Alain Gérard Robert Guy Bonnet (; born 2 October 1958, Aix-les-Bains), known professionally as Alain Soral (), is a far-right French-Swiss author, publisher, ideologue, conspiracy theorist, activist and filmmaker.
From the 1990s, Soral gained fame in France for his essays and media interventions on seduction, relations between men and women and other social issues, though his antifeminist views and other provocative stances caused some controversy.
A self-professed Marxist, initially considered far-left, he evolved towards the far-right during the 2000s and eventually joined the National Front which he left after two years. Having created his own political movement, Égalité & Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), he espoused openly antisemitic positions, associating himself with comedian-turned-activist Dieudonné. He also became one of France's most influential conspiracy theorists.
Soral has been convicted multiple times of hate speech, both in France and in Switzerland, mostly for antisemitism but also for Holocaust denial and homophobia. In 2026 he relocated to Russia to avoid imprisonment in both countries.
Early life Alain Bonnet was born in Aix-les-Bains (Savoie). His father was a French-Swiss notary and legal advisor. His family, which has roots in Soral, Switzerland, has long used "Bonnet de Soral" as an unofficial name. He grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (Haute-Savoie), where he attended primary school. When Soral was in his early teens, his family moved to Meudon in the Paris area so that he could attend a private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris. « Du communisme au nationalisme : itinéraire d’un intellectuel français » , allocution prononcée à Vénissieux le vendredi 2 March 2007.
Soral later described his family as highly dysfunctional. In a 2004 interview, he said he had been "programmed to be a monster". His sister Agnès said that their father was a "narcissistic pervert" who mistreated his wife and beat his children. In 1973, their father was sentenced to prison for fraud in Switzerland. The family faced financial ruin and had to leave the Paris area for Grenoble, later returning to Annemasse.
He spent two years working odd jobs before being accepted, aged 20, into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, one of the few tertiary educational institutions he could attend without having the baccalauréat. He studied there for two years. He attempted for a time to become a painter, using the name "ABS". He was then taken in by a family of academics,. who encouraged him to enroll at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales where he attended lectures given by Cornelius Castoriadis.
Career Early writings and filmmaking Aspiring to be a writer, Soral frequented Parisian "trendy" circles during the early 1980s. His younger sister Agnès Soral, who gained prominence as an actress during the same period, allowed him to use her stage name as his pen name so he could benefit from her fame.
In 1984, following his studies, Soral co-wrote with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents ("Fashion trends explained to parents"), a humorous essay about the "sociology" of 1980s fashion and assorted youth subcultures. The book was a success at the time, but only Obalk was invited to promote it on the talk show Apostrophes. Soral deeply resented Obalk for taking all the spotlight. He later commented that he had been "manipulated by a Jew [Obalk]" and that this had prompted him to "study the Talmud" and realize that "betrayal and solidarity" were at the foundation of Jewish culture. Obalk and Pasche disputed Soral's version and stated that Obalk had been the book's primary author.
The book's success gave Soral the opportunity to be employed at ESMOD, where he gave a course on "clothing sociology". He made his first television appearance in 1985, as a fashion expert.. He later appeared as a panelist on TV shows. According to his own account, he devoted much of his free time to be a pickup artist. In 1991, he published his first novel, Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien ("Day and night, or the life of a scoundrel"), a fictionalised autobiography which sold poorly. Soral then became interested in a filmmaking career. He directed two commercials, then two short films with a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe between them.
In the early 1990s, Soral joined the French Communist Party. His then-friend Simon Liberati, who also joined at the time, later said that he and Soral were just being eccentrics, since the communist party was collapsing electorally and becoming members could be perceived as original. During the same period, Soral worked for L'Idiot international, a controversial newspaper founded by Jean-Edern Hallier. He wrote columns in the young women's magazine 20 Ans and also worked for the gossip magazine Entrevue.
Soral became interested in Marxist thinkers. In 1992, he was a guest on Mireille Dumas' TV show Bas les masques to discuss his experience as a pick-up artist and his vision of love. This led him to publish in 1996 the book Sociologie du dragueur ("Sociology of the pick-up artist"), which he described as a "Marxist analysis of seduction". Also in 1996, he appeared in Catherine Breillat's film Parfait Amour!, in a supporting role as a "macho hoodlum".
In 1999, Soral published another polemical essay, Vers la féminisation? – Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique ("Towards feminisation? – Analysis of an antidemocratic plot"), in which he argued that feminism and the resulting "feminization" of society were a tool of capitalist oppression. Scholar Mickaël Studnicki later analyzed Soral's book as an early emergence of masculinist discourses in France.
