Jean Marie Le Pen

Well, much though it pains me to think about the French in any real detail, I find that recent events in that lovely country have forced my hand. You may or may not be aware that the good people of France have given the rest of the world one more reason to think less of them. Over the weekend, the first round of the Presidential elections took place. The purpose of the first round is to narrow the race down to two candidates, and the second round is a straight competition between them. Everyone in their right mind expected the Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, to go through to the second round and face President Chirac. Instead, thanks to the efforts of numerous people who clearly are not in their right mind, the National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has gone through to the second round.

Normally of course I am all for anything that heaps shame and indignation on the French, but if one puts the standard English-French antipathy to one side for a moment, then one can see that the first round result is not a good thing for all of us. The National Front, as their name suggests, are a party who hold French patriotism dear. This in itself is no bad thing (and lest you feel ready to scream "racist" at me I ask you to be patient; I shall explain that comment in more detail later on). However, much like the National Front of the UK they promote their idea of patriotism at the expense of anybody who doesn't pass muster as a true Frenchman.

You will not be surprised to learn that M. Le Pen believes that blacks, first and second generation immigrants, people of the French colonies, Jews, Moslems, socialists, in fact anybody who isn't a member of the National Front, is not a true Frenchman. His ideas on policy are beyond laughable (he wants to repatriate any and all French citizens of Arabic and African descent. This is the same man who claimed the French victory in the World Cup as proof of the superiority of the French. I wonder if anyone pointed out that half the team were black and that their star player was of North African descent...) and if he were elected it would surely spell doom for France's economy and viability as a leading part of Europe.

Various commentators assure us that M. Le Pen has no chance whatsoever of winning the election, and that he will only receive approximately 22% of the vote. Well okay, so he won't win. Good. But doesn't anybody else find the idea of almost a quarter of France voting for a right wing extremist who described the gassing of 6 million Jews as "a detail of history" just a little bit unsettling? With the strength of his support in mind, doesn't the fact that he wants to take France out of the EU provide a rather ominous omen for European integration?

The resurgence of the extreme right is by no means limited to France. In Austria, Jorg Haider found himself and his far right party sharing government with the centre right. In Italy, Silvio Berlisconi's coalition government includes the original fascist party founded by Mussolini back in the 1920's. And here in the UK, last summers race riots heralded increased activity from those glorious thugs in the British National Party. It seems that we are forgetting that no matter how well groomed and presented the various far right spokesmen are, no matter what their honeyed words assure, and no matter how much they may try and dissemble their nature, these people are racist thugs. The last time that the far right had such influence in Europe was in the 1930's, and I hardly need remind anyone what the overall result of that awful little decade was.

So why are the far right doing so well? What has led literally millions of people to think that having extremists in government is a good thing? Well, I suspect that there are a number of reasons behind it, ranging from voter apathy, political sleaze, and misappropriated patriotism. Not to mention the rise of extremism worldwide (Religious fundamentalists, Australia's stance on immigrants, militant pro-lifers etc.), although I would say that this is symptomatic of the problem rather than it's cause.

Firstly, voter apathy can be blamed to a large extent for M. Le Pen's victory. There was a 75% turnout at the polls in France. This is still considerably higher than in the UK (where the BNP stand to make huge gains in the council elections in early May due to the fact that most people won't bother to vote whilst the brain dead few who think that racism is a good thing will turn out in droves) and almost double that of the US (who's elected leader is regarded as a joke by the rest of the world and where the Evangelical Christian Right have an inordinate amount of influence despite their relatively small numbers), but it still means that a quarter of the country didn’t vote M. Le Pen received 16.9% of the votes, whilst M. Jospin took 16%. That tiny difference could quite easily have been bridged had just a few hundred more people voted. A few hundred people have been the difference between France choosing a racist and extremist to run for the presidency, or choosing a fairly ineffectual but good natured career politician who would have been little different from the previous President.

Which leads onto the next point; political sleaze. It's a common complaint of mine that there is no real choice in politics these days. All of the mainstream political parties in Europe and the US preach much the same doctrine; that of pragmatism. They almost all work to the idea that if they can guarantee that tomorrow is like today then people will grow docile and contented. If people care less and less about what goes on in the corridors of power, then politicians can get away with enacting their own personal agenda without even having to go through the motions of consulting the public. And whilst they do so, they become distant from our everyday lives, caring little that public services and infrastructure are creaking and falling apart.

So when a party comes along that promises to blast away the cobwebs of government and act in the interests of the people and who hearken back to a golden age in a nation's history (a golden age that, more often than not, has never existed outside of people's imaginations), then they are bound to attract attention from the angry and disillusioned. In the meantime, thanks to voter apathy, no one can be bothered to vote. And so, even though the extremist parties are attracting maybe only 10% of the electorate, the fact that only another 20% or so are voting means that the extremists get a disproportionately large vote. And so they find themselves in local government, or even in government itself.

As a final point, I'd like to address the various patriotic trappings that the various extremist parties use. In England, being patriotic is seen as a bad thing. This is because of thugs such as the BNP who claim that to be patriotic, you have to agree with them. In the meantime, the political party that is usually seen as the voice of the patriotic Englishman (the Tories) is slowly collapsing in on itself and performing with staggering ineptitude. The other mainstream parties, perhaps in a hangover from the National Front heyday of the late seventies coupled with Margaret Thatcher's shanghaiing of patriotism for her election campaign, shy away from overt patriotism. So a young man or woman who considers him or herself to be patriotic has the choice of a corrupt and toothless political party, or the vibrant and dynamic British National Party.

I deplore the fact that patriotism in England has been hijacked by thugs and racists; today is St Georges day and yet you will not see a single English flag hanging from the lampposts (I'm less concerned about the Union Jack; St George is England’s patron saint and the Union Jack is made up of all of the flags of Great Britain). Should you attempt to make a show of your pride in being English, be in no doubt that many will assume that you are racist. Why is this? No one bats an eyelid at the celebration of St Patrick’s Day. No one accuses the Scottish Nationalists of being bigots. Once again, I would say that apathy is the problem. "Why bother to reclaim the flag from extremists? It won't really matter. Just as long as tomorrow is like today." Just as our attitude towards electing the people who are going to make the decisions that change our lives is deplorable, so is our attitude to anything else that we feel doesn't directly concern us.

Well, I know it's such a hassle and a pain for people to walk anything up to 200 metres in order to vote, but if I could perhaps exhort them not to be so, well lets not mince words here, stupid and lazy? And perhaps do something to ensure that the country they live in does not become a bastion of intolerance and stupidity? Is it really much to ask? I have an awful feeling that the answer will be yes. Maybe this is how the likes of Hitler came to power and caused such destruction; not because people cared so much that they worked hard to get him into power, but because no-one cared enough to bother to stop him.