What was the role of the Front National, in that vote? Le Pen campaigned, hard, for the "Non". Were French voters simply frustrated with and discouraged by the so-called "pocketbook" issues of the economic recession, as so many journals reported, or was this a vote in favor of Front National policies?

April 22, 2002: Update -- well, It Happened...

The Le Pen Presidential Elections, 2002: taking "je m'en fous" too far?

National Results:

Still, the significant statistic appears to be that nearly 1 in 5 French voters now favors the Front National: or at least is so fed up with her / his politics -- these are the folks who were not calm enough simply to abstain -- that the vote has gone in that direction.

So, ok, now assure us that "everything will be alright" in the Second Round, on May 5 ?...

February 4, 2002: Update -- just in case you thought Le Pen, or the Front National, or these issues, had died in France... many of the French themselves think they have / thought they had...

The following photo is of none other than the Front National's Jean-Marie Le Pen -- in full rhetorical flame -- who now once again is running for election, this very Spring, as president of France:

And apparently "8% à 9% des intentions de vote" already are with him... see Charles Platiau in Reuters,

At a time when the home front news everywhere is a little shaky -- questionable elections, scandal, corruption, terrorism, the massive deployment of weapons of "mass" as well as "not - so - mass - but - still - effective" destruction throughout the globe... -- it seems useful to remember just how fragile our political institutions really are, in a lot of places, and not just "at home" wherever that may be.

In France, which is one of the closest and oldest political and cultural allies of the US, institutional fragility in politics has a long history, honored as much in the breach as in the memory. From the turmoil of the revolution of over two centuries ago, to the tragedies of the 1940s, there always have been men and women in France ready to wreak profound and violent political change -- for the sake of the change alone, it very often seems.

At the same time the French have less tendency than others simply to forget their periods of violent change. The country is covered with historical monuments. Major towns still have their boulevard du 11 Novembre 1914. French pupils still learn to distinguish their Vendémiaire from their Frimaire from their Prairial in school -- reciting such lessons at times to little effect, francophobes point out, but nevertheless at least they remember them... simply remembering could be a first step for a few other political cultures now entering rough waters after more successful sailing, so far, than the French have enjoyed...

And, beyond "examples", at least one of the remedies for isolationism -- and a necessity for globalization -- is an ongoing awareness of what may be happening to your friends as well as to your foes, whatever the current "home front" distractions might be. Nations which cannot find Afghanistan on a map, or which act surprised when foreign friends criticize, or which get taken over by extremists, have nothing to blame but their own ignorance.

What were those old book titles, so infamous in the 1940s and 1950s and so little-read since?:

• While England slept; a survey of world affairs, 1932-1938 / Winston S. Churchill (New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1938).

• Why England slept / John F. Kennedy (New York : W. Funk, 1940).

  -- or, for that matter,

• Mein Kampf / Adolf Hitler (Munchen : F. Eher Nachf., 1925-1927).

  -- anyone wanting to read a modern day version of the latter, in the French context, is directed to the various resources by and about the French FN assembled herein, via the links shown above.

Guys like Le Pen never keep their ideas a secret. Publicity -- for building "the movement" as well as for egomaniacal grandstanding and fund-raising and other purposes -- always is their first priority. It's just that the rest of us never take them seriously, or just "don't want to know".

Le Pen now is 73 years old. But age is no barrier in French, or any other, politics. Petain was 84.

And for those who will say, "But things are very different now, things were much worse back then..." Well, there were those who said that back in 1940, too...

A partial list of current worries, the type of thing which contributes to a Le Pen:

• Unemployment is rising again in France -- back up towards the double digits. The memories of decades of 12%+ national chômage which tore into the social fabric of the country still are fresh. Such memories understandably panic any voter who thinks of them now.

• The general economy is not doing so well in France now, either. The recovery from the US - led "dotcom bust" -- which has lagged the US economic recovery by about 6 months, as it lagged the "dotcom boom" in the first place -- now seems to have stalled. Just as investment managers in the US increasingly are warning of a long and slow recovery -- no "V-shaped recovery" here, it seems -- so investors in France too are becoming worried. And it is worry, not necessarily reality, which fuels extremism.

• And corruption doesn't help. The escape of the President and other politicians from the worst which might have happened, in the recent French corruption scandals -- might have been better to have faced the fire -- fuels a cynicism greatly increased now by the tales coming out of Washington about "EnronGate". Back when French national unemployment was high, the worst-impacted were youth -- nationally 25% or even 35%, with regional figures even higher -- it was virtually impossible to get a job "near home" if you were "young", and the proportions of "SDF / sans domicile fixe" were enormous. To an already disenchanting situation, then, add the possibility / probability of "cheating at the top", plus an easy escape from same by the supposed culprits, and you have a recipe for "disenchanted youth" voting for extremists on simply a "je m'en fou" factor -- which was a large component of the appeal to unemployed youth made by the Nazis in the early Weimar years.

