The French

[Skins24]

What is up with France??

First all the antisemitism,

now they seem to have forgotten what decade this is...

bad frenchies...

It seems as though a lot of people are angry at the voting.....but they voted for him. Those votes didn't just fall from the sky.

What gives?

[Terry]

Well, the socialists had two candidates who were virtually inseperable, so the voters ended up splitting their votes and thus weakening the winner between the two.

The incumbent is considered a lock for re-election, so the turnout of mainstream voters was surprisingly low.

Then with the turnout being low, the extremes were magnified beyond their usual proportion.

And in times of turmoil, reactionary voices always carry further (George Wallace, Ken Duke).

It's to be expected that an anti-immigrant demagogue should make some political inroads after 9/11, and with the huge influx of moslems/arabs from France's old colonies. After all, Marseilles is more Algerian than french, it's like being in another country. Immigration and the resultant drain on resources and increase in crime is a huge issue in France.

[Brave]

The holocaust a "detail" of history? France out of the EU? And this guy is 73 years old? Anyone want to bet that as a youth he was fetching water, weapons and wine for the Germans? How a guy like this gains this much support is curious.

If there is a snottier nation on earth than France, someone clue me in.

[fansince62]

pretty good answer terry.........my mother is french and i would say you have this one accurately

[PCS]

I still think they'll surrender.

[redman]

The other night while channel surfing I came across a C-SPAN rebroadcast with subtitles of a French national news telecast covering the elections. The coverage was actually very good, and they were analyzing the results. Unlike the "split vote" theory, their conclusion was that it was a "protest vote" - at least that was the translation - as there has been growing dissatisfaction with the government's response to the problems identified by Terry. They did say that the number of rival challengers meant that the average voter had no idea of who to support against the incumbent, and so the protest vote for Le Pen ended up carrying the day.

Also, as far left as the average Frenchman is, the idea of totally surrendering their nationalism to the EU turns a lot of them off. Le Pen plays to this nationalism. He's in essence the Pat Buchanan of French politics.

(As an aside, speaking of Buchanan and Le Pen's dismissal of the Holocaust, I'm reminded of a joke that Don Imus famously told in that infamous speech he gave to the National Press Club around six years ago, where he roasted both of the Clintons when they were present:

"I just found out something amazing. Pat Buchanan had a relative die at Auschwitz. He fell out of a guard tower."

Anyway, Le Pen has now ironically succeeded in doing what his political rivals could not do on their own: arouse relatively unified support for his opponents.

But only the French could take to the streets to protest the undisputed results in a fair, an open and democratic election. This political hopping around that they do is why the English call them "Frogs."

[Riggo-toni]

The fascist party has always had a much stronger following in France than in other countries. LePen has been around for decades, and his party has been slowly gaining primarily because of anti-immigration sentiment. Demographers are already projecting that France will have a Muslim majority within 30 years from both immigration and a higher birth rate among Muslims. This is undoubtedly a shocking development for a country that had never experienced much immigration prior to WWII.

Still, anti-semitism has always been rampant in France. France sent more CHILDREN to the death camps than any other country outside of Germany; yet now they, like the Croats, Lithuanians and Austrians, love to pretend it was all done by the Occupying Nazi forces.

What I find really laughable about all this is how loudly French politicians were protesting the disgrace of an Italian coalition a few years back that included the National Alliance, a party barely linked to Il Duce (his daughter was a member), even though the party officially and outspokenly repudiated racism and facism. (Actually, Italy was one of the safest places for Jews in Europe in WWII.)