Benjamin Haddad defends his reading of Paul Morand in the face of criticism from LFI

“I’m crazy about literature. And I accept it: I read Balzac, Flaubert, Grossman, Roth, Houellebecq, Vargas Llosa, Olga Tokarczuk or Le Carré,” wrote Benjamin Haddad on Thursday, on anti-Semite, traitor to the country and supporter of Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval.

The author in question? Paul Morand (1888-1976), the writer, diplomat and academician, major figure in interwar literature, whose anti-Semitism was notorious and who, in 1940, chose Vichy rather than Free France. Marshalist author during the Occupation, then ambassador of the regime in Bern, he was dismissed at the Liberation.

Le Figaro described him in an article as a “sad Vichy diarist”. Benjamin Haddad, however, sees in him “the greatest chronicler of the Roaring Twenties”, as he wrote on A tribute that the rebellious MP Manuel Bompard had described on X as “scandalous”.

A few days later, at the microphone of Sud Radio, reacting to the boycott of the BFMTV channel by La France insoumise, Benjamin Haddad accused the party of “establishing an anti-Jewish, anti-Republican climate, of chaos, of intimidation of journalists”. Recalling her praise of Paul Morand, Mathilde Panot was surprised that the minister “dared to come and speak”.

“Of course Morand was a bastard and a collaborator. No one is unaware of it,” defended Benjamin Haddad. “But do you refuse to read Céline’s Voyage or War? Do you refuse to touch The Man in a Hurry? Or to read authors compromised with Stalinism? It’s your choice but it’s very sad,” continued the minister, on the theme of the separation of man and artist.

And Benjamin Haddad concludes, still addressing Mathilde Panot: "I have the weakness to think that we can both love Annie Ernaux and the Hussards", this generation of post-war writers - Roger Nimier, Michel Déon, Antoine Blondin, Jacques Laurent - who greatly admired Paul Morand. “I’ll leave you to your burnings.”