Even with the rightward trend in many European countries, especially since 9/11, I was surprised by Jean-Marie Le Pen's second-place finish in the French presidential elections. His placement sets up a race between a conservative candidate, current President Jacques Chirac, who received 19% of the record low vote, and one of the most extreme conservative positions in French recent history. LePen, long known as an unrepentent racist and xenophobe, once referred to the Holocaust as a "detail of history." He appeared to back away from some of his most extreme stands, but still wants to return the death penalty and impose stiffer sentences for criminals, he seeks to curb France's liberal abortion laws, and has denounced France's immigration policies.

It appears he captured many working-class and poor voters who previously would have voted for the Communists. In his speech last night, he made an appeal to people of "all races, religions" and backgrounds to address many of France's current problems and issues, and also tilted strongly against the European Union and globalization, two hobbyhorses of the Left in the U.S. and many Latin American countries, though this appears to be a major issue, particularly with regard to sovereignty, among the Right in Europe. Some of his comments had a leftist tinge, which only proves that it's not always such a good idea to categorize ideas according to these labels.

What do people think about this vote? Paul Krugman, in his column in today's New York Times notes that in the U.S., the Republican Party, in the guise of people like Tom DeLay, has co-opted the kind of extremism that LePen espouses; here much of it is mainstream. Chirac, who is from the Gaullist, conservative cloth, is probably closer to Clintonian Democratism in many ways; market solutions, social liberalism, economic conservatism.

Many other European governments, like Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Denmark, have conservatives in power; and the trend is showing in both the Netherlands and Germany, where the Democratic Socialists just suffered a major defeat in eastern Saxony-Anhalt. The next Chancellor of that country may be from the right, Edmund Stoiber of Bavaria.

Even Blair's Labour Party has moved far to the right of its traditional, socialist-leaning positions, or those of the once center-left Liberal Party. Hungary, however, went the other way. Whither France, whither Europe?

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: fantomas ]

This, people, is why we always have to vote. I find it interesting that the entire spectrum of French political figures has gotten behind Chirac. The French are mortified. It's their own fault because of their apathy.

This is like Pat Buchanan mounting a serious challange for president. *shudder*

As for Europe leaning right, well that's just history. Sometime the pendulum moves to the right and then a decade or two later it moves to the center and then to the left and so on and so forth. As long as there isn't too much damage or bloodshed, before it swings to the center again, then the world will be lucky. I, however, am a pessimist.

And keep in mind that LePen, who has been running since '74, got 15% in 1995. His rise to 17% last Sunday, while noteworthy, did not exactly come out of the blue - to me, the real story was the total abandonment of "mainline" socialism by those to the left of Jospin - the Trotskyites, Greens and other left independents mustered about 10.5% of the vote (not even counting the 3% or so mustered by the fading "official" Communist party). Even half of those votes going to Jospin would not only have put him in the runoff, he would have been the top vote-getter.

I don’t want to sound like I underestimate the danger of fascism and xenophobia. We’ve had the case of Austria already. We have many people right here in our country who want to suspend constitutional rights because we’re under attack. Our own current Ptolemaic view of the world, where only our interests are worthy of consideration, has reached extremes. Some of our slogans (e.g. “with us or against us”) are thinly disguised xenophobia.

That said, I still believe that the majority of people here and in France respect individual freedoms, and I trust that a lot of this posturing (“I don’t agree with LePen’s more extreme views, I only voted for him as protest”) will give way to reason. Right now the cynical French are rallying around Chirac instead of tossing the usual “they’re all the same” (sound familiar?). There is a big difference between Bush and Buchanan. And Chirac is more center than Bush, so he’s more acceptable to more people.

I know the results of this election are great fodder for the large community of French haters here in the USA. “France has always been fascist, and they have the gall (or is it gaul?) to oppose American foreign policy, bla bla bla.”

