Posted on 04/24/2012 6:22:30 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The success of the far-right National Front (FN) in France's presidential election is both new and not new; and it is important to analyse precisely its political and social implications.
What is not new - at least not remarkably so - is the size of Marine Le Pen's vote.
Ms Le Pen polled 6.4 million votes in Sunday's first round, or 17.9% of the total. In 2002 her father Jean-Marie got 16.86% of the vote: 4.8 million overall.
But to make a proper comparison, one should add to that the score of the other far-right candidate in 2002 Bruno Megret, who got 660,000 (2.3%).
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Let’s hope all of her voters now vote for Sarkozy in the run-off
To the Communist fags at the far Left BBC, is there any other kind of “Right”, except “Far Right”?
The analysis that says Le Pen’s votes are not newsworthy is a bit off. She did much better than the polls indicated before the election.
Le Pen is *not* a right-winger, at least not in any way we Freepers would like to be associated with. She and her father are socialists. They’re just nationalist socialists. You know what you call a nationalist socialist, don’t you?
France does have an immigrant problem, in that their immigrants aren’t moving to France because they love France, but because they want to destroy France, and remake it in their Islamofascist image. But fighting a fascist death cult with nationalist socialism isn’t the answer. Sarkozy’s answer (restrict immigration, insist on inculturation of immigrants, liberalize France’s oppressive economic structures) is the better way.
I don't think so. National Socialists maybe.
There's not much to be found outside the USA being dedicated to limited and smaller government, importance of the individual, our type of Constitutional Rights.
So?
It bears no relationship to conservatism does it?
I was unaware....she is anti-capitalist? From what I read, she wanted secure borders....thanks for the education. :)
Your telling me, my Wife’s family immigrated to France to find a better and peaceful life. But sadly they brought their Muslim Contempt for French Culture with them and have created in France very thing they were Fleeing the West Bank.
Le Pen is the Ron Paul of France, she doesn't sound so bad at first, but then the Kookiness starts to come out.
Deep down her and her father have a very disturbing Anti-Semitic streak.
Need To get the Truth out about Marine Le Pen Ping!
She’s a Holocaust denier from what I’ve read, but as with all things media-driven, take it with a grain of salt.
Read up up on this. Marine distances herself from these. What is “mainstream” in France we think of as socialism. What is “far right” in France we think of as free markets.
Any free market capitalist who is a strong nationalist (anti-European union, anti-globalist) in France is branded as a raving “far-right” loon.
I think as time goes on we see racism and anti-semitism being called out for what it is. Where older generations have tolerated it more, I think most conservatives nowadays are distancing themselves from those who claim to be “conservative” but continue to harbor racist sentiment.
Whenever I read about the details of FN and other right-wing parties in France, and I get beyond the labels thrown at them by liberal/socialist commentators, I see this bearing out to be true.
The big bureaucratic state machinery paints everyone who opposes it with the broad brush of nazism. To anyone who is truly conservative in the American sense, any racial prejudices are contradictory to their most fundamental values. IMHO, there are many Europeans you would be very surprised to find out how much you agree with their perspective. Look at the Gaullists; being very opposed to having foreign troops on French soil not under French command. Well, well, well, how would an American feel about foreign troops on our soil not under American command ? IMHO, if America exclusively and extensively worked with conservatives in every nation and helped a shift towards national sovereignty and responsibility for all nations, we’d be doing much better for America.
FYI.
No. What is “far right” in the European press is Naziism, despite the fact that Naziism is socialist. The European press calls what we call “conservative,” “economically liberal.” FN is a socialist party. Le Pen, pere et soeur, support nationalization of energy, banking, transportation (including airline and manufacturing), and education. And in education, it is vital to note the distinction between government-supported options (like in the U.S.), and nationalization (like in Nazi Germany).
I understand FN under Le Pen is no longer the communist organization it once was, and I’d be interested to know whether after the Muslims targeted Catholic schools for destruction, whether Le Pen concurs with those Islamofacsist mobs that Catholic schools must be eradicated. So if you have anything to share about recent shifts in Le Pen’s positions, please share. (I have little to go besides Wikipedia discussions and leads.)
... I should note that Marine Le Pen’s economic statism is populist, unlike America’s which is corporatist. In America, corporations use the state to protect their market sure and ensure profitability. Le Pen’s proposals are more about old-fashioned redistributism, such as complaining that corporate tax rates are regressive.
However, communists always use populism to obtain power.
Of course, with politicians and political groups, stated positions can change and they can also differ from actions. So I can’t help but shy away from making absolute statements on particulars.
I did find this...
Davies, P. (2010), The Front National and Catholicism: from intégrisme to Joan of Arc and Clovis. Religion Compass, 4: 576–587. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2010.00237.x
at Wiley.
Abstract
The relationship between the Front National and religion has never been straightforward. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s leader, comes from a Catholic background, and many of his policies are rooted in traditional Catholic teaching. The FN’s interpretation of French history is based around religion and its main political icons – Joan of Arc and Clovis, for example – are chosen precisely because of their heroism and Catholic-ness. In fact, the FN is the latest in a long line of far-right movements to position themselves close to the Church. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the party is loyal to the Latin Mass and for many years was dominated by an ‘integrist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ faction. Electoral data also suggest that for all its ‘Catholic values’, the FN is not that popular with regular churchgoers. In summary, the FN is an interesting movement with a curious relationship to Catholicism and the Catholic Church.
