Georges Fenech, Hardline Excess and Pulp Fiction

Georges Fenech, Hardline Excess and Pulp Fiction

By CICNS (September 2012)

On 30 September 2008, Jean-Michel Roulet left the head of the MIVILUDES and drew up a positive self-assessment of his time within this mission in the magazine Culture Droit. A flash of lucidity had made him declare by way of conclusion: “We must not transform ourselves into a cult by setting ourselves up as directors of conscience” (Culture Droit, November 2008). A premonitory warning addressed to his future successor Georges Fenech, who took no heed of it.

While Jean-Michel Roulet seems to have disappeared from the little world of anti-cultism, it is probable that Georges Fenech (now replaced by deputy Serge Blisko at the head of the MIVILUDES) will be active in it for a long time yet, having built a not insignificant part of his political notoriety on the backs of the spiritual, educational and therapeutic minorities (the “cults”, for the MIVILUDES) in the name of the defence of a few victims. The number of real “victims” (in criminal-law terms) in the groups pejoratively qualified as “cults” is small, indeed very small, it has moreover never been seriously quantified and compared with other sectors of society, and can justify no specific policy targeting the said “cults”. The defence of victims is a serious thing, but not when it serves as a screen for a discriminatory policy. This extravagant victim politics has moreover become a speciality of the interministerial mission. At our meeting with Jean-Michel Roulet, we had presented to him factually the damage of the French anti-cult policy, to which he had replied: “Were there only a single victim, the policy I pursue would be justified”, a grandiloquent and fallacious formula, in view of the many collateral damages, also meaning: “Move along, there is nothing to see”.

Georges Fenech, a deputy once again, will therefore not abandon his extremist anti-cultism, and has just published a book whose title should allow him to rake in a broad popular readership: “Apocalypse : menace imminente ? Les sectes en ébullition”. The book’s descriptive notice presents him, without laughing, as “the greatest specialist in the anti-cult fight in France”. One must indeed grant Georges Fenech an undeniable success: having managed to raise anti-cult disinformation to an unequalled level, with the benevolent assistance of the media.

Every interview with Georges Fenech is an anthology of manipulations of language, of the use of fraudulent concepts, of untruths and approximations, which one understands he perpetuates since nobody, with rare exceptions, seeks to contradict him. Thus this latest interview in Le Figaro entitled “Fenech: ‘The big cults are infiltrating the places of power’”.

Question on the “illuminati” announcing the end of the world: Georges Fenech straight away evokes the “suicide killing of the Order of the Solar Temple” (we refer the reader to Yves Boisset’s documentary film, which documents the grave failings of the police investigation into this affair). What is a “suicide killing”, a killing or a suicide? If it is a killing (and all the available elements point to this hypothesis, even for Georges Fenech, since he takes up this convoluted expression on his own account) and its author is unknown (see the trial ended at Grenoble in a dismissal), what legitimacy is there in stirring up the fear of suicides, if not for the purpose of amalgam and manipulation? Let us admire the rhetorical effect of Georges Fenech’s first answer: in two sentences, he asserts that he does not want to “lapse into paranoia” and follows on with the “suicide-killing of the Order of the Solar Temple”. Reaction from the journalist? None.

Question on the Bugarach site: we learn that the site is watched by the DCRI because, among other grounds, “groupings of a cult character have acquired estates there”. In fact, the media hysteria around this site was orchestrated and anticipated by the good offices of Georges Fenech. Reaction from the journalist? None.

Question on the number of apocalypse cults: Georges Fenech replies: “In reality, all the cults contain in their doctrine a message of the Apocalypse”. No justification for this intellectual “sally” is advanced, Georges Fenech moreover repeating frequently and with duplicity that there exists no definition of the cult. It is therefore a statement empty of meaning, dressed up as false knowledge of the subject on the part of the “greatest specialist in the anti-cult fight”. Reaction from the journalist? None.

Question on the infiltration of the State by the cults: Georges Fenech asserts: “The big cults seek to acquire power and therefore infiltrate the places of power”. No proof is produced and, short of an argument, Georges Fenech brings up his personal case through the annulment of his election as deputy in 2008 (for financial irregularities in his electoral campaign): the spouse of the rapporteur on his file is said to have been a “lawyer for the cults”, therefore suspect, which is equivalent to a demonstration that the “cults” infiltrate the State and that the latter is at their orders. Reaction from the journalist? There, there is one, since the journalist chose this quotation from the former president of the MIVILUDES as the title of her article, to put it well in evidence.

Question on the Dupont de Ligonnès affair: Georges Fenech uses in his answer a stratagem much prized today, consisting in suggesting the cult trail as soon as a judicial affair is at a standstill. If it is grave and obscure, there must surely be “cult” beneath it. The totally unfounded character of this posture ought to be obvious. Reaction from the journalist? None.

In conclusion of the article, Georges Fenech confirms that as a deputy he will continue his anti-cult action, without any doubt the only niche in which he can attempt to “shine without brilliance” to make people forget the bad press that has accompanied him these last years. We also note once again that the journalists of the major media are not doing their job and choose to promote an anti-cult discourse senseless in substance and in form.