January 7 will leave an indelible imprint in France's collective memory. The day began with the launch of Submission, the new blockbuster novel by Michel Houellebecq, the enfant terrible of contemporary French literature. The novel provoked a torrent of reactions before it even hit bookstores, for two good reasons: the celebrity of the author, of course, and no less important, the novel's politically explosive plot, which posits the accession to power in France of the candidate of an Islamist party.
In the novel, Mohammed Ben Abbes, the well-mannered leader of a fictional party called the Muslim Fraternity, confronts far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Traditional parties and prominent members of the media establishment support Ben Abbes, who wins the election.
In order to fulfil commitments made with the traditional parties that had endorsed his candidacy, Ben Abbes appoints Francois Bayrou, a real-life, middle-of-the-road politician, as his prime minister.
Things take an ugly turn when Ben Abbes begins to implement his program, legalizing polygamy and expelling women from the labor market.
Of course the book overstates the role Islamism plays in France's political life - hence the legitimate concern, expressed by mainstream political figures and journalists alike, that Submission is bound to play into the hands of the extreme right.
The relevance of the novel, however, stems from something else: Houellebecq's tale offers a dispassionate, clinical description of the subtle, pernicious manner in which a political movement with loosely defined, unconfessed designs manages to seize power and then erodes and annihilates democratic values and institutions.
Seen from that angle, the dynamics of delusion described in Submission should not be dismissed as extravagant. Such a dynamic has already wreaked havoc, and continues to do so, in Latin America.
Indeed, the same tricks deployed by Ben Abbes - and the same initial connivance of mainstream intellectuals and politicians - the same resignation of the population, which form the core of Houellebecq's novel, have long been at work in Cuba under Castroism and in Venezuela since the rule of Hugo Chavez.
It didn't take too long for Fidel Castro to reveal his totalitarian designs. After having pretended - first when he was in prison, and later while fighting in the mountains against Fulgencio Batista - that his intention was to re-establish democracy in Cuba, the Líder Máximo took great care to root out every mere trace of liberty in his country.
And in the same manner that elite intellectuals, journalists, and politicians sided with Ben Abbes in Houellebecq's Submission, so the self-proclaimed "progressives" of Latin America, Europe and the United States invariably have found excuses and justifications for the human-rights violations perpetrated by the Castro regime.
A similar farce has been staged in Chavez's Venezuela. Before he was elected president, the Comandante Supremo repeatedly advertised himself as an advocate of liberty and free enterprise. Once in power, however, he tried all means to secure an indefinite, indeed, perpetual tenure. Only death finally frustrated his designs. His objective led him to persecute opposition leaders and to harass and muzzle independent media.
The role Houellebecq assigned to Bayrou in his novel, that of a leading fellow traveler, was assumed in Castro's Cuba by Manuel Urrutia Lleo, a conveniently lackluster figure appointed president by Fidel Castro until the latter deemed he had amassed enough power to dispose of his occasional ally.
In Venezuela, Chavez's fellow traveler came from the high ranks of the military: Gen. Raul Baduel helped Chavez consolidate power before his own fall from grace. He has been in prison on a nearly 8-year sentence since 2009.
In Houellebecq's France, Ben Abbes' acolytes boast that they eliminated unemployment by chasing women out of the labor market. This absurd kind of "social achievement" finds an analogy in today's Venezuela: To justify shortages of toilet paper, Venezuelan authorities declared that such shortages exist because Venezuelans eat more, thank to socialism.
The launching of Submission on Jan. 7 was abruptly overtaken by a tragic real-world event: the horrendous terrorist attack perpetrated by two Islamist fanatics against the staff of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The pretext of the carnage was to avenge the publication by that magazine of some irreverent caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Neither is the satirical treatment of revered figures - in this case, political leaders - ever tolerated in the Castro-Chavist universe. In Venezuela, the well-known caricaturist Rayma Suprani was fired from the journal for which she worked, because of a cartoon criticizing the country's dismal healthcare system.
When he held the reins of power, Hugo Chavez banned a televised soap opera that he judged to be disrespectful.
The same aversion to independent, critical thinking is shown by Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, who doesn't hide his political affinities with Castro-Chavism. A caricaturist named Bonil was sanctioned by the country's media oversight agency after the president judged one of the cartoons offensive and called Bonil an "ink assassin".