• And the Brave New Europe of The Euro, while it is Good News also is Unsettling News, for many -- any time you have change you lose a few to the sheer novelty and uncertainty of it. So the Front National also may benefit from whatever marginality is out there on the "Europe" issue: people afraid of the Germans, people longing for their old icons, people afraid of "Europe", people afraid of "change", people afraid of their own fear...

• To which "September 11" and the ringing sloganeering of the US White House that "Everything Has Changed..." do not help. The uncertainty, and insecurity, engendered by the very mediagenic bin Laden and his bunch no doubt succeeded, at least in part and with some folks -- quite a few people have been scared, all of us at least a little, by the very real new risks presented. With all the other headlines -- the Middle East, the Iranians arming Hizbollah, new North Korean missile capacities, and so on -- in foreign relations there are things to panic about even if one is not the panicky type, and in spite of The Euro and other good news. So some people turn to extremism, such as Le Pen and the Front National...

  France is no exception in this, one of the leading US classical scholars just has released, and is pushing, an alarming rearmament panegyric -- While America Sleeps : Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace / Donald Kagan, Frederick W. Kagan (Griffin Trade Paperback, 2001) ISBN: 0312283741 -- on the theory that nowadays "might will make right" as it has, he says that he demonstrates, throughout history... no wonder that people are worried...

• And all of which, perhaps, manifests itself in ways even more fundamental than political extremism: fertility rates are down since the 1960s and are falling, now, in Western Europe generally and in France -- below 2 babies per woman. People have or do not have babies for many reasons. But if and to the extent that one of these reasons is economic and political insecurity, then a general fall in the fertility rate just might become a useful and even alarming political prognosticator... people do tend to go to extremes when they are feeling insecure...

There is a fragility in human institutions which is too often taken for granted, in nations which enjoy a long history of stability in same, or at least in the notion of that stability. The US, for example, is a nation which enjoys, or believes that it enjoys, a nearly 225-year run of relative political stability: memories of total ruptures and near-interruptions -- the antiwar 1960s, the racial 1920s, turn - of - the - 20th - century labor unrest, the Civil War, early rebellions -- all grow dim, particularly with recent Cold War successes against an "Evil Empire" opponent. Things look good.

But it is useful to remember -- useful never to forget -- that there have been times, and might be again, when things don't look so good. A recent work analyzing the history of some of the typical of American political philosophy -- Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) -- forcefully makes the point that the debt owed by the US to seminal thinkers such as John Dewey, Charles Peirce, William James, and Oliver Holmes stems greatly from labor unrest and Civil War insecurities which these four knew in their youths. Such insecurity will come again, to any society, and when it does some will take the path indicated by a Front National and a Jean-Marie Le Pen. For the rest of us, it would be well at least to remind ourselves that the extremists are out there, and that the world is never certain: in the words of Paul Simon, "these are the days of miracle and wonder... the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio..."

So now comes -- once again, to the fray in France -- Jean-Marie Le Pen and his Front National, who and which many in France seemed certain would die an irrevocable death in the internecine Mégret / Le Pen squabbling of a few years back. "Squashed like a bug," was the very definite phrase uttered by a French friend to me, back then.

But the bug lives, and is running for president now, again, and has nearly 1 in 10 French voters saying that at least they'll consider it in the elections this Spring... Hard to kill some bugs...

July 3, 2001: Latest news from Vitrolles: a not-so-subtle reminder -- to any of us, and particularly any of us who are French, who have tried to take comfort in the recent Le Pen - Megret fracas and FN internecine split -- that Europe has been / still is / always could one day become, again, a very dangerous place... like the U.S. too, I suppose... these guys, Haider, Bossi, Berlusconi... the price of liberty is nightmares...

From: p.ufict-cgt@libertysurf.fr
Subject: Vitrolles : censure
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:26:58 +0200

Le syndicat CGT des fonctionnaires territoriaux de Vitrolles continue 
d' informer les professionnels et amis des bibliothèques et de la 
Lecture Publique sur l'évolution des bibliothèques de Vitrolles et de 
leur personnel :

La procédure d'acquisitions décrite dans le précédent message 
commence à produire ses effets :

Le personnel a pu constater que trois titres proposés par eux à 
l'acquisition ne font pas partie de la liste des ouvrages 
effectivement passés en commande la semaine dernière. (Il faut se 
souvenir que le volume des acquisitions est très faible) :

Voici les ouvrages écartés :

- La mort qu'il faut / Jorge SEMPRUN. - Gallimard, 2001
- Cette aveuglante absence de lumière / Tahar BEN JELLOUN. - Le Seuil, 2001
- Tout le monde fait l'amour / Pascale CLARCK. - Albin Michel, 2001


Il s'agit indéniablement d'un acte de censure, dans la mesure ou il a 
été clairement annoncé au personnel par le responsable des 
bibliothèques, oralement bien sûr, que lorsqu'un ouvrage n'était pas 
retenu pour commande, il ne fallait pas le représenter dans les 
propositions pour la commande suivante. Monsieur WINTER a même été 
précisé à ce même personnel que par contre les ouvrages choisis par 
Monsieur BORDON, le Directeur des affaires Culturelles, ne pouvaient 
pas eux "être censurés".

