The Camp of the Saints

Why it’s on the list: A 1973 French novel about a fleet of migrants arriving on the Côte d’Azur and the collapse of European will to refuse them. It is a notoriously racist book — dehumanising in its language about its own subjects — and it has been cited approvingly for fifty years by the European and American far right, which is the reason it keeps surfacing in political coverage. It sits in the anti-library as a primary source for understanding that lineage of argument, not as a recommendation: the entry in Ideological Family Tree terms is the ancestor you read in order to recognise its descendants.

Where I saw it: A link to a full-text scan on the Internet Archive, saved in the note.

Connections

• Ideological Family Tree — the portfolio idea this belongs to, and the only reason to read it: it is an ancestor text for a live political argument.
• Immigration — the subject the book is invoked about.