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| Europe |
| Le Pen in sight of regional election triumph in Frankistan |
| 2003-09-19 |
| There are many grounds for mistrusting Jean-Marie Le Pen, but electoral prediction is not generally among them. When he hazards a guess the veteran leader of France’s far right is rarely wrong. And this, he said yesterday, is the most winnable election of all his long career. Even his opponents agree that next spring’s regional polls, the first since the presidential and parliamentary elections last year which produced the biggest upset in the country’s postwar political history, will probably give the pugnacious National Front president his greatest chance yet of a historic victory. "I see things very clearly," he said yesterday, formally beginning his campaign for the presidency of the Provence, Alpes and CÃŽte d’Azur (Paca) region before a battery of TV cameras in a chartered yacht replete with champagne and canapes in the Baie des Anges, off Nice. "I am confident that here, finally, we will emerge as the winners of a three-way battle." And remember, death is not an option: Le Pen or Chirac. Discuss. Many observers think Mr Le Pen may be right. The anti-immigrant Front has come close to controlling France’s 20 regional councils before, notably at the last polls in 1998, when several conservative council presidents tried to make ultimately unsuccessful deals with far-right leaders in an effort to retain their seats. This time its chances of winning an outright victory, particularly in its heartlands in eastern and southern France, may be even better. The Socialist party is still reeling from the events of last year, when their The early flush of Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s centre-right government has faded, and its approval rating is falling steadily on issues such as its allegedly inept handling of this summer’s heatwave and its unpopular reforms of state pensions, the civil service and the national health system. Inept French government? But they train their young people for this! Nowhere is the risk of the Front gaining its first taste of serious power higher than in Paca, where Mr Le Pen won a record 28% of the vote in the second round of last year’s presidential election. Unemployment there, at 11.5%, is more than two points higher than the national average, encouraging support for the far-right. Thierry Mariani, a conservative MP who has successfully fought off Front challenges in his southern constituency Vaucluse, said the prospects of Mr Le Pen becoming regional president - with control over a large budget for economic development, education, transport and culture - were "terrifyingly real". "Here the Front can count on as many votes as both the right and the left," he said. "It would of course be a catastrophe: every regional decision would be politicised." "Instead of being left to people like me!" Mr Mariani knows what he is talking about. In the four southern French town halls it has controlled, Orange, Vitrolles, Marignane and Toulon, the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote "traditional" French culture. Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held "non-French" events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications. Michel Vauzelle, the current Socialist president of the regional council, is equally pessimistic. "There’s a very big risk," he said. "Neither the left nor the right can win by saying, ’If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll merge to keep out the Front.’ That would hand them victory on a plate." Blinking in the sun on the deck of the Star CÃŽte d’Azur yesterday, Mr Le Pen brimmed with an unaccustomed confidence. "True, the president of a region does not have the same powers as the president of the republic," he said. "But victory here will send a very, very strong signal. ... After the earthquake of the presidential elections, it will mark the beginning of fundamental change for France." Le Pen kicks over the first domino, and the radical Muslims in the cities do the rest. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #17 About what? I think that your good friend understandably doesn't like people pissing on her front door (regardless of whether they are Somalis or not) but I also think that the objection to "non-assimilating" foreigners sounds a bit like the objections to the non-assimilating Jews, and all other peoples who kept to their own communities and customs throughout the centuries. And I think the rest of the objections are objections about poor people (as immigrants generally are) coming to the neighbourhood, rather than about foreigners instead. And I think that people are seriously fooling themselves if they think that nationalism can return to Europe without the return of anti-semetism and fascism as a whole. And they are also fooling themselves if they think that nationalism can return to Europe without a repeat of Bosnia and the ethnic cleansings there. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-20 9:52:16 AM |
