Steve Sailer writes: French politics are important in a symbolic sense because French political history probably ranks with American and British political history as the best known in the world, and perhaps the best known for ideological purposes. The current move to the right in France is thus worth paying attention to…
So it looks like the next presidential election will pit Marine Le Pen vs. a Rick Santorum-like Catholic conservative, putting the National Front to the left of the Republicans on traditional class economic issues and not all that far to the right on cultural / identity issues. The usual history in France, projected into the future in Houellebecq’s Submission, is for the left to submit to the right to defeat the National Front, as in 2002. But maybe in the very long run the National Front will become the center-left party in France?
COMMENTS: The National Front has never been “far-right” on economic/provider state matters–it’s appeal has been ethno-centrist My suspicion about François Fillon is that, while he talks tough on immigration, he did little while prime minister to change the situation, and would defer action indefinitely while he tries his economic reform agenda, which will likely fail. I know that the French president has much more power, but the prime minister is not without influence and I don’t think that he used it in the cause of limiting immigration. But even the National Front is emerging more as a Euroskeptic Party than an ethno-nationalist party since the replacement of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, with his daughter, Marine Le Pen.
A genuine far-right French party would probably favor the restoration of the Bourbons in a constitutional monarchy, reinstitution of the Catholic Church as the state church, and an abndonment of the ideal of laicité.
* Don’t be fooled — Fillon is the more-of-the-same candidate. The French Republicans may be slightly less tone-deaf than the American variety (non-Trump) when it comes to acknowledging people’s real concerns, but it’s an act. Their actual agenda, as always, is making the world safe for Davos.
* Fillon is your typical cuckservative. Mentioning religious items here and there in between talks of open borders and tea between you and me.
And how should I presume?
Look at the financial times/Rotschild Economist…they’re calling him a ‘free-market’ guerilla revolutionary….
I think that sums up what he brings to the table.
Another George Bush/Tony Blair/Hilary Clinton/Angela Merkel neoliberal nation state leveraged buyout professional (salesman).
* BBC were describing Fillon this morning as a Thatcherite. I’m sure France is looking forward to the financialisation of the economy, the destruction of trades unionism and manufacturing, and the introduction of what the Economist calls a “flexible labour market”. French productivity is still higher than the UKs – despite the stricter employment laws or because of them?
I remember Sarkozy introduced Sunday trading into France – one of Thatcher’s first acts of cultural destruction – but when I was last there (admittedly in darkest Languedoc) 18 months back nothing seemed to have changed and nearly all shops were still shut by noon.
(Incidentally Fillon’s wife Penny is a Welsh girl – albeit from the solicitor rather than coalminer class – and his brother married her sister Jane).
