The French connection
This is a post on the result of the French race for the presidency. Sarkozy won, a clear turn to the Right … and the White House is uber-thrilled at the prospects. Royal lost, with a lot of help from her fractured party, and this will signal a reorganization of the Socialists if they want to remain viable, or so say the pundits. The “given” is that the French “Right” is not so Right as ours … but the word NeoCon is being associated with the new prez. Not very comforting to the progressives from a pro-Israel, anti-EU Reagan-esque character who has used the word “mandate” and has won an election with, it turns out, Diebold-type voting machines.
I’m posting a short collection of interesting articles, from Juan Cole’s analysis to snarky blogs regarding poodles. Responses to the blog posts have been the most entertaining, though — from great harangues about immigrants to affirmations of fidelity with the French democratic model to disregard and insult for cheese to defense of poodles [the breed] in general. We’re all over the place with this — and I don’t know French politics well enough to comment, although a group of those who do told Charlie Rose last night that Sarkozy is a control freak; we’ll see how well he gets along with the Dubbys arrogance.
One tidbit — over and over again I hear people saying if Sarkozy doesn’t “work out,” the tough-minded French will oust him without ceremony.
Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s projection … what we WISH we’d done.
Jude
Can Sarkozy Uphold the Values of 1789?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, May 07, 2007
Rightwing nationalist Nicolas Sarkozy, is the next president of France. He campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform that veered uncomfortably close to that of Jean-Marie LePen, though he did make a provision for affirmative action. Sarkozy will try to break the unions, and his view of the immigrants who rioted in 2005 over joblessness as “scum” bodes ill for social peace. An Arab blogger’s view of Sarkozy’s police tactics is eye-opening.
Sarkozy’s message, that he wants to restore pride in Frenchness, wants to promote free market reforms, and worries that France has lost control of its borders all sounds Reaganesque. Just as Reaganism was a form of American (”white”) nationalism, so Sarkozyism is a form of French nationalism. And just as Reagan’s nationalism had a class location in the upper middle classes and the rich, so too does Sarkozy’s “French” nationalism.
But the United States and France are both founded on civic nationalism (open to everyone of any race or culture), not on ethnic nationalism. While Germany’s laws allowed persons of German heritage and language resident in eastern Europe and Central Asia under Communist rule to come to Germany as citizens after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States would hardly make a law allowing English-speakers to immigrate at will. Citizenship in the US is open to all ethnicities and is about allegiance to the Constitution. The revolutionary ideal of France is similarly civic. The Republican French thought nothing of bestowing citizenship on some provinces of Senegal and actually allowing them to elect deputies to the French national assembly. French citizenship was never about race, about “Français de souche.” But I worry that Sarkozy’s trajectory is to privilege that kind of narrow Frenchness.
Sarkozy’s French nationalism (he uses the French equivalent of “France: Love it or leave it!”– a sentiment pioneered by LePen) will clash with the realities of French multiculturalism. France’s Muslims are estimated at anywhere from 4 million on up, but I favor the 4 million figure (the population of metropolitan France is about 60 million, so this is 6.6 percent).
The Muslims are only one immigrant group. There are thought to be 14 million French of immigrant origins (over the past century?)– including 100,000 Britons. The biggest group is the Portuguese.
Sarkozy intends to create an Orwellian “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.” He rubbed the practicing Muslims the wrong way when he came out in favor of the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, and he supported banning the headscarf for Muslim school girls.
Although it is often said that Sarkozy played a positive role in insisting that French Muslims form a Muslim Council and develop a “French Islam,” it is often forgotten that the council ended up being dominated by first-generation immigrants out of touch with French Muslims (many of whom are third or fourth generation), and by conservative religious groups–the “National Federation of Muslims in France (FNMF) and the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF).” Sarkozy himself is said to have favored the UOIF, which is to say the least made up of hardliners. One suspects that he was attempting to set up religous Muslims as a force in rightwing politics in France, on the model of the practicing Roman Catholics. (About 18 percent of the French are practicing Roman Catholics; most of these congregations have tended to vote Gaullist. Some 45 percent of practicing Catholics voted in the first round for Sarkozy, with only 11 percent voting Socialist. The rest must have voted for the centrist candidate, Francois Bayrou [or as a reader reminded me, LePen, who got 10% in the first round].)
Ironically, Sarkozy may have succeeded in setting up a rightwing Muslim Council, but failed to attract its loyalty to himself, given his subsequent record of anti-immigrant rhetoric and his positions on cultural issues important to Muslims.
In the first round, only 1 percent of Muslim voters embraced Sarkozy, with 64 percent voting for Segolene Royal. That French Muslims supported a woman socialist candidate so overwhelmingly shows how few of them have a fundamentalist mindset. Most French Muslim youth are relatively remote from the culture of their grandparents and the rioting was economic in character.
In his acceptance speech, Sarkozy said he would try to be president of all the French. I hope he meant to include the workers and immigrants. If not, his tenure could be turbulent.