Here’s the link...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2010.00237.x/abstract
Now that you mention wikipedia, yes, I take it with a grain of salt, etc. (let’s get that out of the way), that being said, it had an interesting tidbit on Jean-Marie Le Pen...
“Le Pen focuses on immigration to France, the European Union, traditional culture, law and order and France’s high rate of unemployment. He advocates immigration restrictions, the death penalty, raising incentives for homemakers,[1] and euroscepticism. He strongly opposes same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion.”
Here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen#Political_career
Also this...
“At the end of the 1970s, Le Pen refurbished his party’s appeal, by breaking away from the anticapitalist heritage of Poujadism. He instead made an unambiguous commitment to popular capitalism, and started espousing an extremely market liberal and antistatist program. Issues included lower taxes, to reduce state intervention, as well as to dissolve the bureaucracy. Some scholars have even considered that the FN’s 1978 program may be regarded as “Reaganite before Reagan”.”
and this on Marine:
“Since becoming leader of the party in 2011, Marine Le Pen has focused mostly on the perceived threat against the secular value system of the French Republic. She has criticised Muslims, for what she sees as their intents to impose their own values on the country.[128] Following the rebellions in several Arab countries, she has been active in campaigning on halting the migration to Europe of Tunisian and Libyan immigrants.”
Here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_%28France%29
Politics in France is rather different from America and quite complex, then again American politics would be likewise for a French observer. I could not find anything where National Front was supportive of communism; of course there are similar-sounding names, such as the overtly communist National Liberation Front in Viet Nam in the 1960’s, but these are different organizations from “Front National” in France.
I try to not write off every Frenchman as a socialist. I worked with a Polish fellow recently who enlightened me on the conservatism of some Europeans that has persisted even until today. IMHO, there are more than a few in France who see the bloated bureaucracy as a mistake and are very desirous of seeing more small business and entrepreneurialism. The following site popped up on quick search of
france entrepreneur
http://www.french-property.com/guides/france/working-in-france/micro-entrepreneur-business-france/
Interesting...
Yes, and the very next sentence on wik reads...
“She claims that the main groups of CAC 40 only pay 8% of corporate tax whereas the small offices/home offices, the small and medium entreprises, the craftsmen and the shopkeepers fully pay 33.33%.”
I don’t think 1 single small business owner in America would disagree with the complaint that big business winds up with an effective tax rate far below their own, and this is enabled by the U.S. tax code.
Big business can afford to do all sorts of things to lower their corporate income tax bill that small businesses find either too expensive, complex, or divergent from their business operations to do.
The local ice cream stand grossing $600k per year can’t possibly generate the tax credits that General Electric can, year in and year out, for decades.
IMHO, almost every small business owner in America would be fine with replacing the entire corporate income tax with a flat percentage of gross revenue like a sales tax, where General Electric, the ice cream stand and every other business in America would pay exactly the same rate of x% of their revenue, which would be remitted every month with a simple form (like sales tax) that would take about a minute to fill out. No more complexity. The only stumbling block politically is all the business owners who are successfully keeping their effective tax rate very low; they, of course, would prefer the current system.
The big challenge for both France and the U.S., along with every other nation, is to get the largest firms to pay the same effective rates of tax as the smallest. Marine is right on target with that complaint, IMHO.
It’s perhaps difficult for American conservatives who have never owned a small business to see the small/big business differences. The typical conservative line is “pro-business”, but if one has never owned one’s own small business, one has not experienced the excrutiating pain of being squeezed by both government AND big business. Small business is not a bunch of communists. IMHO, those that have never owned a small business should keep in mind “what if I wanted to start my own business someday ?” Would I have the right ? How high would my effective tax rate be ? How high would my competitor’s effective tax rate be ? Would I be able to compete against big business on a level playing field ?
If Ben Franklin and others had no legal right to start a newspaper, or were pushed out of business early on by a big corporate newspaper owned by loyalists or wealthy British citizens, where would we be ?
I’m very glad for those sources. It can be very difficult to nail down the actual ideologies of movements which have never had the opportunity to implement their legislation. Ron Paul is a good example: supposedly a fervent pro-lifer, but he routinely finds the most arcane reasons to side with the most extreme positions of crazed leftists, such as voting to allow cable monopolies to show unscrambled porn during the daytime (1), or permitting the importation of minors across state lines by government workers to obtain abortions which would be illegal in the minors’ home states (2).
(1) Paul cited his disapproval of state-created monopolies
(2) Paul cited the states’ rights in tolerating the state essentially kidnapping children to kill babies. No, Paul, you spawn of Satan; that’s the very reason the commerce clause DOES exist: to allow Congress to regulate commerce when its interstate scope prevents effective intrastate regulation. And killing babies to those sick bastards who run baby-killing plants is simply commerce.
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