Following a good showing in the French regional elections, Marine Le Pen has assorted liberal pundits, which is to say most Western media, running scared.
The spectre of a far-right takeover is wafting through the air, leaving fear everywhere in its wake. What if the Le Pens, niece, aunt and possibly even her banished father, form the next government of France?
They won’t, but the fear isn’t wholly unfounded. Our wishy-washy governments can’t, or more precisely won’t, do anything to combat the accelerating Muslim threat. Moreover, as Donald Trump has found, even mooting such a relatively moderate measure as blocking entry to more Muslims causes a violent reaction all over Europe – even though he was only talking about the US.
Trump wasn’t suggesting such radical steps as internment or deportation. All he said was that, until a fool-proof way of vetting Muslim arrivals is found, perhaps it’s unwise to let any more in. This view, incidentally, is shared by the governments of most Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, where they don’t admit any Syrians because they correctly see them as a terrorist threat.
So do we, really, except that the God of Political Correctness won’t let us utter such words. We’d rather take a few casualties and turn our cities into souqs than risk offending that vengeful deity.
The only European groups that dare speak the unspeakable are various nationalist parties, such as the French Front National. And the more craven the policies of European governments are, the louder will the voice of such groups be heard.
For most people are happy to accept the virtual reality stuffed down their throats, but only for as long as they don’t feel personally threatened as a result. However, when they hesitate to go out for fear of being shot, stabbed or blown up, they become less docile. Actual reality barges in, pushing the virtual kind out.
This creates troubled waters in which assorted fascist, quasi-fascist, neo-fascist and crypto-fascist groups can then fish profitably. The Front National falls into that last category and, if the party ever advances beyond local success, the ‘crypto’ part may well fall off, leaving the ‘fascist’ part all on its own.
It’s conceivable, though far from certain, that an FN government could alleviate the Islamic problem, which is more acute in France than in most European countries. But the remedy may well prove to be deadlier than the disease.
Historical analogies are screaming to be drawn. For the economic problems in Germany circa 1933 were easily as catastrophic as the immigration problem is in France now. It was on his promise to solve such problems that Hitler came to power, and he was as good as his word, in the short term. But there were attendant costs, and I don’t need to remind you what they were.
Fascism, neat or whatever prefix one chooses to attach to it, must not be allowed to vanquish in Europe again no matter what the temptation. If it does, Europe will emerge at the other end as unrecognisable as it would even with a greater Muslim presence.
Whatever little is left of Western civilisation must be saved by means indigenous to Western civilisation. As the history of Rome shows, letting barbarians sort the metropolis out isn’t a good idea.
What I find baffling is the tag ‘right-wing’ attached to Marine Le Pen and her jolly friends. Hating aliens, foreigners and Jews (this last hatred Marine doesn’t emphasise as much as her father did, but make no mistake – it’s there) seems to be a sufficient qualification.
This is woolly thinking married to ignorance, which is a union routinely made in our press. For fascism, as represented by the FN or for that matter Hitler or Mussolini, is a socialist heresy. Hence it sits on the left of the political spectrum, not on the right inhabited by God, king and country conservatives in Britain or their republican counterparts elsewhere.
The FN’s economic programme puts the party to the left of Hollande’s socialists whom no one accuses of being right-wing. Apart from being a protectionist and therefore no fan of free markets, Marine believes that the government should nationalise health, transportation, education, energy and banking, which is as far from right-wing desiderata as one can get this side of Joseph Stalin.
So why are the Le Pens, along with Mussolini and Hitler a couple of generations ago, described as right-wing? The reasons for that aren’t rational but emotional and ideological.
Most mainstream media are left-wing, however they choose to describe themselves. Hence in their minds left-wing means good, and therefore, dialectically speaking, right-wing means bad. They don’t like Marine Le Pen (or her typological ancestors), so she has to be right-wing.
Serious thought is as far away from this taxonomy as Marine Le Pen is from conservatism. As to her eventually occupying the Elysée Palace, I can allay the fears of our left-wing darlings.
Barring a global catastrophe, extremist parties don’t ascend to power in the high-rent part of Europe. And if such a catastrophe befalls, it won’t really matter who lives in that palace just off Champs–Elysées.