^{[citation needed]}, Soral gave up cinema altogether and returned to writing. He published Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? - Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("Down to where are we descending? ABC of ambient stupidity"), followed by Socrate à Saint-Tropez (2003), and Misères du désir (2004).

Soral's penultimate book, CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce (subtitled Roman (novel)), was published in France on 6 April 2006.

In the 2007 he became part of the central committee of Front National, trying to place social issues in the program of the party. He left the party in the 2009.

His latest essay Comprendre l'Empire^[3] will be published in France on February 10, 2011.

Views[link]

Besides the sociological marxist analysis of the modern-day society, Soral's books tend to focus on seven main themes^{[citation needed]}:

• criticism of communitarianism
• criticism of feminism, especially neo-feminist movements
• criticism of the media and the society of spectacle in general
• criticism of capitalism and USA imperialism
• criticism of the mainstream culture
• the Arab-Israeli conflict
• the dismembering of Yugoslavia, and possibly of France

Notably, Soral has written:

Soral's analysis of society focuses on what he terms "desire society",^[5] promoted by the media and the cult of celebrity^{[citation needed]}. He has especially criticised monthly women's publications, which he believes alter the conscience and relegate women to the status of "objects".^[6]

As part of the debate on 'laïcité' in French schools, Soral claimed to prefer the Muslim veil to thong underwear.^[7]

Soral defined himself as a Marxist, and was a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90's. He left the PCF because of his opposition to the party's renunciation of revolutionary content^{[citation needed]}. Soral supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, Soral turned to the far-right, joining the National Front's campaign committee; he was given responsibility for social issues and for the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. Soral's personal journey has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain.^[8] He supported the Bloc identitaire's distribution of food in January 2006.^[8]

Since 18 November 2007, Soral has been a member of the central committee of the National Front which he left in early 2009 because of some ideas he was in conflict with (especially the menace of Islam which is not an actual threat for him).

In 2007, he founded the group "Egalité et Réconciliation",^[9] a think tank led by the ideas he developed in his books and his several interviews (an innovative mix between social and economical ideas from Left, and Values like Nation or morality from Right).

Controversy[link]

Alain Soral and "gay communitarianism"[link]

Alain Soral has denounced communitarianism as a "poison".^[10] 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^{[citation needed]}. 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.

The association Act Up rounded on his publisher,^[11] Éditions Blanche. Act Up stated that through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès, Éditions Blanche spread 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^{[citation needed]}. 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.^[12] No legal action has so far been pursued.

Alain Soral and feminism[link]

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). To him, they would have invented feminism by tiring of their role as mothers. Soral distinguishes two types of feminism: that of the "flippées" ("freaked-out") such as Simone de Beauvoir, and that of the "pétasses" ("bitches") like Élisabeth Badinter. 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.^[13]

Accusations of anti-Semitism[link]

In a report on the television programme Complément d'enquête (in its episode devoted to the controversial French humorist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala), broadcast on the French television channel France 2 on 20 September 2004, Alain Soral said:

These comments sparked much controversy and Soral estranged himself from his show-bizz friends like Thierry Ardisson, a French TV host and producer, though they knew each other for more than 25 years.^[15] Anti-Semitism is the subject of Soral's latest book: CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce. Soral defended himself some days later on the website oumma.com, claiming that his words had been taken out of context.

Following this programme, on 29 September 2004, Soral and several others were the victims of an attack by about twenty people wielding baseball bats, while he was signing copies of his book Misères du désir in a book shop called Au Pays de Cocagne in Paris's IIIe arrondissement. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the police investigation has found no leads so far^{[citation needed]}. Soral himself believes the act to have been the work of an extremist Jewish group such as the Betar or the Jewish Defense League.^[16]

In a 2005 interview given to the magazine VSD, Soral announced his intellectual support for the equally controversial Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, with whom he worked on the Euro-Palestine list for the European elections of 2004, before his withdrawal led Dieudonné to do likewise. During the France 2 programme mentioned above, Dieudonné is visible in the background, listening to Soral.

Break-up of Yugoslavia and France[link]

Alain Soral believes that Yugoslavia was dismembered by the USA, 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 believes that community-ism in France could have a similar effect, if the French Republic fails to apply its prestigious 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State, which is enshrined in the French constitution.^[17]

According to a recent TV interview (Direct 8 / 88 minutes), Alain Soral stated; "that 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 signal to the Republic".^[17]

Soral finished by stating that such a course could only push other minorities to form political religious movement in order to be heard.^[17] According to Soral, this would be a step likely to divide France into its various religious communities, which would then weaken the independence of the country.

Bibliography[link]

• Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Robert Laffont, 1984

reissued by France Loisirs and Le Livre de Poche

• Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien, roman, Calmann-Lévy, 1991

reissued under the title La vie d'un vaurien, Éditions Blanche, 2001

• Sociologie du dragueur, Éditions Blanche, 1996
• Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Éditions Blanche, 1999
• Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre ? Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Éditions Blanche, 2002

reissued under the title Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Pocket, 2003

• Socrate à Saint-Tropez : Texticules, Éditions Blanche, 2003
• Misères du désir, Éditions Blanche, 2004
• CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce, Éditions Blanche, 2006
• Comprendre l'Empire, Editions Blanche, 2011.
• Pour en finir avec l'antisémitisme Éditions Blanche, 2012

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

• 1996 : Parfait Amour ! de Catherine Breillat : Philippe.
• 2012 : L'antisémite de Dieudonné

Director[link]

• 1990 : Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces (5 minutes)
• 1993 : Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine (10 minutes)
• 2001 : Confession d'un dragueur, avec Saïd Taghmaoui et Thomas Dutronc

References[link]

External links[link]

• www.alainsoral.com - Site officiel - Official site (in French)
• Alain Soral at the Internet Movie Database

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2010)

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the French Wikipedia. (December 2008) Don't speak French? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the French article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|fr|Julien Dray}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Julien Dray in 2012.

Julien Dray was born on 5 March 1955 in Oran, French Algeria, in a native Jewish family. He is currently a member of the National Assembly of France. He represents the Essonne department,^[1] and is a member of the Socialiste, radical, citoyen et divers gauche. He was a trotskyist activist till 1981 and a cofounder with his friend Harlem Désir of SOS Racisme, of which he was vice president from 1984 to 1988.^[2]

Works[link]

• SOS génération, Ramsay, 1987
• Lettres d'un député de base à ceux qui nous gouvernent, Flammarion, 1989
• La Guerre qu'il ne fallait pas faire, Albin Michel, 1991
• Les Clairons de Maastricht (with Gérard Filoche), Ramsay, 1992
• De la gauche en général et de l'archaïsme en particulier, Belfond, 1994
• Chronique d'une différence (with François Baroin and Pierre Doncieux), Editions 1, 1998
• Sept jours dans la vie d'Attika (with Harlem Désir, Gérard Filoche, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann and Jean-Luc Mélenchon), Ramsay, 2000
• État de violence, J'ai lu, 2002
• Comment peut-on encore être socialiste ?, Grasset, 2003
• Règlement de comptes, Hachette Littératures, 2007
• Et maintenant ?, Le cherche midi, 2008
• La fin des Vingt perverses, Betapolitique, 2008

References[link]

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the French Wikipedia.

External links[link]

• Julien Dray (Assemblée nationale)
• Juliendray.com
• Juliendray.blogspot.com/

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