Published on November 7, 2019. From Masayuki Takayama’s essay “Chirac’s Feint,” published in Shukan Shincho. The article examines former French President Jacques Chirac’s apology speech, France’s collaboration in the persecution of Jews under Nazi occupation, Holocaust-related asset issues, nuclear testing, alleged embezzlement of public funds, and the Asahi Shimbun’s worshipful attitude toward Western whites.

November 7, 2019.
Because worship of whites is the corporate creed of the Asahi Shimbun, such stories never appear there.
It was a column that made one nostalgically recall the phrase “brutish Americans and British.”
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s essay titled “Chirac’s Feint,” which adorned the final pages of Shukan Shincho released today.
This essay, too, proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is an essay that must be read not only by the Japanese people, but by people throughout the world.
Former French President Jacques Chirac has died.
The Asahi Shimbun, which worships whites, carried a tribute article praising Chirac and also took him up in its column “Thinking on Sunday.”
The writer was Hiroto Ono.
In May 1940, when the German army invaded through the Ardennes Forest and the dark-skinned colonial soldiers who had been defending it were defeated, France surrendered quite easily.
They offered no resistance and spent the time until the end of the war living idly.
They also accommodated themselves to the Nazis, and when Himmler ordered them to hunt Jews in France, they obeyed with delight.
They built a temporary camp to put Jews in at Drancy, near today’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, and even laid a railway siding.
If one boarded a train from there, it went directly to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Once preparations were complete, they literally hunted down the Jews living in France and sent them to Drancy.
The residences and businesses owned by Jews were made to be sold, and the proceeds were deposited in banks such as Crédit Lyonnais.
The number of people put into Drancy was 75,721.
When they were put onto trains bound for Auschwitz, they were physically searched, and jewels and gold coins sewn into their clothing were confiscated.
These were things the Jews had hidden in order to plead with the Nazis to save at least their children.
The merciless and greedy deeds of the French continued even after the war.
Once it was confirmed that the Jews would not return, Crédit Lyonnais pocketed the deposited assets under the pretext that their owners were unknown.
They also received the valuables confiscated at Drancy and kept silent.
Instead, they deceived the world by lining up lies like Syngman Rhee, saying, “Under occupation, we all became members of the Resistance and resisted.”
Half a century then passed.
Chirac, after taking office as president, confessed the secret that had long been concealed, saying, “We handed over to the executioners the people we were supposed to protect.”
He apologized to the victims, saying, “France, which should have sheltered refugees and exiles, committed an irreparable wrong.”
Ono’s column recounts this chain of events and concludes, “Chirac’s words still press upon and appeal to people’s hearts.”
It praises him, saying, in effect, that whites do not turn a blind eye to their mistakes, and that this is splendid.
However, what bothers me a little is that this statement by Chirac can be read as if it were presented as a bolt from the blue.
That is not true.
At that time, victims of the Holocaust were raising their voices.
They raised their voices so much that even a self-admonishing book called The Holocaust Industry appeared.
The first target was Swiss banks.
The charge was that banks had arbitrarily pocketed the assets of Jews who had disappeared in the camps.
In addition, the Swiss government was also having its old wrongdoing exposed: it had turned back at the border 30,000 Jews who had fled from the Nazis.
France’s evil deeds had already been exposed long before.
Rather, in the sense that it cooperated with the Nazis and helped carry out the Holocaust, it was more malicious than Switzerland.
That is why Chirac acted first and included in his apology the words that France had “assisted the criminal madness of the occupiers.”
He also quickly prepared a fund for atonement.
To state my honest impression, I would say that he maneuvered skillfully.
In addition, though Ono did not mention it, there was one more thing on which Chirac acted first.
Nuclear testing.
Behind this apology speech, in fact, he was repeating nuclear tests at the Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific, one every month.
The reason was that the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty would be adopted in September of the following year.
It could be called last-minute testing.
Unless one possesses nuclear weapons, one is not a great power.
He was a president who thought only on the same level as China and North Korea.
But he was also a man who dearly loved sumo.
He came to the Kokugikan many times, and I believe there was even a “Paris Tournament.”
Straightforward Japanese people may take this at face value, but after Chirac retired, the first thing exposed was embezzlement of public funds.
It is said that he even used Tokyo Sowa Bank for that illicit accumulation of wealth.
When one hears that his frequent visits to Japan were not primarily for sumo, but for illicit accumulation of wealth, the charm fades somewhat.
Because worship of whites is the corporate creed of the Asahi Shimbun, such stories never appear there.
It was a column that made one nostalgically recall the phrase “brutish Americans and British.”