| #16 Umm Aris--you forgot the rest of my comment.... what do you think? |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-9-20 2:07:06 AM |
| #15 "but are Greeks a race?" Well since "races" are human conventions, that'd be "No", but then again "black" and "white" aren't objective "races" either, as no such thing exists. E.g. there's more genetic division inside the African peoples than there's in the whole rest of the world combined. So it makes no sense to group them all as "black", as if that's a "race". Would it make you feel better in this linguistic curiosity if I told you that in Greek we use the same word for "race" that we use for "tribe"? "Fylh", pronouced "Fee-lee"? It makes little difference if jlc insults me for my colour-tribe (aka "white") or my ethnic-tribe (aka "Greek"). I was born into both and chose neither. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-19 11:34:33 PM |
| #14 Aris, I usually agree with you--but are Greeks a race? Obviously jlm is a French fascist who tries to curry favor on Rantburg by parroting the latest Bushie line carried to it's logical conclusion--xenophobia, fascism, etc. But I do think many Rantbourgeois have a point about the return of nationalism to Old Europe--according to many of my friends in France, Italy and Germany--they are being overrun by a foreign culture that does not assimilate EVER in much the same way Texas, Florida and California have been overrun--colonialism in reverse. I don't know enough about Greece to know if the same thing is going on there--but a good friend of mine in Florence is tired of Somalis pissing on her front door |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-9-19 11:13:59 PM |
| #13 Point. I had to make that first post and show Le Pen's true colors to the people here who had thought he was just a Berlusconi rather than a Heider... but I probably shouldn't have bothered to mention my opinion about jlc in said post. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-19 10:52:36 PM |
| #12 Stop feeding trolls. That applies to the brown ones as well. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-9-19 10:34:19 PM |
| #11 "The ad hominem attacks above directed at me by Katsaris I will take as a compliment" You do that. Your various insults against my country I will take as nothing but continuing proof of the stupidity of racists of all kinds; people who somehow think that when insulting someone the focal point of one's attack shouldn't be his personality or individual deeds, but rather his race, his colour, his ancestry or his ethnic group. When you stop insulting Greece I can perhaps start insulting Iran or China or the Klingon Empire or whatever, but you'll still haven't made a single point about my person, except within the confines of your miniscule little racist mind. "I figures that you wouldn't elaborate on what exactly is so amusing about my statements." Oh, my, let me count the ways. The ways that you attack EU of being "Orwellian" and yet at the same time support the kinds of people who *would* turn Europe into an Orwellian nightmare? The ways you fail to understand that the anti-EU hatred of the Neonazis is one of the signs that EU is moving the continent into the right direction? Your failure to understand that the threat of nationalistic fascism rising again is one of the things EU was created to combat, not something which "suddenly" appeared to be a blow against the EU? Your failure to understand that the fact said threat is real is one of the things that has made me such a vocal supporters of the EU? The fact your rhetoric sounds so close to that of a communist, naming the extremists as a glad response to the ills of society (e.g. "the socialist nanny state") rather than the usual attitude that conservatives claim to have about personal responsibility? And your "they had it coming" attitude about how the fascists are a response that pleases you to the oh-so-horrible evils of the "socialist nanny-state" EU (but in several continental countries EU was a force for economic liberalization, not for socialism, didn't you know that either?) is pretty identical to the response other people have had about the islamofascists' attack on the United States on 9/11. You see -- all the things that made your comments very amusings are the same things that made them very sad as well... |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-19 7:41:23 PM |
