Posted on 04/21/2002 6:50:43 PM PDT by summer
Chirac is what France has right now.
I agree with you, Dog. This article is all over the place and makes no sense, just like all the other Le Pen articles written this weekend. But the inconsistancies are truly breathtaking!
Every dawgone one of the articles calls him some variation of an "extreme right winger," yet they also call him a racist (leftist characteristic), anti-Semite (leftist), nationalist (leftist), fascist (leftist), etc.
The Euro-Coms have been slamming "right wingers" in the U.S. for supporting Israel and the Jews, while they openly loathe them in Europe! So which is it? Are right wingers "extreme" because we support the Jews? And if Le Pen is an anti-Semite, how does that connect him with "the right"?
And, furthermore, I've been asking for years now...What is an "extreme right-winger"? What are people aftraid of? -- do these prats who fear the "extreme right-winger" worry that he might legislate them more of their freedoms back? It is shocking that the same "outrage" and "horror" (Neil Kinnock, UK socialist) doesn't get expressed when someone like Jospin gets into their govenment. No -- instead, electing some Eurocrat with designs on usurping more of their liberties, is just fine with them.
Do you think Le Pen is anti-semitic? I keep trying to find actual evidence that he is, but all I get are regurgitations of the "detail of history" quote. That doesn't seem like enough to "convict," imho...
Very curious to hear what you think.
I'd love to get your thoughts on the subject.
I don't think much of Le Pen. However, the problem with the French is immigration as it is with other European countries. He's a nationalist and immigration is a strong element of his platform.
A lot of the paranoia you're hearing is from the EUrotrash elites, mainly socialists and EUrophiles. Interesting that this was the same kind of nonsense propaganda from the left - "far right" or "extreme right" phobia attendant to Berlusconi's election. Of course Berlusconi, is, if anything, quite the opposite from what the EUrotrash propagandized about.
The real story here is simply the disorganization of the French left. There were 9 leftist parties running in the election. Le Pen moved up less than 1% of the vote since last time; the change was that the socialist party plummeted past his regular vote total. It did so because the splinter parties of the hard left all gained, and there are more of them than ever.
This reflects increasing radicalism on the left, and intellectual and ideological incoherence there. In the last couple of years (since Seattle in particular), a large portion of the left has repudiated the center-left idea of globalist soft socialism, as "McWorld" - too establishment, too capitalist, too pro-American.
There is a shift rightward here too, but a small one. The median voter falls in the center-right parties between Chirac's Gaullists and Jospin's socialists. Chirac will win, not far from that median position. The left gets no shot at the presidency in the second round as a penalty of electoral disorganization - too many splinter parties dividing the left-of-center vote.
That splintering in turn reflects the incentives of the French parliamentary electoral system. Which uses proportional representation (for enough of the process to matter), which encourages factionalism. When one part of the political spectrum is less organized than another, it makes little difference for parliament (so it happens), but a big difference for presidential elections.
In pure winner take all systems like the US, coalitions are built before the general election, in the two main parties. In pure proportional representation, coalitions are built after the election, in parliamentary coalitions to support this or that candidate for prime minister. But France's hybrid system gets the splintered parties of proportional representation, and then requires electoral organization for presidential elections.
The parties split apart to attract each nuance of voters in parliamentary elections. That gets them seats in parliament. They do not then easily reorganize into electoral compacts for the presidential election, because they have cultivated and stressed their differences for parliamentary election purposes.
So Christine Boutin splits from the UDF, Chevenement splits from the socialists, Megret splits from the National Front, the communists split into several parties, the greens have a few of their own. There are 13 parties to the left of Chirac, 3 to the right counting his own. The hard left and far right each have 20% of the vote, but the former is split among 7 parties while the latter is almost all Le Pen.
The greater disorganization on the left reflects a real development, not just the strange electoral incentives of the hybrid system. The new element on the scene is that the left does not know what it wants anymore. The old ideal of globalist soft socialism is rejected by at least half of the left. But they don't know what they want in its place.
Like the Seattle protesters, they agree only on what they are against, not on what they are for. The French left is becoming ungovernable, and its voters are putting radical pieties of various stripes above access to power, and governing. That was Jospin's failure. He leaves the center left without a leader and the whole French left without any organization.
That, and not Le Pen, is the real story here. Le Pen is just the messenger of that failure, and his getting to the second round just ensures Chirac's victory (which was probably anyway, since the median voter was center right in the first round). Chirac will just win by a larger margin, 75-25 instead of 55-45.
I think the funniest thing is to see how the left is forced to flock around Chirac.
But it will remove many third-way socialists who were ecstatic about the Balkan War. The likes of Andre Glucksman who wanted to atone for his Maoist past by bombing Serbia because, in his imagination, it is another Nazi holocaust in Europe, not nasty multiparty ethnic conflict, where Muslims shelled and sniped fellow Muslims to present it as Serb atrocity and kill Serbs when they can. These people used to see the face of Nazi-like evil on French and German societies of 60's. They thought they are figthing Nazis again, their parents only to find that they become like Nazis, hijacking together with PLO terrorists and rooting for Pol Pot who administered final solution to Cambodian people.
