Le Pen Minister?

Did Nicolas Sarkozy consider offering Marine Le Pen the ministry of the interior on the eve of the final presidential debate? According to Bernard Girard, this is the message of a forthcoming book--and the proposal came from Camille Pascal, a centrist, not from one of Sarkozy more extremist advisors such as Patrick Buisson. Remarkable if true. Ã suivre.

Le Pen au Chocolat

Jean-François Copé is having a hard time establishing himself as Sarkozy's successor and heir apparent. It's bad enough that he has to fend off a challenge from François Fillon. But on top of that he just can't seem to get hold of the right rhetoric to prove that he is now in fact the incarnation of la droite décomplexée, the role in which his recent eponymous "Manifesto" cast him. So he's gone poaching in the Var, Le Pen country, where he came out with his now famous paean to le pain au chocolat:

« Il est des quartiers où je peux comprendre l’exaspération de certains de nos compatriotes, pères ou mères de famille rentrant du travail le soir et apprenant que leur fils s’est fait arracher son pain au chocolat à la sortie du collège par des voyous qui lui expliquent qu’on ne mange pas pendant le ramadan. »

This gem packs a lot into a small space: it manages to imply that the criminal element (voyous) coincides with Ramadan-celebrating Muslims who terrorize small children and deprive them of that quintessential snack of le Français de souche, le pain au chocolat.

This rather lame emulation of Lepenist rhetoric unleashed a torrent of laughter on Twitter. The title of this post is taken from one of those mocking tweets. Others can be read here. Like many imitators, Copé assumes that the original he seeks to copy is easily imitable. In the case of the Le Pens, it isn't.

Copé Shows His True Colors: White

Jean-François Copé has dredged up the concept of "anti-white racism" for use in his quest for the leadership of the UMP and ultimately for its presidential nomination. This strategy of poaching on the territory of the Front National didn't work well for Sarkozy, of course, so Copé has had to up the ante, making himself a little more overtly obnoxious.

Le Pen's UltralaÏque Offensive

Is Marine Le Pen reverting to the ways of her father? She soft-pedaled the anti-Semitism in her presidential campaign, but now she has launched an offensive against both the veil and the kippa in public places. This artfully poses "balance" as a criterion in advancing an agenda directed at what she calls "foreign fundamentalists" in France. The moment is well chosen to coincide with heightened fears of an incident following the provocation from Charlie Hebdo.

Le Pen also shrewdly implies that her move is simply an extension of existing anti-veil regulations, but this is not true. Only the burka is banned in all public places. The veil cannot be worn in schools but can be worn elsewhere. With this escalation, the Front National signals that it is not going to allow the value of its traditional xenophobic fonds de commerce to decline simply because it has also discovered economic populism.

One wonders what internal tensions in the FN may have contributed to this shift.

Whither France?

The growing strength of the Front National was vividly driven home to me today. Some years ago, as a result of my blogging, I was contacted by a young Frenchman, a student then 18 or 19 years old, who was a passionate supporter of Ségolène Royal. He intensely disliked Sarkozy and was such a Ségo enthusiast that he ran a Web site devoted to her doings. We would gChat from time to time. It was interesting to me to make contact with this young man from the provinces, quite interested in politics, a little untutored, to judge by his frequent grammatical errors, but reasonably well-informed. Over the past two years or so, he stopped contacting me, and I more or less forgot about him, until today, when he turned up on my screen. I said I recalled his prediction that Sarkozy would lose in 2012, which at the time was by no means a sure bet. And he replied that yes, the Left had won, but he could no longer support the Left because he had gone over to Marine Le Pen. He liked her patriotism, her defense of the French worker, and her strong image, while he disliked the Left's "betrayal" of what he considered to be the traditional values of the Left. I reminded him that he had once been such an admirer of Royal's that he had asked me to pass her a note when she came to Harvard, which I did. He didn't like to recall those days, when he was "naive." Now, having passed his nursing school exams, he plans to apply for a position in the Gendarmerie.

When one reads about the progress of the FN in the abstract, it's one thing. When one sees the effect on a person one knows, however remotely, it's quite another, and actually startling.

Jean-Marie Explains His Daughter's Success

She's a petite bourgeoise:

"Je suis un homme du peuple. Je viens d'une famille de paysans et de pêcheurs (...) J'ai été officier dans un régiment de parachutistes, j'ai eu une vie virile, c'est le moins que l'on puisse dire. Ma fille, quoi qu'elle puisse en dire, est une petite-bourgeoise", affirme l'ancien président du Front national, âgé de 84 ans.

