Marine Le Pen took over the party leadership of the xenophobic, far-right National Front Party this week. The Wall Street Journal noted that “Ms. Le Pen on Sunday became the party’s second leader since it was formed 38 years ago by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, and immediately promised to oppose immigration and globalization, as well as seize back powers from the European Union.”
The National Front has been, without question, a political force to be reckoned with during election cycles in France. In 2002, it defeated the French Socialists and forced a run-off election with former president Jacques Chirac. French analysts chalked up the dramatic National Front election results to a kind of infantile protest vote against the mainstream parties. In short, a post-adolescent French outburst of political disaffection but not a real flirting with French Vichy-style neo- fascism. Chirac went on to soundly prevail over the National Front.
According to a recent French poll, however, the National Front has secured 12 percent of the electorate’s support. Jean-Marie Le Pen is notorious for his statements that contain elements of Holocaust denial and crudely playing down the severity of the Holocaust, terming it a mere “detail” of history.
One “detail” that the mainstream media did not report on this week is the alliance between the National Front and those Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who loathe Israel and want to abolish the Jewish state. During the 2009 European Union parliamentary elections, the French entertainer and comedian Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala formed the Anti-Zionist Party. He was deadly serious about his party’s aims and has over the years been engulfed in anti-Semitic scandals.
Dieudonne’s political bedfellow at the time was the National Front. (Le Pen is purportedly the godfather of Dieudonne ‘s daughter.) What unifies Le Pen and Dieudonne, himself the son an immigrant from Cameroon, and figures from the left, such as ex-Communist Alain Soral and former Green Party member Ginette Skandrani, is hatred of Israel. It should also be noted that Yahia Gouasmi, head of the Zahra Center in Paris, which is affiliated with Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran, was a candidate on the Anti-Zionist party.
(Not unrelated: Hezbollah enjoys wide organizational latitude in France. Germany also recognizes Hezbollah as a legal political entity, and there are 900 active members in the Federal Republic.)
In 2009, the Anti-Zionist Party platform called for an end to “Zionist interference in the nation’s public affairs,” as well as a rebuke of “politicians who apologize for Zionism.” The radical anti-Israeli party demands that France “free our state, our government, our institutions from the possession and pressure of Zionist organizations; eradicate all forms of Zionism in the nation” and “prevent enterprises and institutions from contributing to the war efforts of a foreign nation, which does not respect International Law.”
With French President Nicholas Sarkozy faltering in the polls and his Socialist opposition still seen as floundering, a repeat of the National Front’s coup of making it to the second round of the next presidential election is not out of the question. This formal alliance with the Anti-Zionist Party makes such a development even more ominous.
And shortly thereafter the NY Times hired him as a stringer.
A thinly veiled glee could be discerned in much of the reporting, especially in the places where anti-American sentiment runs deepest
Like Iraq? The same Iraq that we liberated?
what sam said…
I wish we can threw all our shoes to all these corrupt politicians living and breathing in DC.
“A thinly veiled glee could be discerned in much of the reporting, especially in the places where anti-American sentiment runs deepest”
The Demorat party was gleeful.
He was tackled and arrested? How brutal? I’m sure he would have fared much better had he thrown his shoes at Saddam, back when Iraq was free.
Are we sure he’s not registered to vote in Chicago.
“He has been very critical of the occupation of Iraq, expressing his wishes that Saddam Hussein was still in power.”
“He has been very critical of the occupation of Iraq, expressing his wishes that Saddam Hussein was still in power.”
That’s according to Wikipedia.
It’s already made it into Wiki. Sounds like a setup.
Yeah, it’s all over the papers and on the news, especially that zone of super-smart einstein-like genius – television/cable news. The same news that gives you dopey recipes in the morning, traffic reports, and jokey-stupid anchors with content free banter between content free ‘news’ reports. There is something almost child-like and touching about news reporting these days – it’s all personality, it’s all opinion, all blowdried blow hards giggling over the inability to pronounce Blagojevich.
Oh, the shoe thing? Yeah, truth to power!
Barack Obama’s inauguration is coming soon. We should all throw our shoes at him in DC and see what happens to us. Of course, you won’t be able to get within a mile of the Messiah.
Next you’ll be telling us the media has a liberal bias. Politico:
“Jay Carney, who left Time magazine this morning, is going to become assistant to Vice President Joe Biden and his director of communications, according to “The Page.”
“Carney had been Time’s Washington bureau chief, and was overseeing campaign coverage just over a month ago.”
Hey, you’ve still got AM radio.
Shoe-tossing seems like an improvement over flying planes into buildings.
Time’s DC bureau chief knows where the MSM’s headed. He’s no fool.
It’s no big deal, the man was just letting Bush know how ‘grateful’ he was for his country being invaded, civilians killed, country destroyed.
What is startling is the disconnect numb-nuts has with reality. Good riddance to immoral people.
One moronic “journalist” throws his shoes at the president, and this is proof that all Iraqis or a majority of Iraqis opposed the ousting of Saddam Hussein and even that such opposition was correct? Maybe it is not barely restrained glee, but the deeper yearning of a dubious belief grasping a straws for external justification. Because if Bush is not the monster so many journalists and pundits and bloggers have made him out to be, what are they?
“And shortly thereafter the NY Times hired him as a stringer.”
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
I immdeiately noticed that the shoe-throwing got more front page above the fold space than this year’s turnover of Anbar Province (you remember, the place billed as “most dangerous in all of Iraq”, and a lost cause less than 2 years ago). I’m so glad I no longer have to rely on the morning paper to find out what’s actually going on.
You can take it to the Bank that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis loathe President Numb-Nuts.
How many Iraqis, living in Iraq, have you spoken to about their feelings? When I was there, at a minimum, most of the Iraqis I spoke with were happy that we’d removed Saddam under Pres. Bush’s orders.
The issue is not whether the Iraqis are better off without Saddam. Of course they are better off without that evial tyrant. The question is the cost. In the eyes of the Iraqis, was it worth getting rid of Saddam if it meant the death of their children, their wife or husband, or parents. The complete destruction of their country, the descent into sectarian murder, the intrusion of Iran in their affairs. It is easy for you and President Numb-nuts to pooh-pooh the cost when it wasn’t your family that was killed. Does the means justify the ends? It is not for you or Numb-nuts to say, it is for the Iraqis to say.