Posted on 04/29/2002 4:17:20 PM PDT by Starmaker
As European leaders were falling all over themselves last week urging French voters to reject nationalist "far right" presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, his colleagues in the European Parliament prevented him from addressing them, despite his longtime membership in that august body. And I bet you thought that the jack-booted thugs lost WWII and the Cold War.
Le Pen is one of several Rightist figures on the rise in Europe, all touting a populist anti-crime and anti-immigrant message. Throw in job-security issues, negative feelings about the European Union and globalization, wide ranging government corruption, not to mention fear of a Muslim hegemony, and the Euro Right seems to have some real home run potential.
Nationalism, of course, has a bad name to Euro Leftists. Try to follow the logic: The Nazis were an ultranationalist movement, that rained destruction on Europe. They were so bad and so intolerable, that the French fought them for ... a scant few weeks before surrendering. Even though these Nazis were, in fact, National Socialists, they are somehow tagged as a "Right-Wing" or Fascist movement. To be sure, these days, "Fascist" has no meaning whatsoever, except as a derisive term used by Socialists and Communists to describe their opponents.
Europe's first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Originally, fascist parties and movements stood for extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a "people's community", in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.
Let's see. Most people would not call Stalin a fascist, yet he certainly met every single standard mentioned above. Moreover, aside from their hatred of all things military, the Left in Europe and America fits these criteria, as well.
Contempt for electoral democracy is well evident in the handling of Le Pen in Europe, and the numerous laws never voted on, but created by judicial fiat in the US. Political and cultural liberalism, as properly understood, are completely eliminated by political correctness, and their adherence to the remaining factors is merely self-evident.
As you might conclude, it takes copious amounts of denial (maybe even delusion and drugs) to reconcile the positions of the Left. Indeed, the BIG rally against Le Pen will be on May 1--Labor Day in much of the "progressive" world--and also the day in which Le Pen's National Front Party honors Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France. It truly does boggle the mind to picture French citizens lining up opposite Jeanne d'Arc, but there you have it.
Regarding the Left's embrace of Arab terrorism, I proffer a simple explanation. Functionally atheistic, and without a single principle that works--or EVER worked, for that matter, they hector Israel under a battle flag identifying the Palestinians as "exploited." In reality, sated with a sick, self-satisfying Nihilism, and ignoring that the Palestinian Authority is nothing if not fascist, they admire the "militants," murderous thugs no doubt, that at least believe in something.
Sadly, nowhere is this strangling Nihilism more present than in France, where the once magnificent Catholic culture is now but a museum piece, and Mosque attendance trumps Mass attendance. That 16 percent of the voters supported Le Pen, even if they didn't agree with all of his positions, shows that there might still be some hope.
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