Selon lui, l'élite parisienne le considère comme un être "grossier" et "inquiétant"mais accepte sa fille en raison de sa bonne éducation. "Mon image de diable s'est méthodiquement et avec ténacité imposée dans le monde politique français. Ma réputation d'antisémite a été créée artificiellement", déclare M. Le Pen au Times. "Mais ce n'est pas Jean-Marie Le Pen qui est le diable à leurs yeux, c'est le défenseur de la nation", ajoute-t-il.

La Droite Populaire Decimated

Details here. Two interpretations: voters sanctioned the droitisation of the UMP (the defeat of Guéant might lead one to this conclusion), or, FN voters refused to turn out to support UMP candidates who had solicited their votes, just as many of them refused to support Sarkozy.

Party Realignment on the Right?

Slate.fr has a very interesting piece by Jean-Laurent Cassely, who examines with the help of a number of scholars the idea that the party of the center-right is in danger of fissure and absorption by the party of the extreme right. Alexandre Dézé: "These questions of rapprochement and explosion arise whenever the right is in a difficult position, except that the media dramatize the situation in different ways." Indeed, not the least interesting aspect of the article is the look back at history, in which we find Giscard, for example, speaking of the "invasion" of immigrants and the RPR-UDF expressing concern that Islam may not be compatible with French law.

Le Pen Loses in Hénin-Beaumont

Hallelujah!

Le Pen Beats Mélenchon

Législatives : Jean-Luc Mélenchon reconnaît sa défaite à Hénin-Beaumont

Le leader du Front de gauche est arrivé en troisième position du premier tour des élections législatives dans la circonscription d'Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais). Marine Le Pen est arrivée largement en tête du scrutin devant le candidat du PS, Philippe Kemel.

The Feminization of the FN

Like the party's base, the FN's candidates are younger and more of them are women than in the past. All the dynamism on the right is with the FN. With Copé as leader of the UMP and a series of scandals likely to plague the party in the press for years to come, the UMP risks being ringardisé as the FN gains strength. Could the next few years bring a party realignment in France? It's not out of the question.

Post-Sarko UMP: De pire en pire

Jean-François Copé is everywhere these days, emulating his mentor Nicolas Sarkozy's route to the top via ubiquity. "Que je ne sois pas populaire auprès de l'ensemble des Français, c'est normal : je suis un repoussoir pour la gauche." He also claims that Fillon has no support within the party. And to top things off, he has chosen Christiane Taubira as an ideal target to win back FN voters: she is black, she's a woman, and her first move as minister of justice was to abolish criminal court trials for young delinquents, so that Fillon can appeal to concerns about "security" while warning FN voters that a vote for the FN is "a vote for Taubira."

This is the low road, but Copé thinks it will take him to the summit. Unfortunately, he may be right.

Analysis of FN Vote in Basse-Normandie

It's exurban workers who made the difference.

The FN in the Legislatives

The Front National could win 5 to 8 seats in the next National Assembly.

Il faudra donc suivre avec une attention particulière les circonscriptions où Mme Le Pen est arrivée en tête au premier tour de la présidentielle. Et notamment les douze où elle a devancé Nicolas Sarkozy, le 22 avril : la 5e de l'Aisne, où la députée sortante, Isabelle Vasseur (UMP), peut être en difficulté, la 12e des Bouches-du-Rhône, la 2e du Gard, la 6e de l'Hérault, la 2e de Haute-Marne, la 1rede la Meuse, les 5e et 7e de la Moselle, la 2e de l'Oise, la 2e des Pyrénées-Orientales, les 3e et 4e du Vaucluse.

...
Un autre cas de figure sensible est celui où Mme Le Pen est arrivée en tête et devant François Hollande au premier tour de la présidentielle. Cela concerne 11 circonscriptions : la 3e de l'Aisne, les 13e et 16e des Bouches-du-Rhône, la 4edu Gard, la 4e de Meurthe-et-Moselle, la 20e du Nord, la 1re de l'Oise, la 11e du Pas-de-Calais (celle de Mme LePen), la 2e de la Haute-Saône, la 2e des Vosges et la 5e de la Somme. Là, on suivra avec attention l'attitude des électeurs - et des responsables - de la droite.

