President Nicholas Sarkozy did better than polls had predicted, but the widely anticipated first place win of Socialist Francois Hollande was still a humiliation to the hyperkinetic Sarkozy who sought to wrap himself in the French flag. Polls show Hollande, a bland, unassuming figure, continues to lead Sarkozy in the final election to be held on 6 May.

The National Front is no longer on the ballot in the final two-man race, but it remains the hulking 800-kg gorilla in the ornate drawing room of French politics.

As Marine Le Pen said, French politics will never be the same again.

Just who and what does the National Front represent? I spent a day in the late 1980’s interviewing party founder and father of Marine, Jean Marie LePen, and have followed the LePens ever since.

Leftist critics have branded Jean-Marie Le Pen as a fascist. This is not accurate. I found the big, burly, convivial former paratrooper a modern-day apostle of the Vichy France of 1940’s era: ardently Catholic, anti-foreign, a hater of Islam (Jews used to fill this role), an enemy of the rich industrial class and what he calls “Jewish money,” a fierce foe of Communism and Socialism, and advocate of harsh law and order. “Emigration equals invasion,” he memorably told me.

His daughter, Marine, softened her father’s rhetoric, and is more discreet, but her policies are similar. She wants France to ditch the Euro, end globalism, break the power of the banking elite – a goal shared by Hollande – and crack down on crime and emigration.

Marine Le Pen’s policies are bitterly anti-Muslim. She blames France’s 5-6 million Muslims for many of the nation’s troubles. Sarkozy, in an desperate attempt to attract National Front voters on 6 May, has jumped on the anti-Muslim bandwagon and has intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric, warning of the alleged dangers of more mosques, halal meat, veils and terrorism.

Sarkozy, a long-time pro-Israel neocon, is beating the war drums for an attack on Syria. France’s 600,000 Jews are solidly behind him.

The big question now is how many of the 6.4 million French who just voted for the National Front can Sarkozy and his UMP party attract. This shift will decide the election.

National Front supporters are a mixed bag. There are working class people furious their factories are being closed and outsourced to East Europe or Asia as unemployment heads over 10%. Many blame Sarkozy and his business mogul friends, or Jewish finance, Muslims, or Americans. They are angry and explosive.

Other National Front members come from the ultra-conservative Catholic haut bourgeoisie, the same class that supported Marshal Petain’s Vichy government during the war. They saw Communism as a far greater threat than Hitler’s National Socialism.

The National Front also draws Muslim haters, anti-Semites, supporters of an all white France, the elderly, and minor neo-fascist groups, as well as small shopkeepers fearing their businesses will be crushed by huge retailers. In the 1950’s, a rightist political Party led by Pierre Poujade fought for “petits commercants.”

France’s right and left have been locked in battle since the 1870’s. The forceful entry of the National Front into this conflict has muddied this two-way fight.

Marine Le Pen’s strategy is to break up Sarkozy’s UMP party and become the party of the center-right. If Sarkozy is defeated on 6 May, his bickering, unstable party may indeed fragment, allowing Le Pen to pick up the pieces in important parliamentary elections on 6 June.

Europe’s neo-fascists, like Holland’s Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, are cheering Le Pen’s stunning vote win. Europe’s center-right leaders are not. They fear growing economic malaise and stresses will spark the same kind of surge to the far right seen in France.

They fear as much a win by Hollande’s big-spending Socialists will undermine their efforts to stabilize continental finances through austerity and saving, or even wreck the vital Franco-German entente that is the foundation of European unity.

But Le Pen’s calls to quit the Euro, return to the franc, and protectionism find many ears across Europe.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012

One suspects Sarkozy, has made a pact with the devil.

First, in an incredible stroke of luck for the wildly unpopular Sarkozy, the man who should have been France’s next president, former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn(DSK), was ruined by sordid sex scandals. Disgraced bad boy DSK is now preposterously charged with pimping and sexual criminal conspiracy. The Strauss-Kahn scandal saved Sarko’s goat: polls showed Sarkozy would have been soundly beaten by DSK.

France’s judicial system is notoriously obedient to political power. Sarkozy is clearly beating political dead horse Strauss-Kahn to smear the opposition Socialist Party, whose star the ex-IMF chief once was. French politics are notoriously dirty and sleazy.

Strauss-Kahn’s Viagra-fuelled sexual escapades with ladies of the night and females who came too close proved a major misfortune for France. Strauss-Kahn was likely the only politician who could have imposed desperately-needed reforms on France’s sagging economy and bloated welfare state.

Second, the murder of seven people in Toulouse by a deranged youth of North African background that horrified France. Sarkozy, his allies and the right-wing media launched a blitz of scare stories about alleged “Islamic terrorism,” the suspect’s supposed links to al-Qaida, and fear of foreigners. In a scene straight from the classic film “Casablanca,” Sarko ordered his security forces to arrest the usual Muslim suspects who had nothing to do with the Toulouse massacre.

Third, Sarko played to France’s growing xenophobia and prejudice against Islam by warning of Muslim conspiracies, and demanding the number of “foreigners” in France be curtailed. Pretty rich, considering that Sarkozy has Hungarian and Jewish background. But his rightwing supporters ate this up with gusto. Now, Sarko and his men are crying about the dire threat of Muslim halal meat (though not Kosher. France has 600,000 Jews who are fierce Sarkozy supporters).