Soral then developed Confession d'un dragueur ("Confessions of a pickup artist"), his first feature film as a director, purportedly based on his own experiences. Released in 2001, it was a commercial and critical fiasco. Allociné - French movie database, 2.2/5 average press rating, 2.8/5 average public rating – checked on 15 January 2015 The film's producer said that he had only realized belatedly that the statements found in the script about male-female relations were serious rather than ironic. Soral later commented that the failure of his film had been caused by "Jews and faggots", though he claimed that it had since become a "cult film".
Media fame Returning to writing, Soral published Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? – Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("How far down are we going? – ABC's of ambient stupidity", 2002), followed by Socrate à Saint-Tropez (2003) and Misères du désir (2004). During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Soral was a regular guest on French talk shows where he frequently caused controversy with his diatribes against feminism, capitalism, contemporary social liberalism (which he called "libertarian liberalism"), the liberal elite and modern society in general. Libération called him in 2002 a "left-wing reactionary". At the time, Soral professed to be a disciple of Marxist theorist Michel Clouscard, to whom he had borrowed the concept of "libertarian liberalism". Clouscard initially endorsed Soral, but later rejected their association after Soral evolved towards the far-right.
Soral's 2002 book Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? included a jibe at comedian Dieudonné, whom he found too biased against "common" French people. Dieudonné then sought to meet Soral: the two men eventually became friends, having found, according to Soral, a common ground on "anti-Zionism" and the "Jewish lobby".
During the 2000s, Soral, who presented himself as a sociologist, claimed to oppose communitarianism and stated that the "liberal-libertarian" ideology promoted by the French moderate left had imported anglo-saxon communitarianism into France, including its "feminist", "gay", and "regional" subdivisions. On the contrary, he commended the Muslim community for its ability to produce "men raised in values".
Before Soral's discourse began openly antisemitic, his analysis of communitarianism already included remarks about the Jews. He commented that in France, "all forms of growing communitarianism (gay, Islamic, etc.) form and strengthen through imitation of, hostility towards and opposition to Judeo-Zionist communitarianism, whose privileged status constitutes the communitarian jurisprudence by which their claims against the Republic are supported".
Far-right radicalization
In the course of the 2000s and 2010s, Soral's views and public persona became increasingly associated with antisemitism. In 2004, he was interviewed in a segment on the television newsmagazine Complément d'enquête devoted to Dieudonné's radicalization. While Dieudonné nodded in approval in the background, Soral said:
Following this interview, one of Soral's book signings was disrupted by Jewish activists, with several people being wounded in the resulting brawl.
In 2007, Soral openly embraced the far-right by joining the National Front, in order to contribute to Jean-Marie Le Pen's campaign for the upcoming presidential election. He tried to place social issues as well as elements of Marxist analysis in the program of the party (historically strongly opposed to communism), even claiming that "nowadays, Marx would vote for Le Pen".
Also in 2007, Soral founded his own political association, Égalité & Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), which aimed to attract working-class and disadvantaged voters. At the same time, he also launched a publishing company, Kontre Kulture, which he used to publish himself and other controversial authors. In November 2007, he became a member of the National Front's central committee.
In February 2009, Soral left the National Front after Marine Le Pen refused to let him lead the party's list at the European Parliament election. Soral and Dieudonné then headed an "anti-Zionist list" which included far-right, far-left, Shia Muslim and Holocaust denial activists and won 1,3% of the vote in Île-de-France. Soral later acknowledged that the list had been funded with the help of Iran.
During the following years, Soral built a network of structures and businesses dedicated to promote his ideas while also benefiting him financially. No longer invited by the French mainstream media after his move to the far-right, he turned to the Internet where he became particularly influential. He published countless viral videos of himself discussing various topics; his movement's website became one of the most popular French-language sources of "alternative" information. Soral's association with Dieudonné also helped him gain in influence. His book Comprendre l'Empire (Understanding the Empire, 2011) was one of the best-selling essays in France in 2012 and 2013. In the course of the 2010s, he came to be perceived essentially as a far-right, antisemitic ideologue. He became one of the most active and famous French conspiracy theorists, notably promoting the theories about 9/11. He called the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings a "joint French-Israeli operation" aimed at discrediting Muslims, and a "low-budget version of 9/11".
In 2013, Soral started calling himself a "national-socialist", though he claimed that he did not mean that in the usual sense. He later claimed that he was not antisemitic but "judeophobic" and was merely opposed to the "Zionists". Soral also became a proponent of Holocaust denial: he and Dieudonné associated with denier Robert Faurisson and introduced his ideas to a new, younger audience. When Faurisson died in 2018, Soral paid tribute to him.