The Real French Theorist

Ultra-Proud Dad. American assigned European at birth. Hardcore rationalist. Neo-revolutionary. Nitro-universalist. Far-sighted. FR/EN

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

Watching @elonmusk's detractors react to his recent interview with @TheEconomist has been revealing.

Musk can be wrong. He can dodge questions, make seemingly absurd predictions, speak outside his field or simply give a bad interview.

But notice how quickly criticism becomes: “He is stupid.”

Not mistaken. Not arrogant. Not dishonest.

Stupid.

Because in modern Western society, intelligence is not treated merely as an ability. It is treated as a caste marker.

Cognitive privilege is the most structurally important—and least discussed—privilege of all.

It is not limited to IQ. It includes verbal fluency, memory, abstraction, executive function, social intelligence, the ability to learn quickly, navigate institutions, understand administrative language, recognise manipulation, plan ahead and present oneself as intelligent to the right people.

These abilities influence almost everything: education, income, autonomy, political influence, access to justice and even the ability to explain one’s own suffering.

And they are largely unearned.

Nobody chose their genes, prenatal development, childhood environment, health, parents or early education. Yet we routinely transform these accidents into a hierarchy not merely of competence, but of merit, credibility and human worth.

History makes this hierarchy visible.

Even intensely patriarchal societies produced women whose abilities made them impossible to ignore: Hatshepsut, Wu Zetian, Murasaki Shikibu, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Émilie du Châtelet—and they are legion.

Their existence does not prove that patriarchy was imaginary. It proves that cognitive privilege outweighs gender disadvantage.

The same happened in openly racist societies. Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and became one of America’s greatest orators and writers. W. E. B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. Katherine Johnson made herself indispensable to NASA while living under racial segregation and sex discrimination.

Again, their success did not abolish racism. It revealed that cognitive privilege could outweigh racial disadvantage.

Now consider the reverse case.

A man could be white, heterosexual and male in the most patriarchal, white-supremacist and heteronormative society imaginable—and still spend his life being humiliated, exploited and discarded.

Without cognitive privilege, his supposedly supreme identity might give him a relative advantage over an equally poor woman or member of a minority. It would not save him from a dire existence.

He would be cheap labour in the fields, factory fodder and, eventually, cannon fodder.

He might be privileged along one axis while possessing almost no real power over his own life.

That is why cognitive privilege is so structurally important: it determines how effectively people can convert nearly every other advantage into actual power.

It also determines who gets to describe society.

The people least equipped to conceptualise their condition are, by definition, the least able to turn it into a political issue. Meanwhile, journalists, academics, activists and professionals—groups heavily selected for verbal and analytical ability—produce increasingly elaborate theories about every privilege except the one that enabled them to produce those theories.

Our society is not merely a patriarchy, plutocracy or racial hierarchy.

It is a cognitocracy.

And now comes AI.

AI directly threatens cognitive privilege.

It can already translate bureaucratic language, explain contracts, write letters, tutor students, generate code, structure arguments and help people navigate institutions designed by—and for—the cognitively privileged.

Used properly, AI can become a cognitive exoskeleton for millions of people.

Don’t be fooled by liberal anti-AI rhetoric.

Much of the moral panic comes from a credentialled class that watched automation displace manual workers with remarkable philosophical composure—and suddenly rediscovered the sacred dignity of human labour when machines began writing essays, producing images, analysing law and generating code.

They are not merely afraid that AI will harm the vulnerable.

They are afraid that it will devalue their own cognitive capital.

Elon Musk may be wrong about the future of AI; only time will tell.

But calling him “stupid” is not an argument. It is an attempt to strip him of status within the hierarchy his critics understand best—and are most invested in keeping invisible.

The next great emancipation may be the emancipation of ordinary people from dependence on other people’s cognitive privilege.

Great times lie ahead.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@brivael Tu es ma dose quotidienne d'optimisme.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@cremieuxrecueil What does fathers vs everyone else say?

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@elonmusk @KatieMiller @Google @sundarpichai We need a @grok powered browser!

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@alyssamariiee11 Pure EU blood here. Ultra scarce ressource.

