Dominique de Villepin: A symbol of everything rotten in today’s France

Let me be blunt: I feel sick. Watching Dominique de Villepin—the so-called “favorite politician of France”—still enjoy public esteem is nothing short of a national disgrace. 

The man is a fraud. A ghost from a darker France that so many of us hoped had been buried for good. That such a figure is admired by anyone tells us how far France has fallen, how blurred the lines have become between elegance and arrogance, between diplomacy and moral decay.

This is the same de Villepin who built his career on flamboyant speeches, empty posturing, and quiet alliances with some of the most sinister actors on the world stage. 

Let us not forget: he is a well-documented friend and client of Qatar, a country that finances radical Islam, shelters the worst ideologies of the Middle East, and seeks to destabilize Europe while pretending to play partner. 

De Villepin has long bathed in Qatari cash, enjoying their favors, living in their luxury, and parroting their interests—interests that run counter to everything the West should defend.

Worse still is his thinly veiled antisemitism, wrapped in so-called “anti-Zionist” rhetoric. It’s no accident that the Jewish people, the Jewish state, and Jewish history are frequent targets of his cynical moralizing. 

De Villepin represents a French elite that masquerades as humanist but is infected with a deep, rotting hostility toward Jews, toward Israel, and toward the values of clarity, strength, and truth.

He was never loved by serious people. He was never trusted by thinkers, soldiers, or statesmen who actually carried the burden of responsibility. 

He was always a dilettante, a fop in a silk tie, adored by salons and sneered at by patriots. A man more comfortable with tyrants than with truth. A poseur who mistook arrogance for intellect and who turned his back on everything France once stood for: reason, courage, and honor.

And yet here we are. In a country I love with all my heart—France—watching a man like this still revered by parts of the media, academia, and cultural circles. I want to vomit. Because this isn’t just about him. 

It’s about what France is becoming when a man like de Villepin is embraced instead of condemned. A France that applauds betrayal. A France that kneels to petro-dictatorships. A France that allows antisemitism to wear the mask of diplomacy.

De Villepin is not France. He is its betrayal.

And to those who still see him as a beacon of intellect or nobility—I say: wake up. The man is a mirage, a decaying symbol of a republic that has lost its moral compass.

It’s time to call him what he is—and reject everything he represents.