Jean-Marie Le Pen

French Rightist Stirs Up a Storm Visiting Britain

By ALAN COWELL

Published: April 26, 2004

ONDON, April 25 — Hostile demonstrators swirled around a car carrying Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-right leader, during a visit to northern England on Sunday, throwing eggs and garbage to protest his support for the white supremacist British National Party.

Mr. Le Pen's visit to British far rightists seeking to move in from the political fringe offered an unusual public display of transnational support among European rightists. His weekend journey to Manchester in northwestern England had been preceded by warnings from the British government that the police would take action if his presence threatened public order.

Mr. Le Pen's hosts tried to restrict information about the location of a news conference near Manchester, but protesters learned of it and several hundred gathered outside shouting, "Nazi scum off our streets." As he left, the antiracism demonstrators surged toward his car and pounded on it.

"I've walked about freely in Iraq and Turkey, in Malaysia and Indonesia," Mr. Le Pen said at the news conference. "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to walk about freely in England."

In the presence of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, he pledged support for the British group in European Parliament elections in June.

The British National Party has frequently been embroiled in racial clashes, particularly with people of Asian descent in northwestern England. In France, Mr. Le Pen has been convicted of stirring racial hatred and anti-Semitism. In 2002, Mr. Le Pen came in second in French national elections, an unexpected inroad into the political mainstream.

He said Sunday that he hoped right-wing parties would make a strong showing in the European elections in June. Both Mr. Le Pen and the British rightists seek a following among those who blame immigrants for many of their country's woes.

Mr. Le Pen said immigration threatened the French national identity. "If this is not stopped the French people will no longer be French and will become subject to the invading populations from the third world and other countries," he said, according to the Press Association, the British news agency.

i'm not a fan of either. i'd be quite happy if he didn't get to come here at all. if that's censorship (and it quite clearly is) then so be it.

so...dud... as far as i'm concerned.

Exsqueeze me?

Have Le Pen's personal approval ratings risen or fallen since the last? Is the French government winning the argument on immigration or is it doing what the Blair government is doing and allowing the Right to set the agenda and put it on the defensive, leading it to drift further and further rightwards?

*Funny that for a country held up by Momus and others as a great beacon of social democracy etc.

Is what I meant to say.

But the refusal of mainstream Britain to accept them (BBC newsreader's faces still frown when they mention the BNP, they are only to be spoken of in a tone of high disapproval) pleases me, even if their attitudes and support are being fuelled by the same people (the Sun, the Mail, the Express) that would otherwise decry them. This strikes me as being a far greater problem - sooner or later Griffin won't be saying anything other than what you can read in any tabloid newspaper - maybe he already is.

I imagine these go no further than being "reports". And he already is saying what you can read in any tabloid newspaper.

Why is Le Pen so much more successful than Griffin?

From the two interviews with her I have seen she is also a fucking idiot.

Televsion and radio presenters in France are generally less than objective when referring to Le Pen too. He's treated with such scorn by the establishment that many marginalized French people like him if for only that. Near the poly-sci campus on the Rue D'Assas one would always see right-wing graffiti so I was surpsed and amused to see one day, "Le Pen=Breton, Breton!=French, Le Pen!=French". To use his simplistic racism as a weapon aimed at him was the perfect approach, I thought.

On the contrary I suspect the lack of racial diversity over here means there is a lack of active racism (though there is certainly some sort of emergence in process). I think this is quite depressing though, in that it implies a return for far right politics, however slight, is an inevitability of the time we live in.

Have Le Pen's personal approval ratings risen or fallen since the last election?
stationary

a platform allows people to engage with the debate, allows others to debunk his statements.
not sure about that. you can't really debate with this man but the platform allows him to express his ideas. and also what Michael said, it allows him to play the victim card

Is the French government [...] doing what the Blair government is doing and allowing the Right to set the agenda and put it on the defensive, leading it to drift further and further rightwards?
exactly. that's the main problem. in France we call this the "lepenisation des esprits".

there is no sense in which this is true. In a multi-candidate election, Jospin won less votes than Le Pen. If Jospin had made it to the run-off with Le Pen, then he would have won by a similar kind of landslide margin to that which Chirac won.

s his participation on this level classic or dud? is it a sign of healthy inclusiveness and debate in french society, or of a sickness and unwillingness to call a spade a spade (by which to say, a racist a racist).

I can't really answer this question one way or another. However, loathsome as he, his party, and everything they stand for are, Le Pen and his cronies do regularly clock up sizeable enough proportions of the vote. I'm not sure that the media should ignore politicians just because they don't like them, even if they are slimeballs.

i think the media often marginalizes him by other means

for example, on tv debates, you often have representatives of many parties, from trotskyites on the extreme left to a national front spokesman (or le pen himself) on the extreme right. the main flow of the debate seems to occur between the socialists, the chirac-ists, and other parties of the center, center-left, or center-right. when the others speak, or rather hold forth, the debate often stops dead, and much eye-rolling and thumb-twiddling takes place. there is a refusal--understandable--to bother engaging le pen et al, lest he set the terms of the debate or the whole enterprise founder over ideological squabbles.

p.s. you can usually identify the extreme left representative even with the sound off, because he will be the one not wearing a tie (if the representative is a woman there isn't a similar telltale sign that i know of).

I don't know much about France's political landscape, but yes, Michael, I'd bet that neither the socialists and the gaullists (is this Chirac's party or am i completely wrong?) had the rural areas of the south as established strongholds like Labour has had the north of England and Wales, or the Tories have had the southern home counties... So, maybe it is partly the electoral system, maybe the distinct socio-geography of France. And very possibly it might have something to do with nationalism and patriotism actually having a lot of residual strength in France... probably more than Britain, I would hypothesize?

i thought this was less true recently, and he won support pretty much all over france, including in the ile de france. (and in alsace, which was recently the only department to go right in regional elections.)