[Alexandre del Valle @alexdelvalle3]

🚨🔴🚨 L’arrêté d’expulsion visant @xfedorova marque un précédent inquiétant. Dans une démocratie libérale, on combat une analyse géopolitique par le débat, pas par l’expulsion du territoire, alors même que l’on connait le nombre effarant d’#OQTF jamais exécutées. Si l’État dispose de preuves d’espionnage ou d’activités illégales, qu’il les présente devant la justice. Sinon, la sanction d’une opinion, aussi contestable soit-elle, crée un dangereux précédent. Plus surprenant encore, de nombreux commentateurs militants pro-ukrainiens, comme #AllaPoedie, ouvertement pour une implication européenne directe dans la guerre en #Ukraine, ayant souvent accusé les dirigeants européens d’être lâches et relayant les déclarations du gouvernement ukrainien, tout comme nombre de prédicateurs pro-Qataris ou pro-#Erdogan défendant le #Hamas, n'ont jamais été expulsés pour intelligence avec une puissance étrangère ou destabilisation de l'Etat français... La liberté d’expression ne peut être à géométrie variable.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@Sardoche_Lol @TwitchDroitard J'adore ton "un peu", mais tu as raison d'être prudent. Il faut avancer avec stratégie.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@askaya 🎯🎯🎯

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@Sardoche_Lol Become the media.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

- Carte vitale + hôpital public : une horreur à privatiser. Rendez-nous notre argent qu'on puisse aller dans le privé

- Transports en commun : ça lui évitera de se faire harceler ou pire par les autres passagers

- Cantine : il est dans le privé la cantine n'est pas subventionnée

- Allocations familiales : j'imagine que c'est une blague

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@mateomatmouth Alors comme ça on présume du genre de la victime ? @J_Bardella est peut-être facho mais toi t'es transphobe.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

Dear Wolfgang,

I’m so grateful to be an EU citizen.

The far-right extremists in the USA do not deserve Dr. Fauci's services. I beg the European Commission to appoint Dr. Fauci its chief medical adviser for life and grant him immediate political asylum.

We’d all live to 100, and the EU would become an even greater paradise than it already is.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@RandPaul As a European, I’m profoundly grateful to you and the American people who continue to demand truth and accountability.

The decisions made during COVID affected the entire world. What you uncover in America benefits all of us.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@cremieuxrecueil Fathers vs mothers is also a telling comparison.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@Sardoche_Lol @knafo_sarah @brivael Au plaisir de t'y croiser, mon goat de toujours.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@TiffanyFong This made me spit my red wine.

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

🇫🇷🇺🇸

To my fellow Americans who haven’t yet given up on us Europoors: I’d like to share some insights into France’s 2027 presidential election.

This will be a running series, building toward a crescendo ahead of the first round on April 18 and the runoff on May 2.

In this opening post, I’ll lay out the general context and highlight a few things that may not be intuitive to an American reader.

After serving two consecutive terms, President @EmmanuelMacron is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

Unlike the United States, France elects its president directly by nationwide popular vote.

And yes, French voters have to show photo ID 😉

If no candidate wins more than 50% in the first round, the two leading candidates advance to a runoff two weeks later.

Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel), the candidate of France’s National Rally (@RNational_off), is no longer merely expected to reach that runoff.

The RN is routinely described as “far right.” Whether that label tells you anything useful about French politics deserves a post of its own.

She may now be the favorite to become France’s next President.

An appeals court recently upheld her conviction for misusing EU funds but shortened her electoral ban enough to allow her to run.

The political picture after the ruling?

An Ifop poll conducted after the verdict put her at 36% in the first round, with no rival above 19%.
French polling has quirks of its own, though. More on that later.

Prediction markets tell a similar story.

As of July 28, after more than $116 million in cumulative trading volume, @Polymarket prices the leading candidates at:

• Marine Le Pen (“far right”): 31%
• Édouard Philippe (center): 26%
• Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) (radical left): 13%
• Every other candidate: below 4%
The market gives Le Pen a better chance than any individual opponent, but not than the rest of the field collectively.
That distinction reflects France’s two-round system.
First-round strength may get a candidate into the runoff, but the presidency is decided by their ability to build a majority beyond their original base.

For decades, nearly every mainstream party would rally behind whichever candidate faced the National Rally in the runoff.

That political tradition—known as the “Republican Front”—kept Le Pen out of the Élysée in both 2017 and 2022.

It is now collapsing.

The central question of 2027 may no longer be:

Can Marine Le Pen reach the runoff?

It may be:

Can anyone still stop her once she gets there?

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@brivael

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@tristanmf

[The Real French Theorist @RealFrTheorist]

@thenews_fr Il est grand temps de tout revoir de fond en comble dans ce pays.