The National Front in France is less demonstrably evil than its earlier incarnation.
But they’re getting lots and lots of votes. More, apparently, than anyone else.
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This has been coming for a while, from what I can gather according to friends in France.
But don’t you imagine that UKIP would have got similar results following an attack like Paris?
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Way to let the terrorists win, France!
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Yeah, Marine Le Pen kicked her father out for making some anti-Jewish statements, didn’t she? But I bet you she’d focus on the Jews next once the “Muslim question” was “solved”. This is quite scary.
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Funny enough, out of the smallish number of (less than 50) French Jews I keep in touch with, lots of them voted for FN and do not share your “concern”.
More fear of extremist Islam than the far right perhaps?
And there are LGBT people who voted FN, despite their policies being anything but LGBT friendly. People are being convinced to vote for the lesser of two evils without actually questioning if they really are, or if there is a better way that doesn’t involve being a second class citizen.
They just keep coming. Meet Marion Maréchal Le Pen:
While that can be considered a very legitimate thing for Jews in France, thats not mentioned in this context. Basically they generally mention they find the current administration incompetent. Also many of them don’t really consider FN to be the far right any more. I’m over simplifying and generalizing some here but its not like I record my conversations with people and take notes afterwards.
This sort of thinking bugs me. “Convinced” seems to say they don’t really know what they are doing or can’t be responsible. Removes all agency from individuals. As if to say also that it would be impossible for a person who identifies as LGBT (or any other letter combo) might just vote the right of their own free will.
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That was not what I meant. They were presented with a solution to their fears, in return for removal of their own rights (both the FN and Les Républicains have said they will remove LGBT rights introduced by Parti socialiste.) They voted for that freely and willingly. I just don’t believe that the price of that solution is worth paying.
People freely choose to vote against their own interests all of the time. Why would it be any different this time?
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I think you’re bang on the money. Only that’s exactly how you get security drift. Plenty of historical examples of populations sleep-walking into problems.
You have to keep in mind that the FN has a history of antisemitism. It’s not something I’m making up. To imagine that they’ll stop with Muslim immigrants is naive.
[ETA] I’d also argue that for the far right (and yes, the FN IS far right, I don’t think there is any doubt about that, nor should there be), the Second World War solved the question they were concerned with in the first half of the century, the “Jewish” question. The founding of Israel settled that in their minds, because now there was a Jewish homeland. I honestly think these people get support at all of our peril.
The French jews are arguably delusional if they think that the French right wing likes them; but given the fairly dire numbers on anti-semetic attacks of various flavors; they may well be making a logical ‘enemy of my enemy’ decision. So long as they have reason to believe that the state won’t even need to come after them once the informal purging is finished, they have a pretty strong incentive to focus on the near term and worry about what the state will or won’t do when they get around to that.
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I think you’re right.
But also - enemy / enemy is a logical fallacy; and absolute power. The concern with the NF is once in power, what is their to check and balance?
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As usual, you don’t need to give me history lessons on matters relating to my people. In any case I’ve only commented here on what the small number of French Jews I know have told me regarding the matter. I’ll even wager they are more familiar with the subtleties of antisemitism in their own country than I am.
Fair enough.
Good news to wake up to - FN failed to win a single region:
ETA: the BBS sometimes expands BBC links (as in the OP and about half the time I post them), and sometimes leaves them as the bare link. Is there a pattern here? It seems pretty much random.
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