“Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families,” said Mr Micawber, one of the cleverest literary protagonists.
Dickens could have had the Le Pens in mind, and only the slight chronological divergence makes such an intention unlikely this side of prophetic prescience.
The founder and honorary chairman of Front National Jean-Marie and his daughter Marine, the current leader of the party, don’t seem to be seeing eye to eye on politics, ‘seem’ being the operative word.
Le Pen fille has just scored the minor triumph of carrying the European election in France. She partly managed that feat by distancing herself from Le Pen père, who eschews his daughter’s crypto-fascism for the no-holds-barred variety.
Marine is a cleverer politician than her father. She knows what his ideas are, shares them and realises that so do most of those who vote for the party. But she also knows that she has to make voting for FN socially acceptable.
To that end she eschews the more inflammatory vocabulary favoured by her openly and proudly fascist father. Even as it is, those who vote FN seldom own up to it.
By chatting to the locals in our province of France one gets the impression that no one would ever even dream of voting FN. FN, moi? Absolument non!
Yet the party always carried the province by a wide margin even when Jean-Marie was in charge, never mind now. This has to be the only example in the annals of democracy of a party winning elections without having a single vote cast for it.
Now there’s talk in France that Marine may just win the next general election, especially since a large drift is expected from François Hollande’s socialists. They seem to be ever so slightly disillusioned, can’t imagine why.
And the UMP Gaullists aren’t over-enthusiastic about Sarko’s return either, although some are looking forward to seeing more nude pictures of his wife, a visual feast to be confidently expected in the run-up to the election.
All Marine has to do is make the electorate forget that her party neatly blends socialist economics with the nastier version of nationalism. Nationalism plus socialism equals… well, everyone knows what it equals. So temporary amnesia on the part of the electorate would go down nicely.
Just when everything seemed to be going swimmingly, Jean-Marie had to go and jog the people’s memory by suggesting with a distinct longing in his voice that a popular Jewish singer Patrick Bruel ought to be put into an oven (une fournée).
The modifier ‘gas’ wasn’t uttered, but Jean-Marie’s record on the issue leaves little room for doubt that it was implied. One doesn’t have to be an elephant to remember that Le Pen has several convictions for inciting racial hatred to his credit.
Marine screamed bloody murder. That was a political error, Dad, she said. What’s going on? (Qu’est que c’est que ce bordel, papa?). What are you trying to do, throw a spanner in the works?
Her father said he was deeply hurt. Everybody knows what his views are, and he’s not going to change them just because a few sales Juifs don’t like it. Can’t teach an old chien new tricks, and if his daughter doesn’t realise this she can go boil an oeuf.
This family squabble wouldn’t be worth talking about if it didn’t communicate a wider message. But it does, and the message is: beware of single-issue politics even if you happen to agree with the single issue.
Any reasonable person in France or, for that matter, Britain would accept some of the planks in the FN platform.
Curtailing immigration, especially that of cultural aliens, regaining national sovereignty by leaving the EU, banning homosexual marriage – all these are sound ideas. But voting for, or even approving of, a fascist party just because it espouses them isn’t.
Nigel Farage is absolutely right when saying that Ukip has nothing in common with FN, even though they may share a few ideas. But what’s important isn’t just how a party stands on this or that issue, but also why it does so.
Ukip starts from a generally conservative point of departure; FN from a generally fascist one. They may overlap on a point or two, but their philosophical lines will never converge – and they aren’t even parallel.
It’s always useful to remind oneself of others who may share one’s perfectly sensible feelings, and why they do so. Otherwise one may end up in bed with perfectly unsavoury partners.
Don’t like homosexual marriage? Neither did Osama Bin Laden. Feel uneasy about rampant internationalism? So did Hitler. Want to leave the EU? So do the Le Pens. Bad people are capable of holding some good ideas, but that doesn’t make them any less bad.
Before voicing support for a political party or group, one would be well-advised to look deep into its overall philosophy, both at present and as it has evolved historically. Failure to delve deep may lead to a terrible error of judgment, which, if compounded in a democracy, may be translated into ill-advised policies.
Thus I know some decent and intelligent (which is to say conservative) people who have warm feelings about Putin because he claims to support traditional Christian values. As evidence of the KGB thug’s virtues, they cite his recently acquired piety along with the ban he imposed on homosexual propaganda (reliable rumours in Russia insist that the colonel doth protest too much).
They don’t see the wood of fascism for the trees of a few policies they wish our own government would adopt. Personally I’d rather stay in the EU than have a fascist government take us out.
Decent people can like Putin or, if French, vote for FN only if terribly misguided. Alas, in our democracy run riot it’s not knowledge but ignorance that confers power.