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Le Pen 'cock-a-hoop'
Jean-Marie Le Pen, that old stalwart of far Right off-the-wallism, is cock-a-hoop after one of those grim polls portraying the French, or rather too many of them, in a less than savoury light. What the survey found was that 35 per cent considered the extreme Right to enrich political debate in France, while a slightly smaller proportion (34 per cent) believed that end of the political spectrum was close to its own concerns. It was only a few weeks ago that similar numbers admitted to racist views, and I think we all know where, to a large degree, these sentiments come from. The popular fear and mistrust of Islam. Such feeling is evident wherever you go in France. The reasons are obvious: unrest on suburban estates, rising crime, immigration, stubborn unemployment and, of course, the constant fear of terrorist attack. All, to one extent or another, are associated with Europes largest Muslim population (even if French republican principles prevent us from knowing the true numbers). Reasonable people do not despise or suspect anyone because he or she adheres to one religious faith or another. But whatever view we take on the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, it has become very difficult in recent years to think of a terrorist threat that comes anywhere close to that posed by groups or individuals claiming to act in the name of Islam. Whether hijacking jets, blowing up the Tube or Spanish suburban trains or beheading Christian schoolgirls, these terrorists and their apologists assure us that their actions are consistent with Gods will. It is sad, but hardly surprising, that we pay insufficient heed to the protestations of moderate Muslim leaders and ordinary citizens when they defend Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance. But how things have moved on. Think back to the lowest points of IRA terrorism. Even the terrorists or their sympathisers joined in debates about civilian casualties and issues of whether, when soft targets were chosen, warnings had been given and, if so, how accurate they were. We can take with a hefty pinch of salt the sincerity of such concerns. But the average Islamist would regard them as prissy in the extreme, since there is no longer any need to wonder, as some of us did after IRA atrocities, whether civilian deaths were really intended or a mere hazard of conflict. The object of terrorism has become one of causing as many as possible. We are all infidels and thus guilty, which must logically include Muslims unlucky enough to be around when the bomb goes off. One of the London bombers even recorded a video making the very point that if you elect a government of which a terrorist disapproves, you must expect to be blown to pieces as a consequence. And it is by exploiting fears aroused by such developments, and by the other matters arising from generations of immigration, that the far Right is able to prosper. I do not necessarily have any easy answers. It seems, to me, desperately unfair that decent people who happen to be Muslims should increasingly be seen as part of a problem they did not create and for which they are not responsible. When the French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot were kidnapped in Iraq, the only credible demand ever made was that France should abandon a democratically approved law prohibiting headscarves at school. I have the deepest admiration for those Muslim girls across France who, despite their great resentment of the ban, also felt so French that they went to school anyway, determined not to be seen to be reinforcing the hostage-takers supposed motivation. Over lunch with an MP from the ruling centre-Right UMP the other day, I heard a gloomy analysis: that if mainstream conservative politicians continue to pussyfoot around the delicate issues of the day, they will be humiliated in next years presidential and parliamentary elections. Gloomy not because I especially care about the fate of the UMP. But because in the absence so far, despite the ascendancy of Ségolène Royal, of a truly coherent Left-of-centre alternative, the extremists and this time I am talking about politicians, who are at least cuddlier than terrorists are the likeliest beneficiaries. Le Pen feels sufficiently emboldened just now to announce that he can win the race for the presidential elections. Since I am all too close, geographically, to the Elysée, I could joke about the tone of my neighbourhood being lowered. But lets hope it would be a joke and no more, while remembering that in 2002, Chiracs impressive 82 per cent of the poll overlooked the inconvenient fact that five-and-a-half million French people voted for the National Front leader. Posted by: tipper 2006-04-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=149624 |