Tragedy of Paris, the land of Descartes, Voltaire, Diderot, Victor Hugo and Jean Jacques Rousseau is poorer today. Paris is quieter today. On the eve of Le Pen winning the first round in France with Chirac putting out Jospin. The view from my window is bleak, sacre coeur in a distant as I watch lying in my bed is even registering its protest, the lights at distant on this hilly east of Paris are dimmer and gloomy, Paris is not a bubbly town tonight.
Le Pen and France----Fighting the Nazi Threat Today
EUROPE’S biggest Nazi party has long been France’s National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. The party was in the middle of its biggest ever crisis, with an open rift between Le Pen and his deputy Bruno Mégret. The split, which looked likely to be permanent, saw the bizarre spectacle of Le Pen calling Mégret a ‘racist’ and Mégret denouncing Le Pen as a ‘Nazi’. Both labels fit both men.
Le Pen and the National Front
Le Pen himself has a long personal history on the far right. As a student he was a great admirer of Marshal Pétain, who ran the Nazi approved regime in non-occupied France during World War Two. Le Pen was a Poujadist (extreme right wing) deputy in the French National Assembly in the 1950s, and fought against anti-colonialists in Algeria. Active in far right politics throughout the 1960s, he helped found the National Front in 1972. Anyone who doubts what the National Front stands for should recall that in the 1980s Le Pen boasted that the Holocaust was ‘a mere detail of history’. He has refused to withdraw that remark, and made many more similar statements since. In 1998 he publicly argued that he believed in the ‘inequality of races’ and he has made repeated anti-Semitic comments on French TV.
The National Front first emerged as a serious threat in the 1980s, feeding off mass unemployment and disillusionment with the failure of the Socialist (Labour) government of President François Mitterrand. In 1981 Le Pen didn’t have enough support to even stand in the presidential elections. In 1983 the National Front won council seats, through a deal with local Tories, in a small town called Dreux, west of Paris. It then scored 11 percent of votes in European parliamentary elections in 1986, winning several Euro MPs. Then in 1988 Le Pen got 14.4 percent, over four million votes, in the presidential election. Despite some fluctuation the National Front has managed to maintain that level of support since. So in both the 1995 presidential election and the 1997 parliamentary elections it got over 15 percent of the vote.
However, today.......Le Pen has won 17.8% plus vote and has won the first round of the French Presidential elections, Jospin is out and the next round of election would be between Chirac and Le Pen... stop Le Pen and his extreme right message on 5th of APRIL, where is Europe heading? Chirac will beat Le Pen 72-28% but what a tragedy that extremist like LePen can take second round place, poor prognosis for humankind it is like Akhwan taking over Egypt or Gamma ul Islamia winning Pakistani ELECTIONS. The later would never happen but to see a country hat has values rooted in egalitarianism, liberty and fraternity this election victory is big surprise, long live democracy. I am shocked that land of Descartes, Voltaire, Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean Jacques Rousseau where Social contract was authored and liberty was nurtured with most precious of gift of God is today in a reversal of political fortune caught in this dilemma of regressive political thought process. |