Noiriel Analyzes the FN Vote

Historian Gérard Noiriel analyzes the FN vote. Key point:

A partir des années 1980, la bureaucratisation de la société et la crise de la grande industrie ont liquidé les mouvements de masse entraînant une perte d’autonomie du politique au profit des médias. La « démocratie de partis » a laissé la place à la « démocratie d’opinion ». Le retour de l’extrême droite sur le devant de la scène est à mes yeux une conséquence directe de ces mutations. Le triomphe de la politique-spectacle a créé en effet des opportunités dont s’est saisi Jean-Marie Le Pen, en développant la stratégie des « petites phrases » conçues comme des « bombes médiatiques » qui prennent leur place dans l’actualité au côté des crimes, des catastrophes, des procès etc.

Les journalistes, pris dans les rouages de cette machine médiatique, sont contraints d’accorder de l’importance à ces poseurs de « bombes », contribuant ainsi à l’héroïsation des leaders d’extrême droite. Puisque ces derniers sont devenus des personnages centraux du récit médiatico-politique, les électeurs se sentent autorisés à voter pour le Front National. La réputation sulfureuse de ce parti séduit tout particulièrement ceux qui n’ont plus rien à perdre et qui cherchent à exprimer de la façon la plus radicale possible leur refus d’une société qui ne leur fait pas de place.

This argument strikes me as superficially appealing but empirically unfounded. Is it really true that that the FN "particularly attracts those who have nothing more to lose?" There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that the answer is no. The FN has found support in many segments of society, including retirees and small businessmen who definitely have something to lose. Its working-class support has been increasing, and some of that may come from the unemployed, but some of it also comes from the employed, who have their jobs to lose and fear losing them to immigrants willing to work for lower wages.

What Noiriel wants to call attention to, I think, is the fact that most of the public discussion of FN voters is conducted by "the political-media complex," a fancy term for people like himself and me, who speak of FN supporters as the Other and have no direct contact with the milieux in which a vote for the FN is a live option. We impute attitudes and emotions we do not really fathom: hence the "suffering" narrative, which Noiriel rejects as confabulation. That may be true, but in what respect is "the nothing more to lose" narrative an improvement? Isn't it just another name for the same thing?

Where I think Noiriel is right is in his perception of the way in which Lepenist barbs and provocations, echoed by the media, are used to construct an anti-systemic image. For voters whose judgment is that "the system" has failed them, the response is to seek the candidate whose provocations seem most disruptive of what they see as the routinized and ritualized exchanges that constitute the mainstream discourse. In the ensuing surenchère of acerbic attitude, anti-system candidates compete with each other in a closed rhetorical universe that hives itself off as a separate realm of what Noiriel calls the "democracy of opinion," in which one opinion is deemed as good as another simply because it is voiced and without need for the kind of justification once provided by ideology in the "democracy of parties." Hence the intense media interest in the Le Pen-Mélenchon face-off in Hénin-Beaumont. Nothing of consequence will be decided here, but the battle of provocateurs will surely défrayer la chronique.

Mélenchon, parachuté chez les Ch'tis

Was it really necessary for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is hardly familiar with the town in which he has chosen to run for parliament, Hénin-Beaumont, to say this about the local FN, which has been tilling this ground for years:

Mais il ne peut s'empêcher de décrire à des journalistes le FN local comme "quatre alcooliques et dix dégénérés". "Au visage de la haine", il veut opposer celui de la "fraternité et du partage".

Mélenchon in a nutshell: the grand gestures to humanity--fraternity and sharing--on the one hand, the contemptuous dismissal of his opponents on the other. And the particular choice of words, "four alcoholics and ten degenerates," is especially unfortunate in light of the incident in a soccer stadium a while back, when a banner was unfurled that read "Pédophiles, chômeurs, consanguins : bienvenue chez les Ch'tis." Linking "degeneracy" with this region of northern France is really not something that a politician who wants to combat the prejudices that are the stock-in-trade of the FN should be doing.

Already the Hit Show of the Legislative Season

Mélenchon-Le Pen, Season 2, is already the hit show of the legislative round. The screenwriters will no doubt come up with some salty dialogue to match these exchanges from Season 1:

Le 18 janvier, à Metz, Jean-Luc Mélenchon ouvre le feu et qualifie la présidente-candidate du FN de "semi-démente, qui propose des solutions auxquelles personne ne peut croire". Il donnait ce jour-là un meeting sur ces terres lorraines frappées par la désindustrialisation pour commencer "l'opération de nettoyage par rapport à la prétendue présence du FN dans les milieux ouvriers et employés". "Cette Mme Le Pen, qui n'a aucune espèce d'imagination, passe son temps à faire des emprunts forcés pour dire : je parle comme Mélenchon. Voyez mes ailes, je suis un oiseau. Et de temps à autre, je suis xénophobe, voyez mes pattes, je suis un rat. Cela nous fait une chauve-souris."

