Is Klein a socialist, or does he just like them a lot? His views of Europe a couple of years ago....
dispatches
Joe Klein's European Listening Tour
By Joe Klein
Updated Wednesday, July 3, 2002, at 3:25 PM PT
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Subject: How France Is Like America in the 1970s
Updated Tuesday, May 28, 2002, at 4:13 PM PT
Today's itinerary: The English Channel.
An act of nostalgia: I approach Europe by sea, on the Dover-Calais ferry. This is how I first encountered the continent in the summer of 1966—a season remembered for Rubber Soul, the Spencer Davis Group, cheap wine, an English football triumph, and the belated loss of virginity. The ferry has changed. It is a floating duty-free commerce and gambling parlor now; open-air access is limited to a scruffy patch of deck aft on the topmost level. There are no signs pointing the way, perhaps because nothing is being sold out there.
But it is glorious in the fresh air, a calm sunny day on the channel. A group of British schoolkids in maroon uniforms chase each other about the deck and feed sea gulls, which appear to be set on hover. From halfway across the water, the Dover cliffs remain formidable and proud; ahead, France is misty, not nearly so well defined. But it is France, nonetheless: I remember the anticipation of 1966—I approached Europe then with Hemingway-esque intent. I would run with the bulls in Pamplona, lounge in the cafes of Paris and say things like, "The wine, it is very good." I would endure a few museums and chase after dark-eyed lovelies with narrow waists, sharp features, and difficult personalities.
In other words, I approached Europe then as most Americans have for the past half-century: anticipating an adult theme park. One went there to find history, culture, sophistication, and, of course, naughtiness. One was daunted by the sophistication, but there was condescension as well: Europe wasn't nearly so serious or businesslike a place as America—or Britain, for that matter. The Soviet threat seemed remote, sequestered behind barbed wire; in the American imagination, the real threat was Rossano Brazzi, who wooed a repressed Katharine Hepburn in the dreadfully romantic film Summertime without telling her that he was married. (Hepburn succumbed for a time, then fled to Ohio—what a perfect Yank she's always been.)
Things have changed, apparently. Europe is in crisis, and in a fairly pissy mood besides. There is a growing "rift" with America. We are seen as naive, arrogant, unilateral barbarians. (But wasn't that always the case: "Monsewer, van rooge see voo play?") And Europe itself is becoming less fun: There is crime, there is a tide of immigrants, there are right-wing demagogues, there are right-wing demagogues being assassinated, there are lunatic children firing weapons in schools. Indeed, the news from Europe sounds ... rather American, don't you think? Could this possibly be true? Where are the accordion players of yesteryear? The Guardian has put me on the case: a six-country Arrogant Yank tour, starting in France, anti-Americanism's most fragrant vineyard. My trip begins at the very same moment that a rather more arrogant Yank, my president, George Bush, is beginning his own truncated tour—a six-day flash across the Continent. Mine will last six weeks, unless I'm detained in a villa somewhere. I have refused the Guardian's offer of a pink Cadillac convertible as a means of conveyance. I have purchased a Eurailpass. I mean to be inconspicuous. My first words in Calais: "Pardonnay mwa, ooo ehhh le ... uh ... train station?"
The train from Calais to Lille is a disgrace. I had hoped for the Orient Express. What I get is double-deckered, graffiti-smeared (the artist "Eczema '97" has claimed this for his own), and vinyl-seated. On my seat, someone has written, "A spliff a day keeps the doctor away." We haven't seen trains as anarchic as this in the States for years—and I experience an epiphany: Is it possible that Europe really has become just like America, but an America of the recent past—the 1970s, to be precise, a period for which I harbor zero nostalgia.
Think about it: In the '70s American politicians were still caught in the turbulence of the George Wallace phenomenon—Wallace, the American Le Pen, who had stood in the schoolhouse door to block integration, who had coined the greatest of all political slogans, "Send them a message!," and who had actually won primary elections in reasonably proper states like Michigan and Maryland. In the '70s, too, Americans were reacting against an exploding crime rate (it had quadrupled in the '60s) and a rush of new immigrants from such un-American places as Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, Africa, and South Asia. Young people were alienated. The economy was sluggish; American products weren't nearly so nifty as those from Germany and Japan. Jimmy Carter was worried about a national "malaise," which was reflected in the polls: For the first time in the history of the country, a majority of Americans didn't think next year would be better. Much of this was handled over time: Crime abated, industry reorganized itself, the immigrants proved themselves brilliant Americans, "Eczema '74" stowed the spray paint and learned computer programming, Donny and Marie Osmond retired. We vanquished the Evil Empire and made the world safe for Disney. We've even made some progress on race. But it was rather painful there for a while. One wonders if Europe can make a similar recovery. (One wonders if America can sustain its triumphs, but that's another story.)