| #10 The ad hominem attacks above directed at me by Katsaris I will take as a compliment. The rest of Jlc's ravings would have been amusing if they weren't so sad. I figures that you wouldn't elaborate on what exactly is so amusing about my statements. This from a citizen of one of the most anti-American states in old Europe. The more drivel that I hear coming out of your mouth and that of your fellow countrymen, the more I feel that Greece should of remained part of Turkey (the Ottoman empire). By the way, is Greece still the poorest nation in the EU? If it wasn't for all the EU money since the 70's untill now, no doubt Greece would still be a third world shithole. No wonder you're scared shitless about far right-wing radicals gaining more power in Germany/France; they will certainly forcibly remove Greece from the EU money teat. |
| Posted by: jlc 2003-9-19 6:19:52 PM |
| #9 The part of my comment above which was directed to Anonymous was meant to go to another thread. Apologies. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-19 4:22:20 PM |
| #8 Jlc is the philo-Nazi scum from earlier discussions. The fact alone that he likes Lepen gives you an indication of what Lepen is like. The rest of Jlc's ravings would have been amusing if they weren't so sad. Badanov> Here: http://www.adl.org/international/le-pen_new.asp "Le Pen has repeatedly made statements that attempt to diminish or deny the Holocaust, once remarking that the Nazi gas chambers were "a mere detail" in history." "One of Le Pen's more egregious comments, evoking widespread protest from parties across the political spectrum and from human rights and Jewish organizations, was that "the races are not equal." "Pen and his aides have also consistently espoused anti-Semitism. In February 1997, for example, Le Pen accused President Chirac of being "in the pay of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the notorious B'nai B'rith." Make no mistake, badanov, on this matter jlc is well-informed and knows how to recognize a fellow philo-Nazi as Le Pen is. Anonymous> Given the that you haven't chosen a nick, I hope you don't expect me to remember what previous discussion of ours you are referring to. I don't bother trying to decipher whether the "Anonymous" people of one day are the same as the anonymous people of another day, so you may have just as well started posting today where I'm concerned. In short - I really don't remember or understand what your comments about you not being a boy or a male refers to. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-19 4:18:44 PM |
| #7 badanov, you misundertood my post: I agree with you. My assertion that fascism is returning to Europe is somewhat over the top, but only a little. The important thing to note, IMO, is that this is a reaction to the stiffling Orwellian, socialist nanny superstate being coerced on the hapless Euro proletariat by the "I know what's best for you" socialist tyrant elites of these countries. That and the fact that their discredited, Jurassic, socialist cradle-to-grave nanny policies have created only about 4 new (govm't) jobs in all the EU over the last 5 years. Now that some of masses are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee and, in effect, giving the beaurocrats a collective fuck you, is just plain delicious. |
| Posted by: jlc 2003-9-19 1:47:45 PM |
| #6 Oh goody, another Franco-French War looms. |
| Posted by: Hiryu 2003-9-19 1:04:37 PM |
| #5 HIP, HIP HOORAY!!! First the brownshirts in Germany planning to blow up mosques, now this! Boy, things are looking up in old Europe, wouldn'tcha say? The return of Fascism is coming to Europe folks. DEAL WITH IT! One of us needs help. Kindly explain how stopping subsidies of hostile culture is fascism. I think Le Pen is good for France; I think he will clean up French politics from its drippingly rotten socialist policies. I keep looking at what Chirac is doing and what Le Pen wants to do and I see no facsism, just French nationalism. In my opinion, pride in one's country can't be a bad thing. |
| Posted by: badanov 2003-9-19 12:47:31 PM |
| #4 HIP, HIP HOORAY!!! First the brownshirts in Germany planning to blow up mosques, now this! Boy, things are looking up in old Europe, wouldn'tcha say? The return of Fascism is coming to Europe folks. DEAL WITH IT! |
| Posted by: jlc 2003-9-19 12:33:41 PM |
| #3 He looks like the Pat Buchanen of France. Don't half of the Front's policies violate EU mandates? |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-19 9:36:21 AM |
| #2 the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote "traditional" French culture. Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held "non-French" events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications. Am I missing something here? This all sounds like good, solid French conservatism, something that has been lacking for decades in France. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-9-19 6:41:27 AM |
| #1 If Le Pen's mob won in the region and then in the republic: would France decend into civil war with the resident Ummah? |
| Posted by: Anon1 2003-9-19 2:45:50 AM |