Ceci signifie que le public des bibliothèques de Vitrolles est 
définitivement privé de l'accès aux livres de Jorge SEMPRUN et Tahar 
BEN JELLOUN, au moins tant que les Mégret seront en place.

Quant au Pascale CLARCK, c'est typiquement le titre un peu 
provocateur, mais carrément obscène aux yeux de la prude Madame 
MARANDAT, l' élue à la culture, qui justifie sa mise à l'index. Son 
mot d'ordre pour les achats de livres de la bibliothèque est " Pas de 
sexe, pas de violence, pas sang ni de mort".

Syndicat CGT des Fonctionnaires territoriaux de Vitrolles, B.P. 92
13743 VITROLLES CEDEX - Tél : 04-42-75-25-89 Fax : 04-42-79-07-28 ou 
p.ufict-cgt@libertysuf.fr

n.b. In case anyone would like to know which side I am on:
 

Recent events:

Some history:

-- any of which could apply to my personal opinion of the views of either the FN or its more virulent detractors, I suppose -- in my own case they are what I think of the FN's supposed "positions", which I regard as being merely incidental to their overall political aims.

The necessity of expressing this personal opinion, here, is of greater interest than the opinion itself, though, I believe. The presentation of the FN's views here could be seen as helping either the FN or their opponents: their opponents, in that increased publicity for what appear to be ridiculous ideas will assist those who seek to ridicule them -- the FN itself, in that this site increases publicity for FN propaganda. There will be those who will say that "objectivity" would be a better posture to adopt -- that it would be best simply to offer what the FN and its critics say and do, and let the facts and opinions "speak for themselves".

I was trained, however, by a generation which had lost faith in an ideal of "objectivity" derived from a hundred years -- some would say several hundred -- of confidence in notions of "science" and "progress". People questioned these notions, during the 1960's and 1950's, because such unmitigated disasters had been produced by them during the 1940's and 1930's and really during the entire first half of this century. One of my teachers, Harold Lasswell, used to urge students, including scientific researchers and so - called professionals, to "clarify your observational standpoint": he had lived at the center of the 1930's / 1940's maelstrom, and he had learned that you are a participant, no matter how removed you think you are or wish to be.

So here, rather than do what most researchers and historians and librarians traditionally have done, I declare my personal biases quite frankly to be against the FN and to be in favor of spreading their propaganda only so as to expose them to the ridicule which their supposed ideas deserve -- and to consign their sheer and cynical political opportunism and growing political power to the historical garbage heap.

Mine is a naive American strategy, I know, one which ultimately relies upon an idealistic faith in the wisdom of the majority and the functioning of democracy: in places where democracy does not work so well and majorities are not so wise, a better strategy for dealing with the FN might be to "sweep them under the rug" and ignore them.

But now that the FN has polled 15% of the national vote in France -- and they poll well over the majority in several regions and major cities of that large and significant Western European country -- the FN no longer can be ignored. The Nazis polled only 3% nationally in Germany in 1928...

The current strategy in France is to go to the other extreme and "diabolize" the FN, giving them a following which their simplistic and superficial ideas do not deserve: read their Bruno Megret's book online in fulltext, cited and linked herein. My own publication of their ideas here may help them even further. My hope -- naive and American though it might be, or be seen to be -- is that others, and they the majority, hereby will see how ridiculous and dangerous those ideas and this party are. If the result is the opposite, well, I would not want a world ruled by oligarchies, no matter how much more enlightened than the rest of us they might be.

The presentation of the FN here is being made not to victimize France or the French: their "Front National" is a social illness which any of us could have -- most of us do, in one way or another, although the infection is perhaps not so virulent elsewhere as it is in France today. The purpose of the presentation is more to suggest one way in which the "new media" can be used for social action -- the FN themselves already do this, very well -- and to attack the idea that the useful but also professional presentation of extremist viewpoints must or even can be "objective".

There were entirely too many "objective" social scientists and other professionals analyzing events in Germany and the Nazi party there, during the 1930's. 

Versions of what is shown here have appeared online regularly, since 1992, as a feature of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, which is distributed for free via email every month except August. Ejournal subscriptions may be obtained via email request to: kessler@well.sf.ca.us . The lists contain a selection only: new books and periodicals, and additional online digital information resources, develop in France every week, on the Minitel and the Internet -- one can be sure only that there are more, not fewer, than what is shown here online in France now.

Here this file is one of a number made available -- hopefully attractively, all in one place, and relevant to libraries and online digital information work in France and Europe -- as part of FYI France (sm)(tm), an online service to which anyone can subscribe by postal mailing a check for US $45 payable to Jack Kessler, to PO Box 460668, San Francisco, California, USA 94146 (site licenses also are available): please write your email address on the front of your check. Please email suggestions for improvements to me at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .