Alain Soral

Alain Bonnet, known as Alain Soral (French: [alɛ̃ sɔʁal]; born 2 October 1958), is a far-right^[A] French-Swiss ideologue, author, publisher and filmmaker.

Soral gained some fame in France during the 1990s for his essays and media interventions on seduction, relations between men and women and various social issues, though his anti-feminist views and other provocative stances caused some controversy. A self-professed Marxist,^[1] considered far-left at the time,^[2] he evolved towards the far-right and eventually joined the National Front which he left after two years. Having created his own political movement, Égalité & Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), he adopted openly antisemitic positions, associating himself with comedian-turned-activist Dieudonné.^[1]

Alain Bonnet was born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie. His father was a French-Swiss notary and legal advisor.^[1] He grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (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.^[3] His family, which had roots in Soral, Switzerland,has long used "Bonnet de Soral" as an unofficial name.^[4] Soral later described his family as highly dysfunctional. His sister Agnès said that their father, who worked as a notary was a "narcissistic pervert" who mistreated his wife and beat his children.^[1] In 1973, their father was sentenced to prison for fraud in Switzerland. The family faced financial ruin and had to leave the Paris area.^[5]

He spent two years doing small jobs before being accepted, aged 20, into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, one of the few tertiary educational institutions he could attend, not having the Baccalauréat. He studied there for two years. He 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.^[6]

According to his sister, he later became estranged from their mother, citing a need to "reconstruct himself".^[7]

Aspiring to be a writer, Soral frequents trendy circles during the early 1980s. His younger sister Agnès Soral, who gained prominence as an actress during the same period, allowed him to use her stage name as his pen name so he could benefit from her fame.^[4]

In 1984, following his studies, Soral wrote with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche Les mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, a humorous essay about "the sociology of trendiness". The book was a success at the time, but Obalk promoted it alone on the talk-show Apostrophes. Soral deeply resented Obalk for taking all the credit. He later commented that he had been "manipulated by a Jew [Obalk]" and that this had prompted him to "study the Talmud" and realize that "betrayal and solidarity" were at the foundation of Jewish culture.^[1] The book's success nevertheless allowed him to teach at ESMOD; he also became active as a self-described pick-up artist. In 1991, he published his first novel, Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien, a fictionalised autobiography which sold poorly.^[8]

He then became interested in a directing career. He made two commercials, then a short film, Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces. After a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe, he directed a second short film, Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine.^[8]

In the early 1990s, Soral joined the French Communist Party. According to his friend Simon Liberati, who also joined at the time, this was done partially as a joke, since the communist party was collapsing electorally and they found it original to become members.^[2] Soral became interested in marxist thinkers. In 1992, he was a guest on Mireille Dumas' TV show Bas les masques to discuss his experience as a pick-up artist and his vision of love. This led him to publish in 1996 the book Sociologie du dragueur ("Sociology of the pick-up artist"),^[9] which he described as a "marxist analysis of seduction".^[1] Also in 1996, he appeard in a supporting role in Catherine Breillat's film Parfait Amour!, playing a "macho hoodlum".^[10]

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 pick-up artist"), which was a commercial and critical failure.^[11] The film's producer said that he had only realized belatedly that Soral's considerations about relations between men and women were serious and not ironic. Soral later claimed that his film's failure had been caused by "Jews and faggots".^[1]

Returning to writing, Soral published Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? – Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("How far down are we going? – ABC's of ambient stupidity", 2002), followed by Socrate à Saint-Tropez (2003) and Misères du désir (2004). During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Soral was a regular guest on French talk shows, where he frequently caused controversy with his diatribes against feminism and modern society in general. Libération called him in 2002 a "left-wing reactionary".^[1][6] At the time, Soral claimed to be a disciple of Marxist thinker Michel Clouscard, though Clouscard, who had initially approved of Soral's positions, later rejected their association after Soral evolved towards the far-right.^[12]

Soral's 2002 book Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? included a riff at comedian Dieudonné, whom he found too biased against French people. Dieudonné asked to meet Soral: the two men eventually became friend, having found a common ground, according to Soral, on "anti-Zionism" and the "Jewish lobby".^[13][14]

During the 2000s, Soral, who presented himself as a sociologist, claimed to oppose communitarianism, stating that the "liberal-libertarian" ideology promoted by the French moderate left had imported that anglo-saxon notion in which he included "feminist", "gay", "regional" and "gay" communitarianisms. On the contrary, he praised the Muslim community for its ability to produce "men raised in values".^[15]

Notably, Soral has written on the topic of communautarianism:

In France, all forms of growing communitarianism (gay, Islamic, etc.) form and strengthen through imitation of, hostility towards and opposition to Judeo-Zionist communitarianism, whose privileged status constitutes the communitarian jurisprudence by which their claims against the Republic are supported.^[16]

