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May
2, 2002, 9:25 a.m. By NR Editors |
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ean-Marie Le
Pen, the 73-year-old ex-paratrooper who leads the National Front, will
almost certainly not be elected president of France. Yet his ability to
edge into the two-man run-off against Gaullist incumbent Jacques Chirac,
and ahead of the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, rightly made
headlines.
Le Pen's vote in the first round — 16.9 percent — is virtually his base vote, only slightly better than some of his previous three runs for president. But splinter parties on the left pulled Jospin down to 16.1 percent; Chirac's 19.6 percent showing — deflated by corruption — was the worst ever by an incumbent seeking reelection.
Le Pen's good fortune provoked continental outrage. Bien-pensant Europeans vowed to turn back this candidate of the far-right fringe who — as almost every story on him points out — once called the Holocaust a "detail of history." But surely this reaction was what shrinks call displacement. Fighting Le Pen is fighting yesterday's anti-Semitism. When French synagogues have been attacked by Islamist extremists; when French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui has called for the "destruction of the Jewish people" (see above); and when European governments, in a more polite fashion, routinely tilt toward Yasser Arafat, there are more pressing demons afoot.
Where, meanwhile, is the outrage at French extremists of the left? Jospin proudly worked with French Communists, whose party was the most Stalinist in western Europe. Jospin himself, as a not-so-young man, was a Trotskyist, compounding totalitarianism with futility. It was even possible, as François Mitterrand showed, to be a successful ex-fascist, so long as one made one's later career on the left. After 1945, Europe successfully de-Nazified. But after 1991, it did not de-Communize, and it pays the price in inconsistency and self-delusion.
In the late Sixties the American political system was traumatized by George Wallace. Like Le Pen, he was a fiery speaker with unsavory associations. Like Le Pen, his economic ideas were traditionally big-government. But also like Le Pen, he addressed issues that the leadership of the major parties seemed too squeamish to raise. One of Wallace's issues — spiraling crime — is now a problem in France. Le Pen has made hay with high immigration, and loss of national sovereignty to Brussels. On all three issues, Chirac and Jospin offered mush, or worse.
For twelve years, conservative GOP strategists tried to capture the Wallace vote. They also hoped to change it, edging it toward the free market and draining it of racism. This process is called leadership, and after the false dawn of Richard Nixon, it succeeded with Ronald Reagan. There are no comparable figures in France, partly for historical reasons — the French state has been a top-down affair since Louis XIV — partly because the French elite are ensorcelled by visions of a united Europe, in which they hope to play a leading role. If Le Pen indeed goes, things will be different, but not better. As one online wag put it, we have no frog in this fight.