George W. Bush with Brains
Jane Smiley
05.08.2007
After the results of the French election came in, a friend of mine wrote me a note in which she called Sarkozy “George W. Bush with brains”. I am sure she meant to indicate that Sarkozy will now lead France down the sort of corrupt, selfish, chaotic, inhumane, and militaristic path that Bush has led the US down, but still, that phrase, “George W. Bush with brains”. There’s something about it that just seems impossible. If George W. Bush had brains (as opposed to, say, a form of low cunning that is more akin to a survival instinct than reason) he wouldn’t be George W. Bush.
Lots of people know more about France than I do, and no doubt Sarkozy doesn’t mind some shocks to the system in the classic capitalist tradition (meaning stacking the deck with threats, guns, and/or bombers so the corporatists can have what they want), and I do think it would be too bad if France took up a kind of belated Blairism. Life is way better in France than it is in England, shame on the Brits.
Even so, I am inclined to give Sarkozy a chance. The first thing he did was ask Bush to “take the lead on global warming”, the very thing that Bush is least inclined to do. He has, therefore, set a condition for his relationship to the US. Surely he knows that Bush resents suggestions from others–in order for him to want to do something, he has to think it’s his own idea. And now old Sarko has challenged him on something that is at the very heart of what Bush wants to protect, the oil industry. Sarko has given us an indicator–if he keeps pressing Bush on global warming, we’ll know he’s got actual brains and isn’t the suck-up that Tony Blair is. If he lets global warming go, then we’ll know that he’s failed in his official capacity as the president of FRANCE, and become Bush’s French poodle.
As Bush’s French poodle, of course, one of his first duties would be to support the war in Iraq, and, even, perhaps, send French troops. This is another indicator, and even, from the point of view of Washington, a litmus test. “Coalition” troops in Iraq are fading away like the snows of Kilimanjaro. If Sarko decides to buck French policy and send some troops, that would be another sign that a Sarkozy government will haul water for the Bushies. In honor of the Triple Crown, I’ll give you 10 to 1 against French troops heading to Iraq.
What people object to about Sarkozy is his hotheaded and outspoken pugnacity and the fact that he would like to dismantle, or at least modify, the French welfare state. Some 54% of French voters seem not to mind the idea of slightly modifying the French welfare state, and I would say that that is their business rather than mine, but I like that pugnacity.
One of the demoralizing things about Tony Blair is that he has never shown any pugnacity towards Bush at all. “Fawnng” is the word that springs to mind. Or “creepy”. Or “smarmy, slimey, wormlike, crawling, spineless, unprincipled”. Maybe if he had been a little more hot-tempered, he would have shown some character. But Sarkozy’s irritability is another indicator. Does he only call Muslim rioters “scum”, or is he willing to call Dick Cheney “scum”, too?
Sarkozy has been a bureaucrat for many years, and some of his policies have been effective. Bush was just an oil man. Nothing he ever did was ever meant to serve the public good or even to consider it. He came into office with no experience except that of lining his own pockets and having his ass saved by his daddy’s friends. What I am watching for in Sarkozy are signs that he is a tool of the world-wide uberclass of war profiteers, oil profiteers, and finance profiteers. Mere conservatism is not the same thing.
And then there’s this, the 85% turnout. If 85% of the voters go to the polls, that means to me (correct me if you think I am wrong, which I know you will) that French voters aren’t asleep at the wheel the way American voters are. If Sarko goes too far down the Bush path, I’ll give you 5 to 1 that French voters will kick him out. It’s a great thing, democracy.
Misreading the French Election
Benjamin R. Barber, HuffPo
05.08.2007
Republican conservatives reeling from President Bush’s plummeting poll numbers, as low as President Carter’s during the dark days of the hostage crisis in Iran, are excited. They have discovered hope in — of all places — France! Yes, the nation at the very center of what they disdained as “old” Europe, the country that has been Bush’s bete noire ever since he went looking for WMD in Baghdad.
The very same culture whose potatoes had to be renamed Freedom Fries so patriotic Congressmen wouldn’t have to utter the dreaded “F” word when ordering lunch in the Capitol mess hall.
Why the sudden love fest? Because the French just voted in a “conservative” for president, dismissing his rival, a feminist fem named Segolene Royal as pretty as she was ballsy. She snatched the Socialist nomination from her companion, Socialist Party Chair Francois Hollande, with whom she has four children, only to give up a six-point victory (53% to 47% with a huge turnout of over 80%) to the son of Hungarian immigrants.
Which to the Republicans apparently proves the French have wised up to wily women like Hillary Clinton and have figured out that Bush is a friend of liberty, you know, like Chancellor Merkel in Germany, and are ready to cede power back to Washington.
Only it’s not so simple. As usual, the Republicans are misreading international events. Sarkozy certainly stirred up right-wing populist passions against Muslim immigrants and the “thugs” and “scum” (as he called the unemployed and angry mobs of teens in the immigrant suburbs), and he owes his victory to the old — the young voted against him. But he also got a majority of women — they didn’t go for Royal’s message about sisterly solidarity.