Dès le lendemain, Marine Le Pen riposte : Mélenchon "perd ses nerfs, je comprends ! C'est quand même pitié de voir quelqu'un qui se présente comme étant le défenseur des ouvriers n'attirer" que 2 % de leurs intentions de vote, ironise-t-elle. Tout en dénonçant "un vrai dérapage", la présidente du FN considère : "Tout ça, c'est du cinéma, c'est un grand comédien, M. Mélenchon. Devant les caméras, il éructe, il menace, il insulte. Mais en dehors des caméras, c'est un homme charmant, affable, presque un petit garçon."

Mélenchon-Le Pen

Jean-Luc Mélenchon may challenge Marine Le Pen in Hénin-Beaumont. Beyond the clash of these two colorful personalities, an imaginative analyst might see the labor pains of a new political formation struggling to be born: a party of the laissés-pour-compte of globalization, la France du Non et des exclus, a party of workers in declining sectors, retirees, small businessmen, blue-collar workers displaced by immigrants, etc.

Sociologically, such a party might make sense, but history has forged two distinct sensibilities in these social strata, two sensibilities so different that the cleavage between them is unlikely ever to be breached by political entrepreneurship. Mélenchon's effort may be viewed as an epic battle to prevent Marine Le Pen from consolidating her gains among these groups, for it is she who has come closest to achieving a party realignment, and if she makes further gains in the legislative elections and/or provokes internal dissension within the UMP, she may take yet another step toward making the extreme right the premier party of les classes populaires.

Mélenchon recognizes this danger, but it's not clear how much support he would actually command among the blue-collar workers of the 11th District of Pas-de-Calais. These are not the nostalgics of May '68 who thrilled to his speech at la Bastille. Le Pen scored better than 31% in this district in the first round of the presidentials, against under 15 for Mélenchon. The deck is therefore stacked against him. If he decides to throw his hat in the ring, he will deserve some credit for fighting the good fight, but it seems to be a losing battle.

The FN and the Legislative Elections

According to Médiapart, the FN will be a serious problem for the parliamentary right:

Comme l’a démontré Mediapart dans cette analyse détaillée, le Front national est en capacité, d’après les projections des résultats du premier tour de la présidentielle, de se qualifier au second tour des législatives dans 353 des 577 circonscriptions.

This is a record high number. Copé has said that there will be no deals, but particularly for legislators belonging to the "Droite populaire" wing of the party, many representing districts in southeastern France, the temptation may be irresistible.

D'autant qu'en face, Marine Le Pen a, elle aussi, ouvert une brèche, dans un entretien à Valeurs actuelles, le 10 mai. Certes, elle exclut toujours « tout accord entre partis » avec l'UMP, mais elle se déclare désormais « pas fermée » à une « entente » et à des« discussions », « au cas par cas », avec des candidats UMP aux législatives. La présidente du FN lance à nouveau un appel « aux élus et électeurs de droite sincères, qui ont voté Nicolas Sarkozy tout en se reconnaissant dans nos idées et qui en ont assez de la machine à perdre qu'est devenue l'UMP », les invitant à rejoindre son « grand rassemblement ».
Des élus de la majorité saisiront-ils la perche ? Dans certaines circonscriptions, la porosité est déjà importante (lire notre reportage à Nice). Ces dernières semaines, certains élus ont brisé sans complexe des tabous. L'ancien ministre de la défense, Gérard Longuet, a déclaré dans Minute qu'il voyait en Marine Le Pen un« interlocuteur » potentiel, avant de se rétracter au vu de la polémique. Le député Christian Vanneste s'est dit prêt, le 9 mai, sur France Inter, à discuter avec le FN au second tour. En juillet 2011, l'élu du Nord s'était déjà montré ouvert, dans nos colonnes, à l'idée d'une alliance, sur le modèle italien : « La balle était dans le camp de Marine Le Pen comme elle était dans celui de Gianfranco Fini en Italie et non dans celui de Berlusconi. »

Sans commentaire

«Et pour nous au Front national... euh... pour eux au Front national», a promptement corrigé Gérard Longuet, qui a eu une jeunesse à l'extrême droite.

Il a dit ensuite à propos de ce lapsus linguae: «On va dire un lapsus Longuet»...

Source.