By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
In case you’ve been confused by the last few days of
punditry, let me say outright that France is not America.
For example, we recently concluded a presidential
election in the United States in which many argued that it was imperative to
smash the “final glass ceiling” by electing a female president. One doesn’t
hear that kind of talk in France about Marine Le Pen, who just came in second
in the first round of presidential elections. If she wins the runoff against
Emmanuel Macron on May 7, she would be France’s first female president.
Why is there no “ready for Marine” rhetoric? Because Le
Pen would also be the first “far-right” president. Identity politics has its
limits.
And so does the term “far-right.”
Indeed, the terms “left” and “right” rank among the worst
of France’s exports. Their inspiration wasn’t ideology, but a seating chart.
Supporters of the monarchy sat on the right in the General Assembly while
radicals, revolutionaries, republicans, and other foes and critics of the
Ancien Regime sat on the left. (In Britain, by contrast, members of Parliament
switch sides according to whichever party is in power.)
Thus, champions of free markets and limited government
were every bit as “leftist” as the Jacobin totalitarians who would usher in the
Reign of Terror. To this day, a “liberal” in France is closer to what many call
a “right-winger” in America, at least on economic issues.
As for what constitutes “far-right,” that has come to be
defined as a grab bag of bigotry, nativism, and all the bad kinds of
nationalism. Le Pen, the youngest daughter of the even more “far-right”
anti-Semitic politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, until recently led the National
Front party (FN), which was founded in 1972 by, among others, veterans of the
Nazi-collaborationist Vichy government.
How far the apple fell from the tree is hotly debated,
but what is clear is that Marine Le Pen is a smarter, more opportunistic, and
more inclusive politician. She even defenestrated her father from the FN in an
effort to “un-demonize” the party.
One of the main reasons she has come so close to being
the next president of France has been her ability to sap support from former
strongholds of the French Communist Party in the north. This is less shocking
than it may sound, once you account for the fact that the French Communist
Party has its own history of racially tinged attacks on immigration. Nearly a
third of FN voters said their second choice in the first round of the elections
was the doctrinaire socialist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French Bernie
Sanders.
Le Pen rejects the “far-right” label, preferring a
“third-way” approach that has a long intellectual history among nationalists
and fascists. She says that the symbiotic issues of immigration and
globalization (specifically relating to the European Union) yielded a new
politics that “no longer put the right and left in opposition, but patriots and
globalists.” She has downplayed social issues, highlighting the fact that she’s
a twice-divorced single mother who champions “women’s rights.” She’s vowed to
leave abortion laws alone.
Her “economic patriotism” — a mélange of
anti-immigration, protectionism, support for civil-service protections, and
entitlements (at least for the native-born French) — is an updated variant of
old-fashioned national-socialism.
In other words, those looking to cherry-pick easy
comparisons to American politics have their work cut out for them.
Except in one regard.
For decades, critics of America’s mass immigration have
argued that the social upheaval such policies produce is dangerous and
destabilizing. But the topic became radioactive for reasonable politicians,
creating an opening for unreasonable ones among the working-class
constituencies most affected by immigration.
This is precisely what has happened in France. Interviews
with Le Pen voters tell this story over and over again. They bemoan the great
“replacement” of not only workers but also customs, traditions, and lifestyles
brought by waves of immigrants.
These resentments are perhaps more acute in France than
elsewhere, a country where national identity precedes political and ideological
orientations, and where assimilation is narrowly defined. But the same dynamic
is playing itself out across Europe and America.
Le Pen will probably lose, but the problem will endure
long past May 7.
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