Posted on 10/07/2011 4:01:11 PM PDT by Cincinna
Amneville, a town in the Moselle region of northeastern France, does not look like a fault-line in the euro zone. The smell of grilled chicken wafts over the marketplace on a recent Saturday morning, the CD vendor plays German oom-pah music, and the sky behind the ochre clock tower is a steely blue.
Yet the single currency is a target for an unusual politician canvassing stallholders and shoppers in this town near the German border.
Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, was an activist with France's leading trade union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later he joined the far-left "New Anticapitalist Party". This year he switched party again, but not on a leftist ticket.
He joined France's famed far-right National Front, and he was not the only one.
This year, five trade unionists have joined the minority party that made its name with the anti-immigrant rhetoric of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since January, Le Pen's daughter Marine has been in charge of the party, and Engelmann says she is a magnet.
"It really is the arrival of Marine Le Pen that convinced me to join the National Front," Engelmann told Reuters. "She has an economic program that is much more geared to defending the little people, the workers, the popular classes of France."
Marine Le Pen is reshaping France's political landscape and the tremors go beyond people like this reconstructed Trotskyist. Her father played up worries about immigration, but the anxiety Marine addresses is economic and deep. The National Front's new target is the oppressive power of global finance, and the mood she is tapping spreads across Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.yahoo.com ...
Exactly! There were a lot of communists in the German National Socialist Party when it first started.
They were all communists in the beginning. Fascists and Nazis just didn't want Uncle Joe running the show, international Communist movement.
Communists/Nazis/Fascists/Socialists/Liberals/Progressives = same-o same-o.
yitbos
Disagree with you views on MLP. She is more representative of the French people than its political elites who have allowed their country to be overrun with immigrants who are not being assimilated. They are taking jobs and increasing welfare costs. What is going on in France should be a cautionary tale for the US.
:’D I could be snarky, and say, “that explains her appeal to French voters”, but I won’t.
Whoops, well, I would have edited that out, but I’d already clicked “Post”. ;’)
Conservative is where we are.
Fascism and Communism are exactly the same thing, not polar opposites. What someone sez about themselves isn’t revealing — how they behave is. That’s the reason that a child molester’s having “self-identified” as heterosexual means nothing when they’ve been molesting victims of the same sex (NAMBLA members, for example, behave the same way).
Sorry, I don’t like women in Nazi uniforms unless they’re tied up.
Whoops, said too much.
Yes, he was.
Exactly! Nazism=National Socialism=Fascism=Socialism.
All far Left, totalitarian, Statist systems that always favor the will of the State over the will of the people. Just a question if degree!
MLP’s views are well known. I believe I stated them clearly and accurately.
She is an anti-Semite, anti-Protestant, anti-American Statist. Her world view is the view if a leftist, big State, all powerful controlling centralized government. That is not really the world view of the French today.
The fact that she is anti-immigration speaks more to her own xenophobia & intolerance than it dies to solving the huge economic, social, and political problems that France faces today.
MLP is not anti-Islamist. She consistently sides with Muslem countries and the Palestinians against the State of Israel.
Remember, even a broken clock is right twice a day!
Two sides of the same totalitarian coin!
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LOL. Can you tell me what leader of any European country is any different in terms of their world view? Even so-called conservatives like David Cameron believe the National Health Service is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have lived in Europe a total of 13 years in five different countries. Social democracy is the norm. They are all leftist, big state, all powerful controlling centralized government advocates. None of them could be called Jeffersonian Democrats.
The fact that she is anti-immigration speaks more to her own xenophobia & intolerance than it dies to solving the huge economic, social, and political problems that France faces today.
What nonsense. Immigration is destroying France. It is not about being intolerant. Sarkozy has said that multiculturalism was a "failure," warning that such a concept fostered extremism. He said, "If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community," he continued. "And if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France".
Sarkozy's comments echo those of other European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Are they intolerant zenophobes? Immigration is a major issue in Europe and becoming more so with each passing day. Branding people as bigots and nativists because they disagree with the numbers of immigrants entering the country and their failure to assimilate is the same tactic that Bush, McCain Rove, and the Left do in this country when discussing illegal immigration and amnesty.
Le Pen is not the radical you paint her as. She has struck a chord with the people who believe that the ruling elite is disconnected from the public and their concerns. The Tea Party originated from a similar dissatisfaction with the ruling elite. Le Pen may just emerge as one of the two main candidates for the Presidency. There is a strong desire by the Frrench people to preserve their culture and patrimony.
MLP believes in defending France’s language, culture and history. That is conservative. Bad economic policy can be reversed. A France which is no longer French is not reversible. The Gaullist and Socialist are traitors to France and Europe.
That is a very simplistic answer to a very complex question.
Marine of Arc riding in to save Christian Europe from Islamic hordes? Europe in general, and France in particular, need saving from top heavy centralized Statist totalitarian governments. Tyranny, right or left, is the enemy of liberty.
The UMP, PS, and FN are all dirigiste.
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