For Michel Houellebecq, a presidency of Marine Le Pen “would not be very different from what Giorgia Meloni is doing” in Italy

The journalist does not bother with manners. “Are you a fascist? », El País asks Michel Houellebecq during an interview, during his visit to Bilbao, at a literature and humor festival called Ja!. The novelist, who is used to weighing his words between two silences and meditative onomatopoeia, responds: “Well, I don’t think so.”

Started around the theme of humor - Houellebecq believes he demonstrates more "irony" in his work - the interview with the main Spanish daily newspaper takes a political turn. Asked about his label as a conservative writer, which Houellebecq has been carrying around for two decades, the writer appears stoic: “It’s quite exhausting to be called a fascist writer, but you end up resigning yourself.”

“When I was young, we already called anyone a fascist,” he continues. You see, fascism existed and, as an ideology, it had very precise components and characteristics (…) and now, we use this word almost everywhere, to insult anyone. The same thing happened with the notion of the far right. Well, it’s inevitable, and I believe that in France it is closely linked to the rise of the National Rally. But I don’t believe that Marine Le Pen inherited her father’s obsessions.” A reference to homophobia or the protest of crimes against humanity for which the historic leader of the National Front, who died in January 2025, was convicted.

For Michel Houellebecq, Marine Le Pen and her party do not belong to the extreme right, and are even less “fascist”. He classifies them as “nationalists, conservatives or very conservatives”. Hence the lack of concern expressed by the author regarding the RN coming to power. “I don’t think it would be very different from what Giorgia Meloni does in Italy,” he comments. Once in power, the President of the Italian Council of Ministers would have demonstrated more pragmatism than conservatism, blurring her political positioning.

In Le Figaro, political scientist Jean-Yves Camus recalled that there is no “scientific” definition of the extreme right. “There is little doubt that the FN was born on the far right. Its evolution now places it closer to a “radical right” according to German terminology,” he commented. Namely, “an illiberal right which does not advocate violence and can oppose certain aspects of liberal democracy, such as the rights of minorities, but without wanting to suppress it”.

In 2023, while the National Rally hoped to modify a circular from the Ministry of the Interior, the Council of State considered that the “extreme right” label could legitimately apply to its candidates. To the great dismay of the party with the flame, which is trying to get rid of this qualifier.

“On a European scale, we are facing a fairly generalized movement, that of ultraconservative nationalists. Which means that, as a result, the left becomes more aggressive every day, that it is afraid and that it ends up classifying everyone as the extreme right”, affirms in El País Michel Houellebecq, that the specter of a “civil war” in European societies, in his eyes ever more fragmented, always worries.