Disillusioned, they try to find another way to be relevant. But no matter what they do, their underlying mentality remains the same. Jumping onto something which has even fraction of resemblance to their image of evil, ending up with creating more problems than solving them. The whole earth is their playground for atonement and utopia building. As a result, we inherit ruins rather than better world, never an utopia. A Russian woman once told me that Russia is so big that communists can screw up in one part of Russia and then move to anther part and screw it up again. Until, they ran out of places to screw up. If Le Pen buries these socialists, that is the worst humiliation to these snobby scourges. I do not have any problem with it.
"Will Le Pen's elevation to the runoff round likely contribute to a National Front presence in the legislature?"
No, it makes no difference in parliamentary representation. The disorganization of the left will make some difference, so I'd expect Le Pen to show minor gains in seats, but nothing like this outcome because of the proportional representation system.
The next parliamentary elections (scheduled for this summer) will probably produce a spectrum of opinion in parliament akin to the popular vote in the first round. A few of the smallest parties will have less than their share, which will weaken the left and the smaller center parties, compared to the larger ones - socialist, Gaullist, and Le Pen.
The center right will probably control parliament, needing alliances with the centrists to do so, and perhaps some power sharing with the socialists to exclude Le Pen (as was the rule in Italy throughout the cold war, when Christian Dems and Socialists were in almost every government). Right now a coalition of the leftists parties has a narrow majority, but they will probably lose a bit in the next election.
"Will Chirac attempt to appropriate and domesticate some of Le Pen's opposition to immigration in the present climate of high crime and anti-Israel mob violence?"
Both Chevenement on the left and Chirac on the center right have and will continue to sound themes like control of crime in order to try to pull votes from Le Pen. Without too much success, probably. Only radical Arabs and the communists are in favor of mob violence, for different reasons.
"Or is Chirac so indebted to the industrial sector that he must continue to support mass immigration"
Immigration is supported by the center of the political spectrum, from Chirac to Jospin, and splits the hard left about 50-50. Some protectionist workers are against it, as is Chevenement. Le Pen will pull no more than the hard right and a modest portion of the hard left over the issue. Chirac may well stand a bit closer to him on the subject to reduce the "bleed", but will not advocate any fundamental policy shift.
He doesn't need to. This result puts the RPR in the cat-bird's seat. Every government will exclude Le Pen, which means every goverment needs 50 out of 80 of the rest of the spectrum. He's got 20 of it himself. Only a grand coalition of practically everybody except Chirac and Le Pen could possibly govern against Chirac's RPR. And there is nothing the other 13 parties could possibly agree on, especially with 20% of the vote belonging to 7 hard left parties who can't agree on anything, even among themselves. Especially if he maintains a bright line of difference between himself and Le Pen (collapsing it is the only thing that might united everybody else against him), his bloc is indispensible to any governing coalition.
"what of French labor's natural, albeit carefully suppressed, opposition to the low-wage competition"
A tiny portion of the hard left trumpets the issue. But the French hard left is a basket case. It does not really represent workers, but ideological allegiance, young people, students, and half a dozen versions of unworkable marxist or green cant. Which is not the result of careful suppression of anything, it is the result of representation of the cockeyed intellectual fads of the modern left, which often originate in France. And to them, multiculturalist pieties are far more important identifiers than anything about wages. Malthusian economics doesn't sell to people hyped up about Foucault. It is 200 years out of date.
"Can the average disgruntled or unemployed worker really be counted on by the corporate-backed Chirac just because he's to the left of Le Pen"
Yes, easily. Probably by 4 to 1. Wait and see - or if you prefer, I will bet you any sum you like that Le Pen loses in the second round.
"Doesn't the crime and cultural discord produced by mass immigration hold the potential to confuse orthodox left/right political dynamics?"
Nope, and you are repeating yourself. It is true that anti-globalism is a modern issue splitting the left internally, and part of the factionalism seen there is a result of a new cleavage that "confuses orthodox left/right". But even Chevenement, who sounds some of these themes, will not touch Le Pen with a 10 foot pole.
He will present himself as a leftist way of being anti-corporate, but he won't go near political alliance with Le Pen. Neither will his voters. Those concerned with these issues but unwilling to accept the rest of Le Pen's baggage will just go to Chevenement in the summer parliamentary elections.
Reasonable questions, if a bit loaded. The net result will still be that Chirac's RPR will govern France, because now nobody can govern the country without them. The left is in disarray and some further shake-ups can be expected there. Until they find a way to bridge the gap between the traditional soft socialism goal of the center-left and the anti-globalist radicalism of the now splintered hard left, though, they will be secondary players in center-right dominated governments.
Jospin got infinitely more publicity on French TV. Le Pen's posters were almost all defaced--showing who really sought to interfere with a free election. While I do not speak French, I have never seen anything very extreme, quoted in the English language assaults on Le Pen. What is extreme is the characterization of Le Pen by his enemies and supposedly "objective" journalists. He is the victim of the same sort of smear campaign as American Conservatives have been subjected to at least since Goldwater.
Of course, 17% is not that great a showing. But when the French Socialist and Communist vote, between them falls to 20%, France really is moving to the Right.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Jospin got infinitely more publicity on French TV. Le Pen's posters were almost all defaced--showing who really sought to interfere with a free election. While I do not speak French, I have never seen anything very extreme, quoted in the English language assaults on Le Pen. What is extreme is the characterization of Le Pen by his enemies and supposedly "objective" journalists. He is the victim of the same sort of smear campaign as American Conservatives have been subjected to at least since Goldwater.
Of course, 17% is not that great a showing. But when the French Socialist and Communist vote, between them falls to 20%, France really is moving to the Right.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.