The truth is, they split the vote. Without Nader, Gore would have had NH and FL. Well, in France the greens, a women’s rights candidate, a pro-gun candidate, a splinter workers' party, favorite sons, an overseas candidate, etc., all of them got votes. Several of these got as much as 5%. Notice that LePen came second with only around 17% of the vote. Buchanan (or Robertson) would have done as well here if we had the tradition of voting for third party candidates, and if our primaries were open as in France (or some mayoral races here). Protectionism and xenophobia aren’t just right-wing or left-wing.

Remember France enacted PACS (civil unions) nationally, with relatively little bitching or backlash from the general public. Christine BOUTIN, running almost exclusively against gay civil unions, got only about 1% of the vote.

France is my second country. I often spend summers there and have many friends there. My friends are very embarrassed and I feel for them. They remember France’s horrendous record of anti-semitism and collaboration with Germany during WWII. They may not be as vocal as the Germans at admitting their guilt, but there are many people there ready to fight fascism. We need to support them.

For those of you interested in the details of the results, the French ministry of the interior’s web site is
Election results

For those of you who run international web sites, as I do (for a lesbian/gay international hospitality network), you can get anti-Le Pen banners for your site at:

Anti LePen banners
More

<edited to correct a misplaced apostrophe >

[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Tom ]

I've been talking to my friends in the states and in france ever since the early election polls indicated LePen as #2 for le second tour.
All were shocked. (Not at the 17% received by Front National. Due to the great number of abstentions, the number is relatively unchanged from previous elections. It's simply that as the pie shrinks, the percentage of the pie (by the same number) grows proportionally) But they were shocked that it really did happen.

If you think about it logically, as stated already, the 17% figure is not shocking and the extreme fracturing of the left by the myriad candidats resulting in an extremely low number for all those candidats is also logical.
The french, in their total sense of ennui and disgust about politiques francais, managed to allow le front national to sneak through.

Now after the fact, they're forced to hold up signs declaring "non" and "Honte" and asking "Who voted for Le Pen?"
That very question of who voted for Le Pen is being addressed in the french media. Le Figaro and Liberation (among others) are giving break downs of the votes. But you know what? The whole debate about "la fracture politique" and who voted for LePen will not bring any surprising news to the table.
If we include the votes for Bruno Megret, it comes to about 20% of the voting population for the extreme right. After all the rumblings about "les Norafs", "les arabs", "les pieds noirs" "les chinetoques" and basically any ethnic group not descended from Asterix and Oublix that we see in Paris as well as in other areas of France, we should not be surprised that 20% voted in such a manner. Basically that number translates into your neighbours, your co-workers, your family members. These are not just extreme radicals that voted for LePen and Megret.
These are many frustrated french who need to be informed about what the true issues are and what they mean and what the candidats are really saying.

Tom, you raise a good point comparing the strength of the far right in the U.S. and France. Somebody like LePen absolutely could take 20% of the vote here, maybe more. After all, David Duke got 40% of the votes for Governor in Louisiana--probably a majority of white Louisianans. Jesse Helms gets elected routinely for the senator's race.

[ January 03, 2003: Message edited by: Ump25 ]

Of course they are not exactly the same thing, Ump, but they are close enough to make comparisons. A liberal and a right-winger are basically the same in spirit in both countries, as best I can tell from many discussions with my friends and French newsgroups/lists I belong to (and I have lived in France too). The ways they express their basic instincts vary according to the issues at hand and the reality of the situation, and Clinton is indeed closer to Chirac than to Jospin, as fantomas stated above.
I would not dare be a columnist on French politics for le Monde, of course, but most of what other people have expressed on this thread sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Your admonition is gratuitous.

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: Tom ]

[quote]Originally posted by JC:
Somebody like LePen absolutely could take 20% of the vote here, maybe more.

---

Absolutely... I recently read an interview with the media/government critic Mark Crispin Miller where he invoked a quote by Richard Nixon that "30% of the electorate is permanently crazy." Helms and Thurmond sprung to mind...

[ January 03, 2003: Message edited by: Ump25 ]