PARIS – The term “bobo” is short for bourgeois and bohemian, two social castes no one ever expected to find mixed up together. The Bobo takes over where the old Mitterrand-era label “gauche caviar” or caviar socialist (ER: champagne socialist in the English-speaking world) left off. Bobos showed their support for the welcome policy aimed at migrants, but they have had to face their contradictions. Between their words and deeds there is an abyss: between accepting to host more and more migrants or facing risk of being accused of xenophobia.

The “bobos” of the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris have become confused as the last video of Génération identitaire, filmed in the gentrified district of Montmartre, illustrates well.

After filming the support of the interviewees for a generous reception policy towards migrants, the interviewer, activist Clément Martin, then introduces Mustapha, allegedly a refugee from Syria, in search of accommodation as soon as possible.

Very quickly, the mood among the bobos sours and their hypocrisy is exposed.

“Are you in favor of welcoming migrants to France? ” After a few seconds of hesitation, the first person interviewed, a young woman, nods. “Yes, I am in favor of welcoming them” as long as “good conditions” prevail.

The same answer comes from a young man in his twenties, who argues that if “they respect the laws of the Republic”, there is no problem. A third interviewed, evokes “the welcoming attitude” and “solidarity” which the French must show, since they themselves come from old migratory flows.

The idea of ​​welcoming a migrant does not seem to bother them, even though they admit they have never taken met any of these migrants.

Mustapha was then introduced to the bobos by Clement Martin as a Syrian refugee who is in dire need of accomodation. A woman interviewed is visibly uncomfortable: “In reality, it’s … complicated,” she says at the end of a speech full of good intentions while at the same time refusuing to house the “refugee”.

In the end, not one of the bobos wanted accept Mustapha in their homes.

On Friday, in Creteil, the French high commissioner for pensions made a remark that part of the political class has meanwhile widely criticized.

For Jean-Paul Delevoye, immigration is the solution to all France’s problems. The High Commissioner for pensions said on Friday, November 29, that the resolution of the demographic imbalance of the pension system could come from a significant increase in the “foreign population” on Europe.

“The European demography and its aging makes that, if we want to keep the same number of assets in the economic machine, it will take a 50 million population in quotation marks – ‘foreign’ – to balance the active population in 2050 in Europe”, he told a meeting of young people.

For him, it is no longer possibel to speak of immigration “because everyone is hysterical”.

Delevoye added: “We are in a very unhealthy moment of our democracy where we try to throw a scapegoat: yesterday it was the Jew, today it is the Muslim, the day after tomorrow it will be another.”

Marine Le Pen, for her part, called on voters to “wake up urgently and take control of their destiny”, in the face of members of the executive who “have an immigrationist road map from which they will not deviate”.

In the evening, Jean-Paul Delevoye justified his remarks, judging them “out of context” and “misinterpreted by some” after the flood of negative comments. “My opinion is that immigration is a sensitive subject that crystallizes oppositions, and creates divisions,” he said.

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