In the course of the 2000s, Soral's views became openly associated with antisemitism. In 2004, Soral was interviewed in a segment on the television newsmagazine Complément d'enquête devoted to Dieudonné's radicalization. While Dieudonné nodded in approval in the background, Soral said:

When you're talking with a Frenchman who is a Zionist Jew, and you start to say, well maybe there are problems coming from your side, maybe you might have made a few mistakes, it's not always the fault of other people if no-one can stand you wherever you go… because that's basically their general history, you see… for 2,500 years, every time they settled somewhere, after about fifty years or so, they got their arses kicked. Surely something strange here ! It's as though everyone is wrong except them. And the guy will start barking, yelling, going mad… you can't carry on with the conversation. Which, to sum it all up, tells you that there's a psychopathology with Zio-Judaism, something that verges on mental illness…^{[17] [18]}

Following this interview, one of Soral's book signings was disrupted by Jewish activists, with several people being wounded in the resulting brawl.^[17]

In 2007, Soral openly embraced the far-right by joining the Front National, in order to support Jean-Marie Le Pen's campaign to the upcoming presidential election. He tried to place social issues and even elements of Marxist analysis in the program of the party (historically strongly opposed to Communism), even claiming that "today, Marx would vote for Le Pen";^[19]

Also in 2007, Soral founded his own political association, Égalité & Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation)., which aimed to attract working-class and disadvantaged voters.^[20] At the same time, he also launched a publishing company, KontreKulture, which he uses to publish contemporary controversial authors.^[21]

In 2009, Soral left the National Front after Marine Le Pen refused to let him lead the party's list at the European Parliament election.^[22] Soral then headed, with Dieudonné, an "anti-Zionist list"^[23] which won 1,3% of the vote in Île-de-France.^[24] Soral later acknowledged that the list had been funded with the help of Iran.^[25]

During the following years, Soral built a network of structures and businesses that benefited him financially. He became particularly influential on the Internet by publishing numerous viral videos, also benefiting from his association with Dieudonné.^[21][1][14] His book Comprendre l'Empire (Understanding the Empire, 2011) was one of the best-selling essays in France in 2012 and 2013.^[26]

In 2013, Soral started calling himself a "national-socialist",^[1][26] though he claimed that he did not mean that in the usual sense.^[27] He came to be perceived essentially as a far-right, antisemite ideologue and conspiracy theorist.^{[1][20][14][26]}

In 2017, he and his movement were banned from Facebook for violating the platform's rules on racism and homophobia.^[28] In 2020, they were banned from YouTube for hate speech.^[29]

Over the years, Soral has been sentenced multiple times for hate speech, including antisemitism, homophobia and Holocaust denial. On 10 February 2005, a criminal court in Paris sentenced Alain Soral to a €10,000 fine for racist insults against Jewish journalist Frédéric Haziza.^[30]

On 15 April 2019, 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.^[31] 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."

In 2019, Soral received a prison sentence in France for using anti-semitic slurs to label the Pantheon in a video,^[32] incentive to racial hatred,^[33][34] apology of crime against humanity, and Holocaust denial.^[35][36] In 2023, he received another prison sentence, this time in Switzerland, for defamation, discrimination, and incitement to hatred.^[37]

In December 2022, Soral was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment by the regional attorney general for Lausanne for defamation, discrimination, and incitement to hatred after appearing in an online video attacking Swiss journalist Cathy Macherel. Soral described Macherel as a "fat lesbian activist for migrants" and as "queer", which he said was equivalent to "deranged".^[38][39] 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.^[40] 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.^[41][42]

• Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Éditions Robert Laffont, 1984
• 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
• Misère(s) du désir, Éditions Blanche, 2004
• CHUTe! Éloge de la disgrâce, Éditions Blanche, 2006
• Comprendre l'Empire, Éditions Blanche, 2011, ISBN 2-84628-248-X
• Chroniques d'avant-guerre, Éditions Blanche, 2012, ISBN 978-2846283007
• Dialogues désaccordés, combat de Blancs dans un tunnel (e-mail correspondence with journalist Éric Naulleau), 2013, ISBN 978-2755612745
• Comprendre l'époque : Pourquoi l'égalité ?, Éditions Kontre Kulture, 2021.

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

• 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 with Saïd Taghmaoui and Thomas Dutronc

^ A: Most analysts describe Alain Soral as belonging to the extreme right. He is the president of Equality and Reconciliation, a far-right organisation that promotes antisemitic, misogynist and homophobic ideas.^[43][44][45]

• "Egalité et Réconciliation" – Official site (in French)
• Alain Soral at IMDb