I’ve heard the original Parti Quebecois described as a bunch of urban, cosmopolitan, atheist socialists and Marxists who achieved power by pandering to the anxieties of a bunch of unsophisticated rural Catholic conservative bigots.
From what I understand, the reason France isn’t able to take bigoted national chauvinism quite as far as Quebec does is because the revolution there destroyed the power of the RCC, whereas in Quebec the church was able to continue to promote anti-Semitism and bigotry for approx. 175 years after 1789. With Le Pen and her ilk, however, we’re seeing an attempt to revive that kind of hate and racism in the mother country.