Most importantly, he triumphed as an anti-establishmentarian promising to break up the old elites trained in the “grandes ecoles” and free up the entrepreneurial environment, long encased in a paralytic bureaucracy. He wants France to join the world and stop wallowing in nostalgia for its old civilizing mission and its vanished empire. He wants better relations with the United States, but he is as opposed to the Iraq adventure as Chirac, his predecessor at the Palais Elysee.
In other words, though he has exploited populist and nationalist resentments, he is first of all a modernizer who thinks France of the ancient regime has rendered itself irrelevant. As a nationalist, he is likely to enhance not American but French power. His election certainly reflects the appeal of nationalist politics, but it is signals not a return to but a striking break with the past.
My advice to Republicans: in reading the triangle of Chirac (outgoing Gaullist President), Royal (failed left-centrist candidate) and Sarkozy (successful right-centrist modernizer) Bush and his Republican wannabes are not Sarkozy, but Chirac, the tired, stubborn, out-of-touch-with reality ideologue. While Hillary may be, no not Royal, but the pragmatic and realist Sarkozy. In other words, the French election suggests why the Republicans are likely not to win but to lose the presidency in 2008.
Blair Out! Sarkozy In! The Changing of The Poodles!
Tony Hendra, HuffPo
05.07.2007
Just as Tony Blair heads for the Royal Home for Retired Bush-Poodles, here comes Nicky Sarkozy, pom-poms all fluffed and perfumed, stepping high to fill Tony’s dainty doggie-booties.
Difference is that poodles being (I believe) an indigenous French breed, we’ll be getting yapping even more frantic, butt-sniffing even more craven, doggie-tricks even more elaborate than we ever got from cool-Britannia Tony.
The dewlaps of Sarko’s neo-fascist owners in Washington must be drooling buckets at the hoops they’re going to put their new pet through:
Sit, Nicky, sit! Attaboy! Roll over Nicky! Awright! Isn’t he just too cute? Play dead Nicky! Play dead I said! Good boy! Here’s your Chewy.
Yup, just as we’re getting ready to dump and punish the hideous criminals who’ve disgraced our executive for the last six years, the cheese-eating flunkeys of the French right have decided to start kowtowing to them.
Way to go cheese-eating flunkeys. Always in the avant-garde! So far ahead of us lumbering, dumpy Anglo-Saxon progressives. What impeccable political timing you display! What crystalline logic!
So perfectly logical to support a child of immigrants who proposes to repress, imprison and deport the children of immigrants, whose parents have frequently been French much longer than his. Ouais, bien logique! So admirably color-blind to encourage the conclusion that this must be because Sarko’s (uppercrust, Hungarian) parents are white, while those of the French citizens he spits on, are not.
Apropos: how independent, how European, how free-thinking, how very third-way of vous les francais to vote for a candidate whose appeal, like that of the last three Republican occupants of the White House, is, once all the fiscal and patriotic clap-trap has been stripped away, naked racism. How forward-looking of you, how future-oriented! Please, please whenever you get the chance, berate us for our naked racism, for our inhumane treatment of, and attitudes towards, say, immigrants. We can learn from your clarity of vision, o cheese-eating flunkeys, your purity of motive, your matchless integrity.
Vive la Republique Sarkozienne! A Republic in which our own Republicans are going to have heaps of fun, now they have a poodle in place. Poodles after all, are very intelligent. Very easy to train. Righties are already dreaming of a ‘new revolution’ (Such a clever turn of phrase! Because the French had a revolution once before, you see, except it was of the people against the ruling class not vice versa, so maybe that doesn’t quite work…? Eh bien, pas grave!).
In the never-never land that is the right-wing vision of Europe’s future, others are chattering breathlessly about the end of socialism, (that would be the socialism that was long ago incorporated into Europe’s DNA). Still others are envisioning the end of the 35-hour week, or the end of the unions or the end of one of finest health-care programs in the world, and …oh…a dozen other crazy end-of dreams. Not things their poodle has the slightest hope of doing anything about, but who cares?
Nothing the neo-fascists say about France or Europe has anything to do with the actual reality of those places. It has only to do with boosting their prophetic bona fides and thus increasing their clout and credibility within these continental United States. When their attention turns elsewhere because their poodle will have been unable to say privatize the superb French rail-system so that their corporate buddies can strip profits and assets from it, they’ll lose interest. Their poodle will be booted out into the night the way all foreign poodles are sooner or later. (Hey way back when, even Saddam was one of their poodles).
But of course poor little Nicky doesn’t know that… yet. Let’s not spoil his moment in the sun:
Sit, Nicky, sit! Attaboy! Roll over Nicky! Awwww — ain’t he cute? Play dead Nicky! Good boy! Got it first time this time! Good doggie!
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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