Posted on 02/18/2006 8:53:19 PM PST by dervish
It looks like a political oxymoron, but Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front is poised to strike an alliance with France's large immigrant Muslim community.
A generation after France's right-wing party began its surge with a tough anti-immigration campaign tinged with both racism and anti-Semitism, three factors are coming into play that could spell a strategic realignment.
These factors, which are still little grasped outside political circles in France but will have an enormous impact, include:
* The Islamicization of France is largely a fait accompli. It is assumed that 6 to 8 million citizens or residents of France, 10% to 13% out of a global population of 62 million, are Muslim by now. And that the Muslim community, being more prolific, is much younger than the rest of the population: As much as 25% of French citizens or residents under 20 is Muslim, with the number reaching 40% or 50% in the big cities.
* The National Front is surprisingly popular among Muslim immigrants or second-generation Muslim citizens. For all its campaigning about immigration, Mr. Le Pen's party has always extended support to Arab and Islamic causes abroad, from Saddam's Iraq to Arafat's or Hamas Palestine, and from Al Qaeda to Iran. And it is as firmly anti-American and anti-Jewish as the Muslim community itself tends to be.
* The attraction of the French far left, which accounts for another 20% of the national vote, toward Islam, rabid anti-Americanism, and even anti-Semitism, a phenomenon underscored by the emergence of Dieudonne, a former liberal music-hall humorist who has turned into an enormously popular French equivalent of Louis Farrakhan.
'snip'
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Who was a Communist Stooge.
Did you hear Buchanan on Sean Hannity's nationally syndicated radio show earlier this week?
The guy was positively apoplectic.
I know that he lost it some time ago-maybe sometime between his abortive political alliance with New Age Marxist kook Lenora Fulani and his claim that Germany was entitled to annex Poland-but he really sounded unhinged on WABC.
It was almost as if a Muslim had a scimitar pressed to this throat as he made that phone call.
Odd.
Yes, I'm eager to learn. And I've got another question to ask you and I'm not afraid to appear ignorant - because I am. I'd appreciate it if you'd reply by private post. Thanks so much in advance.
Le Pen, like Maurras, was always more interested in the Conservative Catholics as a basis for support, rather than a basis for philosophy and plan of action.
Before, the only reason to vote for the National Front was that they were the only Pro-Life party in France. Undoubtedly this vote will now fall to the MPF.
We all had to start somewhere!
Please feel free to FReep mail me as needed (or even if you just want to...)
...how many French journalists are going to be asked to commit ritual suicide in this deal?
Thanks a million! Now comes the practice. It's kind of like learning a new language.
Well let's remember that on a percentage basis, French newpapers were much better at reprinting the Danish cartoons than the American media.
Okay the above is a bit off topic but among all the French bashing, I thought I might just remind folks of this.
I am not sure that Le Pen is not being smeared here. If he wants accomodate the presence of the Muslim population in France, he has surrendered to what he has fought against for so long. Le Pen is not a fascist, imo; however, he has always stood up for the French people when no other major political figure would. He would have made a fine leader if he had come to power a decade or two ago. Now I would favor Bruno Gollnisch to take over the helm of the Front National, if he is able to escape conviction for the most ridiciulous charge, which stems from him merely calling for a discussion of the Holocaust. (Le Pen does have Jewish and Black supporters of and members in his party, btw.)
OY FREAKING VEH, that's all I can say.
I hope he doesn't expect anyone to sing "Marechal, nous voila" to him though. Petain was respected and then pitied, but Le Pen is and will be reviled.
Nah. No exception for Blum. He was as self-interested, spineless and parochial as the rest of them. The Third Republic got exactly the government they deserved.
Per journal? Or per circulation?
A higher percentage of papers is irrelevant if only the tiny ones print it. They're no better than us.
I'd be impressed to see the cartoons appear in Le Monde or Paris Soir, but I don't remember that happening yet..
I agree. French Jews and everyone else should have supported Le Pen while the Muslim immigration explosion was in its infant stage. Calling Le Pen an anti-Semite is a red herring and inaccurate. Opposing him in years past seems to me much more "objectively anti-Semitic" than supporting him would have been.
Liberals like to call anyone they dislike "right", facts notwithstanding. Basically, US liberals represent cosmopolitan Left, whereas Le Pen represents nationalistic Left. Many Le Pen associates are former Communists, e.g. that guy who distributed pork-based charity soup in heavily Muslim neighborhoods.
The "right" in Europe began, and remains for the most part to this day, in opposition to increasing liberty and the destruction of monarchism, even absolutism. After the American Revolution, that sort of "right" either left for Canada, England or the other colonies, or accomodated itself to the republican and classical liberal principles undergirding American independence. The closest thing to American mainstream conservatism historically is probably the 18th and early 19th century English Whig party.
The European equivalents of our right are actually mostly small parties like the German 1Freie Demokraten ("Free Democrats").
We do have very small elements of the European ultra-right, for example Buchanan and his ilk, and a sprinkling of neo-Nazi nutters. The nutters have never had much of a following (the 1920's Ku Klux Klan was primarily populist and Southern Democrat), but Buchanan and his ilk deserve some comment.
Pat Buchanan is probably the closest thing to a European (especially French) ultramontagne catholic conservative who is active in American public life. His authoritarian impulses are strong and his anti-semitism is increasingly poorly disguised. The amazing thing is that he lasted as long as he did in mainstream conservatism.
Even if so, would the French Jews be worse off if his program to limit Muslims immigration were in place years ago? Back than there was nobody else trying to do it.
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LePen returning to his roots. No surprise.
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