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Subject: A Trip Through Le Pen Country
Posted Wednesday, May 29, 2002, at 7:36 AM PT
Today's itinerary: Lens and Lille, France.
Why start here, in these grungy northern burghs? Because in 1973, the place to go in America was Michigan—home to disgruntled auto workers moving from the left to Wallace to—we didn't quite know it yet—Reagan. Le Pen was very strong in Lille and Lens. There are also a great many Arab immigrants. Hence the question: Have the socialists yet comprehended the threat they face? (In America, it took the Democrats 25 years to get their act together.)
Interpreter Kate and I attend a meeting of the Socialist party in Lens, a coal-mining town that is historically a left-wing bastion; now, a city divided between Socialists and Le Pen supporters. The Socialists remind me very much of the post-McGovern, pre-Clinton Democrats. They have no idea how irrelevant they've become. We are greeted by the mayor, a fabulous, brushy-haired, pipe-smoking Gallic sort called Guy Delcourt. He is, in turn, greeting new recruits to the Socialist party with a champagne reception (this would not happen in America; beer, at best). There are 60 new recruits, a Le Pen-inspired doubling of the usual rate. And Delcourt is happier than any Frenchman is supposed to be: just unremittingly cheery about his party's prospects. Yes, Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate for president of France was humiliated; yes, the local Socialist vote was down four points to 25 percent; yes, Le Pen was up a bit (to 21 percent in Lens). But prospects for the parliamentary voting in June are much better, and the problems really aren't that horrible. Crime is not a problem. Crime is a TV show that scares old people. Immigrants, well: "I remind people that they have worked for years in the mines with the Moroccans," Delcourt says, not realizing that Algerians and Tunisians hate being called Moroccans. If a label is necessary, they would rather be called Arabs or beur (the latter a slang reverse play on the word Arab).
Jean-Claude Bois, the local Socialist candidate for the national assembly, appears—wavy gray hair, glasses, weak chin, a kind man but not nearly so powerful a presence as the mayor. We discuss Jospin. "He scared a lot of people by talking too much about modernity," Bois says. "He had too idealistic a vision of the future."
Translation: "Modernity" is the French euphemism for the European Union. I ask Delcourt and Bois what they think about the plans to enlarge the EU to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and eight other Eastern European countries in 2004. "That will probably not happen," Delcourt says, although I've been told that it probably will. "It would result in a leveling of all the economies. We can't take responsibility for everyone else's problems. We need to fortify Europe first."
Translation: "Europe" is the French euphemism for France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, and perhaps, grudgingly, the Iberian peninsula (and—they hope against hope—the United Kingdom). Poland, the Czechs, and all the rest, however, are perceived to be a hellhole of porous borders, rutted byways, smoky industrial dinosaurs, and antique farmers (and lots of them: 40 million Poles alone!). It will cost a gazillion euros to bring these places up to Western standards.
We move on to an assembly hall—much more pleasant than its American analogue, flags and flowers abound—where several hundred local leftists are gathered for a Socialist party struggle session, a post-election hashing out of the party's problems. The audience is mostly Gallic, a few black and beur faces sprinkled about. The Jospin defeat was a failure of communication, says one. Chirac manipulated Jospin, says another. The party hasn't done enough for local businessmen, says a local businessman. The former mayor, an elderly man, stands and delivers a rambling jeremiad about the failure of the party to adhere to its Socialist past, the failure to distinguish itself from the center-right—this is perhaps the most popular Parisian assessment of the Socialist crumple; it is assumed to be the reason why so many leftists indulged themselves with silly votes for three different Trotskyite parties, the Greens, and other Marxist cats and dogs. Mayor Delcourt, fidgeting through all this, leans over and whispers, "He wants more Socialism, but he doesn't realize the state pays for it."
The crime issue rears its ugly head. Maybe it isn't just a TV program, after all. A middle-aged beur says he is tired of being patted down by the police every day because they think he's a drug dealer. I look over at Mayor Delcourt, who shrugs: "Well yes, Lens unfortunately is along the route that drug dealers coming from the Netherlands use on their way to Paris." And yes, most of these drug dealers are, erm, "Moroccans." And yes, "It is a very serious problem." Yes.
