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To appreciate the scope of Dio’s power, we could look to a hundred examples. One will suffice: the Saint-Favier swimming-pool scandal. Saint-Favier is a dull, sleepy town stuck away in the Jura, that decided one day to indulge its wild fancy and present itself with a gift sure to rouse an industrious populace lulled by the pipemaker’s lathes. Namely, a swimming pool. Olympic, Hiltonesque, covered in the winter, basking in mountain sun in the summer, a billionaire’s pool on a communal scale, a fabulous toy for the people, democratic to a fault, and always jam-packed (God knows how those French love the water!) … Well, it just so happened that, in one of the weekly analyses required by law, a lab technician discovered a troop of bacteria—gonococci, to be precise—living on a corner of the metal plate marked “Saint-Favier Municipal Swimming Pool,” happy as could be with their new surroundings, and, in a word, thriving. So well, in fact, that the hospital, much to the doctors’ disbelief and indignation, found itself treating three youngsters with ophthalmic gonorrhea: two girls and a boy—not even related—and one of whom, it should be noted, was a pupil with the Sisters of Perpetual Help. Now, in France, no schooltot does anything much with her eyes but open them wide, agog at the wonders of the world. There had to be an explanation. And it soon came to light in the files of the hospital, the national health plan, and the factory infirmary, where the records showed that a thousand Arabs—first-rate workers notwithstanding, and socially accepted if not socially absorbed—had been showing up time after time, to the tune of some ten percent, with the aftermaths of a stubborn case of North African clap. To be utterly fair and unbiased, the authorities proceeded to check through the files of all the Jura natives too. A time-consuming task, but one which the West, personified there in Saint-Favier, felt obliged to perform in the worthy effort to subdue its prejudices. The result, unhappily, merely confirmed them. They turned up a total of two rich young brats, both terribly spoiled, who wouldn’t have dreamed of using the public pooi, and one dirty old derelict, who never bathed and didn’t know how to swim. What a blow for the poor town fathers! Such fine folk, too, these laborers, pensioners, railroaders, politicized peasants, placing their leftist ballots in the box, like Eucharists laid on the communion plate, and scratching their chins, deep in thought … One of them, a delegate from the Communist trade-union party, in a highly emotional search through his papers, brought out a mimeographed document proving that the Arabs were essential to the economic well-being of the nation, and that the sudden resurgence of racism had to be nipped in the bud. Of course, they all agreed. The point was well taken. They were all for the worldwide solidarity of the masses. But still! If their kids’ eyes were going to catch the clap, after all—and in their nice new pool, to boot, that they scrimped their pennies together to pay for—and a dose like you wouldn’t pick up from some army-camp whore, well, Arabs or not, they couldn’t just let the thing get out of hand, and besides, doesn’t everyone know it’s an Arab disease? … The fine folk believed it was only common sense to vote as they did, and to reach their unanimous decision: namely, that thereafter the only Arabs to use the municipal swimming pool at Saint-Favier would be those with a medical certificate proving that they had no contagious diseases that might be spread by water. The decree was posted at the entrance to the pool, and in all the Arab cafés and haunts in town. It was, in fact, rather clumsily worded. But that’s hardly a surprise. In times when a spade has ceased to be called a spade, it’s no wonder that thirty-two town fathers—each one a family man, but none with an excess of schooling—should let themselves be trapped by the subtleties of language. … Dio rubbed his hands with glee, and proceeded to use the Saint-Favier edict as his cover of the week, spread over the newsstands in all its glory (by ultracapitalist distributors, no less), with a big title splashed across, proclaiming: “Anti-Arab Racism Alive and Well!” Six hundred thousand copies. Rather hard to miss! … In Paris, His Excellency the Algerian ambassador demanded an audience and got it on the spot. The North African press let loose volleys of hate, and the French press picked up the tune, albeit in a minor key. Somewhere there was even the observation that plenty of Frenchwomen jumped into bed with those poor, slandered Arabs, without once insisting to see their bill of health. … Retaliation took many forms. Oil, for example, was an issue again, as three tankers returned bone dry. And a hundred nice French girls, teaching school in Algeria, were suddenly hauled into the hospital and spread on the stirrups to be plumbed and explored by a squad of medical student commandos, whipped up to a frenzy. Two of them died as a result, but the inquest didn’t last. On his minister’s orders, the prefect of the Jura quickly reversed the Saint-Favier decree, first for certain technical flaws, and also for its breach of human rights. Dio was exultant, crowing his triumph in one of his best editorials. Because, when all was said and done, he was right. And any time that man was right—which he often was, since he chose his pretexts with diabolical skill—the walls of the ancient citadel were sure to crumble. So the Arabs of Saint-Favier returned en masse to the pool, victorious. And they had it all to themselves. No townsfolk were seen there again. There wasn’t even talk about building another one, separate from the first. What would be the sense? … And all at once whole sections of New York are deserted, a score of American cities watch the flight to the suburbs—and half the historic Paris pavement too—American tots in their integrated schools fall five years behind, tubercular Gauls flee in droves from our open-air clinics. … Tally-ho! Tally-ho! Just listen to that battering ram smash at the southern gate!
Jean Raspail - Camp Of The Saints