Gun control in action
Posted on 04/21/2002 8:39:25 PM PDT by vance
French Police Fire Tear Gas at Anti-Le Pen Protest
By Catherine Bremer
PARIS (Reuters) - French police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators in Paris early on Monday as thousands protested against the shock triumph of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of presidential elections. A Reuters correspondent said police with riot shields drove back a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators and fired tear gas after small groups of protesters began throwing metal barriers in the historic Place de la Concorde.
Witnesses said protesters wearing crash helmets smashed the front windows of the famous Parisian restaurant, Maxim's.
Others climbed up scaffolding outside the Hotel Crillon overlooking the cobble-stoned Place de la Concorde, the city's smartest hotel often used to host visiting foreign leaders.
Earlier police said there had been isolated cases of vandalism but no major disturbances and no arrests.
Street marches which earlier had swelled to an estimated 10,000 people were beginning to wind down, witnesses said.
Marchers also massed in Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble and Strasbourg, where about 4,000 demonstrators shouted "Le Pen, you're finished. The French are on the streets" and "Fascism shall not pass."
Le Pen, the 73-year-old leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-Europe National Front party, pushed Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place in the contest.
Jospin announced on Sunday that he would quit politics after the May 5 runoff round, which polling institutes now forecast Chirac, a conservative, will win by a landslide.
Several of the demonstrations played on corruption allegations that have swirled around Chirac. "Vote sleaze, not fascist," protestors shouted in the northern city of Lille.
Le Pen, who once called the Holocaust a detail of history, played down some of his more extreme rhetoric during the campaign, which he focused on law and order in a response to widespread public concern over rising crime.
He dismissed the fascist label some of his opponents have given him in remarks on French television. "I have nothing to do with fascism," Le Pen said. "Fascism is protesting the result of a vote violently in the street."
Gun control in action
I do not suspect that Le Pen will win in the run off. There are still too many, with too long a history, of identification with the Left in France. If most of them who bother to vote, join the large French Center under Chirac, Chirac will indeed win by the landslide predicted. Nevertheless, the gradual upward trend for Le Pen--I believe that he was at 14% in 1995--is encouraging. That he defeated the Socialist candidate, and obtained 5 times the vote of the Communist candidate, are truly good omens.
Of course, Le Pen is not the Far Right in French politics, but the Far Right today are so outnumbered that they do not even field candidates. However, there are still those who would restore the Bourbons--which is the true Far Right in France.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I have seen no evidence that Le Pen is anti-semitic. His frequently quoted comment on the Gas Chambers is certainly no endorsement of such cruel atrocities. At most it is a bit of reverse hyperbole--i.e. over-emphasizing his disagreement with the emphasis that some put on that aspect of World War II. He has certainly not suggested anything adverse to French Jews, that I have seen; and indeed his program for dealing with the Algerian question, would tend to be protective of French Jews, who have lately been victims of Algerian violence. As for his attitude towards the Algerians, themselves: That is not based on their semitic roots, but on their being incongrous to the continuity of a French France.
Yes, the mainstream media in France does appear to be much like the mainstream media in most of the rest of the world: They view all issues via a tremendous Leftwing bias. (This is a result of the Leftward drift in most of the verbal professions during the 20th Century, a theme we have dealt with at the Web Site.)
I find Le Pen's strong showing a very positive event.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Seriously, the press always paints someone as extremist when they're running on a platform that is against The Plan.
Tuor
Thanks for your detailed response....now I understand the bigger picture in France.
But if Le Pen's strong showing isn't alarming in itself, The Weekly Standard's Christopher Caldwell http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/162pmono.asp
argues that Le Pen's ideology "has a great deal in common with that of the French hard left":
*** QUOTE ***
It begins with globalism and ends in an alliance with (and abetting of) anti-Semites. But whereas the old right's anti-Semitism is vestigial and utterly hemmed in by French constitutional practice, this new left's anti-Semitism--which operates through an identification with Islamicist ideology that was spreading like poison even before Zacharias Moussaoui replaced Camembert as France's most famous export--is activist, violent, and chic.
*** END QUOTE ***
There have been a number of ugly incidents lately, where Algerian and other Third World Moslems living in France have attacked French Jews. So I suspect that Le Pen is actually drawing some Jewish support now, whether or not the so called leaders are attacking him.
The problem with both the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard is that they have a sort of "tunnel vision" on the subject of Globalization. They are so preoccupied with the business benefits of the global economy, that they have lost sight of important cultural issues. In their own way, they are as far "out to sea," as some of the most radical of the demonstrators against globalism.
I personally favor a maximum of economic freedom. But I would shun, socially, and denounce as the worst form of blackguard, anyone who operates on the basis that profits are the only thing that matters. While it may not be for Government to tell anyone where they can invest their money, or where to buy or sell goods--except in a wartime situation--that certainly does not excuse anyone from the normal claims on loyalty--or respect for the normal ties of consanguinity or the legitimate claims of community, State or National interest.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
He also represents a unique strand in French political life which has been there since the 1950's - that of the populist maverick who doesn't like foreigners. His programme has shifted back and forth over time but not on that point. And given the street crime which is disproportionately committed by immigrant youth - the average François is apparently fed up with socialist piffle in reply.
Regards, Ivan
Well, but hasn't that--with the exception, perhaps of Bastiat--been pretty much French history? France lost her chance to achieve the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic economic miracle, when she expelled the Huguenots in 1688. (While that has been attributed to religious intolerance, it really reflected, in my opinion, economic jealousy.) She has never really been willing to trust a truly entrepreneurial class. I don't mean to be overly critical. I love the food and the pretty girls in Paris. But is there any real movement in France equivalent to the renaissance that Maggie Thatcher worked in Britain?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You are right to suggest however that the state has had much larger role in political and economic life in France than in England or America. It has been their greatest source of weakness.
Regards, Ivan
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