The next day, interpreter Kate and I wander about the industrial city of Lille, mostly talking to Arabs. Across from a disastrous, dilapidated public-housing bloc, with women in hijabs leaning out the windows and a massive graffito—"Nique La Police " (Fuck the police) scrawled above the entrance, we enter the modern offices of Archimed, a purveyor of multimedia software systems. The president of Archimed is Mongi Zidi, a prosperous 37-year-old Tunisian who is, we are told, making quite a name for himself in French hi-tech circles. "I put our offices in this neighborhood as a social statement," he says, "to provide some hope for the young people across the street."
Unfortunately, he admits, the young people across the street are mostly interested in tossing rocks through his windows. Zidi has curly black hair, quick dark eyes, and a wrestler's build. He is an information-age optimist, an entirely contemporary man. He worries about business, mostly. Raising money isn't easy for a small company in France. The mandated 35-hour working week is a disaster. And then there are the culture-content laws: Among other things, Archimed specializes in multimedia information retrieval systems for libraries—but the systems are built with Microsoft components, so French libraries won't buy them. "We just sold a system to a library in Cerritos, California," he says. "Mrs. Bush presided at the opening."
He insists, at first, that being a first-generation Arab immigrant hasn't been much of a problem for him. He came to France for an education, decided to stay, and found French backers for his company. Later, though, he admits the Le Pen vote has unsettled him. "You stand in line at the supermarket and hear snickering behind you. You see people whispering to each other and you wonder—one out of five are Le Pen voters—are they laughing at you?"
I ask him about America. He loves America (except for its policy toward Israel). He loves the business atmosphere. And there is one American politician he absolutely adores. "Al Gore," he says. "He is a very seductive politician, a strong man for the future. I am inspired by his global approach. He is the granpére of the information superhighway."
Zidi admits that he hasn't had much contact with the poor, angry young people who throw rocks at his building, but he passes me along to a friend, a journalist named Abdel Kirim Saifi, who offers a tour of the other side of town. But first he offers some sociology: "It is the second generation who are the problem," Saifi says. "The first generation was recruited to work in the mines and mills; they were treated badly, but they had no expectations. They did have hopes for their children—and the children have been treated no better by society. The second generation is very angry. Many of them see no hope. They drop out of school, get involved with crime and drugs."
Saifi is thin, quiet, studious—a second-generation Algerian whose sister has made a remarkable leap: She has been named agriculture minister in the new Chirac government, the first Arab to become a Cabinet minister since the colonial era. She had been a leftist for 15 years, he says, but made no progress in the Socialist party. When she switched, the right greeted her with open arms. Saifi remains a man of the left, but now he must concede that his sister has a point: If the Arab vote is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the left, perhaps the Arabs will gain more influence. There are some other unexpected developments in his community. "There has been a revival of religion," he says. "It is not only a comfort, but it is also a means of self-affirmation, of communal protest, a reaction against the problems of immigrants."
That night, Saifi takes us to the mosque in Lille Sud, which indeed seems the neighborhood center. Clutches of old men chatting outside; and young people as well, dressed in American athletic gear, the universal costume of the young and the restless. Saifi introduces us to a young man named Farid Sellani, who is immediately and obviously a politician. He speaks quickly, angrily. "I was born in this neighbourhood," he says. "I have been committed to this cause since I was 20." He is now 28—another second-generation Algerian and a former Socialist. "I was elected to the town council on the Socialist list, but I was just a token Arab. I tried to get a six-year project to improve this neighbourhood, but they would never listen to me, so now I am running for the national assembly as an independent."
We crowd into Saifi's car and take a drive around the neighborhood, which is a monument to the sterility of Socialist dreams past: We'll build these nice, modern high-rise buildings for the poor. They'll be so nice, the middle class will be envious. In truth, these aren't as awful as some of the places I've seen in America: There is graffiti and garbage, but an absence of weaponry and menace. The harsh yellow crime lights throw fuzzy glares through a film of dirt.
Sellani the politician begins a rant about integration. He hates the idea; it is demeaning. Either his people are French or they're not. "We're only French in the eyes of the politicians during election time. They exploited our parents, worked them to death," he is screaming now. "And we are supposed to go to them like beggars. Please can we have a house. Please can we have an education. Please can we be part of society. Integration! I want to see that word banished from the dictionary."
The 1970s indeed.
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