The UK Telegraph’s Joe Barnes gave a miserable assessment of France’s future under Marine Le Pen on the eve of Sunday’s election. He warned that a victory for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National “would mark the first time the hard right have been in power since the Nazi occupation during the Second World War”.
It was a prime example of a so-called “of course” statement; in other words, a declaration that satisfies the prejudices of the cultural elite and therefore requires no further elaboration. This is just as well for Barnes, who might otherwise be asked to justify comparing Le Pen’s RN with the collaborationist, authoritarian Vichy government that deported tens of thousands of Jews to Hitler’s death camps.
Of course, he will not be asked to resolve the paradox of comparing a conservative party that puts national sovereignty above everything with a treacherous bunch of quislings who collaborated with a foreign power that had invaded French soil. Such inflammatory rhetoric is symptomatic of the confusion we are now seeing emerge from elections in Europe and the US.
Barnes adheres to the conventional explanation that voters have been led astray by the guile of the so-called far right. He assumes the political contest is a battle between competing ideologies from the political left and right. It is far better understood as a clash of visions – using David Goodhart’s vocabulary of the “anywheres” and the “somewheres” – and to describe the deepening cultural and social divide between the cosmopolitan citizens of the world and the pragmatic, patriotic middle classes grounded in family, community and tradition for whom pride in one’s country is a virtue, not a sin.
Playing the Nazi card has become a habit for the “anywheres” who are anxious at the rise of new political leaders able to articulate what the “somewheres” are thinking. The anywheres are clever with words, allowing them to frame debates and determine what can and cannot be said. Perpetuating the arcane distinction between left and right has enabled them to construct a moral spectrum ranging from selfless social justice crusaders to brown-shirted, goose-stepping thugs.
By describing their opponents as right-wing signals to others that their views and behaviours should be frowned upon. Those on the hard right should be very frowned upon, while those on the extreme right are despicable beyond redemption.
It is fitting, then, that these crude but effective labels are being strongly challenged in France, where the left-right analogy was born at the end of the 18th century. The RN will be the largest party in 577-member French parliament with between 175 and 205 seats, according to the latest polling. While it won’t constitute an absolute majority, RN will be undeniably mainstream, making it harder to portray supporters as swivel-eyed lunatics from the political fringes.
Emmanuel Macron’s presidential coalition is likely to finish third behind the Nouveau Front Populaire, an electoral alliance between La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), Le Parti Socialiste, Les Ecologistes, Le Parti Communiste Francais, Generations and Place Publique. This uncomfortable grouping of social justice musketeers is rightly described as Nouveau, since it is barely four weeks old. It was formed after President Macron called a snap election with the sole purpose of combating the rise of RN.
Its very existence is proof the conservative nationalists control the electoral agenda, even if they are denied a fair hearing on France Televisions, the national public television conglomerate, and much of the mainstream press.
You don’t have to be particularly proficient in French to read the body language on shows such as C dans l’air, France 5’s nightly version of Insiders, which, being French, incorporates a cooking segment. Guests have been fulminating all week about the crisis in French democracy, the setback for women’s rights, the persecution of the LGTBQ community, and the race-fuelled hatred and violence that will be unleashed if voters fall for the lies of the extreme right.
The inflated rhetoric has been as counter-productive as the demonisation of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Giorgia Meloni, Andre Ventura and every other conservative nationalist leader.
The vehemence of their denunciation towards these leaders demands an explanation. Which particular nerve was pressed to elicit such a primordial reaction?
The answer is buried deep beneath the hyperbole in Le Monde. An editorial on Saturday headlined: “Everywhere, always, the far right has ended up adding to the world’s woes.”
Its author, editorial director Jerome Fenoglio, denounces Macron as “irresponsible” for endangering French democracy by calling an election. Fenoglio appears insensitive to the logical contradiction in such a claim. He finally comes to the point in the penultimate paragraph. He says the RN is “diametrically opposed to the co-operation, cross-border solidarity and universalism needed to take the current catastrophe”.
To put it another way, the RN believes French laws should be made in the French parliament, not by the policy quacks in Brussels, the nouveau riche of Silicon Valley or the charlatans in Davos. It believes French people should decide who enters their country and the conditions upon which they are welcomed.
The RN thinks farmers should be allowed to make a living without being crushed by regulation based on half-baked science. It believes veganism and buying an electric vehicle should a matter of choice, not coercion.
The French election and its aftermath are of more than passing relevance to Australia, where the uncompromising vision of the anointed clashes with the principles of national sovereignty and equal worth.
Here too the laptop class displays the utter certainty that Thomas Sowell identified almost 30 years ago as the hallmark of the anointed. Here too, the current catastrophe, if we are to call it that, is the slavish adoption of an international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 that has emboldened the political class into thinking decisions must be collectivised to overcome dangers to which the masses are oblivious.
The shift in the landscape is fraught with uncertainty. Yet Australians have reason to hope the revival of nationalism abroad is the long-awaited correction to the internationalisation of politics in which the hypothetical interests of the human race take precedence over the welfare of real people.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre and a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute.
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