Equally important, Sarkozy’s warnings of the supposed evils of the Islamization of France are luring voters way from the far right, neo-Vichy National Front of Marine Le Pen. Sarko fears she may grab enough votes on the right to deny him a first ballot victory on 22 April, or even knock him out of the race. The amazingly coincidental Toulouse massacre may just save the day for Sarko.

I extensively interviewed Marine’s father, Jean-Marie. He was beating the anti-Muslim drums back in the 1980’s and warning that “immigration equals invasion.” He had a great one liner-for me: “You Americans took California away from Mexico. Now, by immigration, they are taking it back.” Many French share his views. In the 1930’s, the France’s right made Jews the enemies of mankind; today, the alleged culprits are Muslims. This noxious tendency has also infected US politics.

The hard left has also come back to life in France, threatening to draw votes from center-left candidate Hollande. Politicians across Europe have been swept from office by a tide of anger over economic woes. Strange things could happen in France which has a tradition of radicalism and anarchism. But as of now, the Sarko-Hollande race still looks close, but Islamophobia is allowing Sarko to nose ahead.

None of the candidates have addressed France’s severe economic problems or its growing lack of competiveness. Both Sarko and Hollande vow to raise taxes. Hollande promises to hire 60,000 new teachers to boost employment, a crazy scheme at a time when France has far too many sociology teachers, bureaucrats, and government employees, and spends 56% of GDP on government. Hollande wants a 75% top tax. The Socialists defend their beloved and quite lunatic 35-hour work week, which has further undermined the competitiveness of French industry and service sector.

The basic problem is that in spite of chronic grumbling, French live in one of the world’s most beautiful, best-run, civilized countries. France must slash government spending, lower sky-high taxes, liberalize the economy and stop borrowing. French don’t want to change but must at some point. Vilifying Muslims or banning halal meat is not going to address these issues.
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Cameron, cheered on by the powerful anti-Europe wing of his Conservative Party, thwarted intense efforts to create a super-European fiscal authority to prevent the unraveling of the EU’s embattled common currency, the euro, that threatens the future of the union.

Prime Minister Cameron was following Britain’s five-century old tradition of preventing the rise of a united Europe under a dominant power. Maintaining a fragmented Europe was seen by Britain’s ruling class as vital to preserving their nation’s international commercial and military power.

Britain’s often xenophobic conservatives have long warned that closer membership in the European Union would dilute their nation’s unique character, undermine its self-image of power and importance, and curb its freedom of action.

It would also endanger the famous “special relationship” with Washington that provides the US key military bases in Britain and a loyal, eager-to-please ally.

The US-UK axis provides a sense of power and importance, however exaggerated. Besides, for many British, the ““wogs” still begin in Calais”.

Cameron’s veto also played to a less evident but perhaps even stronger emotion: Britain’s abiding historical antagonism towards modern Germany. Or, as old imperialist icon Churchill nastily observed, “Germans are either at your feet or at your throats.”

As the euro crisis drags on, it is increasingly clear that Britain’s old foe Germany, is fast emerging as Europe’s leader. Britain may end up at Germany’s feet.

Much of Europe is already on its knees imploring Iron Chanceloress Angela Merkel to rescue it. She is waiting for bond markets to sufficiently scare EU politicians into really cutting their profligate spending.

“Zucht und ordnung” (discipline and order), that favorite Teutonic slogan, is Europe’s new marching orders from Berlin. Stern German treasury officials were barking instructions at Europe’s unruly politicians like old German army sergeants.

Europe urgently needs German financial discipline and order. So do the United States and Britain. However true, the Brits can’t stand being treated like unruly colonial natives by the overbearing Germans.

Britain’s wildly anti-German tabloid press, led by the Germanophobic Murdoch clan, has been baying at the Germans and constantly dredging up World War II.

“That’ll tell off those horrid Huns,” a lot of Brits are congratulating themselves.

But Cameron’s veto could leave Britain isolated in the cold North Sea, with increasingly less influence and business in Europe, left to play Ye Merry Olde England theme park for overweight American tourists.

Poor old Britain reportedly can’t even fire its nuclear weapons without the US first turning the key.

Britain’s sulk also showed something more alarming. Finance – money-lending and paper-passing – now accounts for 10% of Britain’s economy. London has long been a wild west Dodge City for unregulated financial buccaneers and shady operators, not to mention one of the world’s leading tax havens for the obscenely rich and shady.

In the US, finance is now the nation’s largest industry, accounting for over 20% of GDP. Manufacturing has shrunken to only 12% of GDP.

The City of London was petrified it might fall under serious European financial regulation – worse, German! -and actually pay some taxes on its none-productive activities. So the money-lenders showed their clout by pushing Cameron to abandon Europe, even if it injures Britain’s national interests.

Wall Street already flexed its muscles by thwarting prosecution of the fraudsters and gamblers who brought on the 2008 financial disaster, defending 15% top tax rates for millionaire hedge fund managers, blocking efforts to cut America’s banks down to a safe size, or investigating the nefarious Goldman Sachs.

Britain’s Tories would rather lash their leaking boat to the financial foundering US than work with the EU to build a viable union.

They prefer to keep invoking the faux glories of Churchill – whose relentless anti-German crusading in two wars led to the collapse of Britain’s empire – rather than facing today’s urgent problems.

One bright light in all of this: the more the overvalued euro sinks, the better off will be Europe’s export industries. Germany has already benefitted from this drop. If France and Italy can hang in and cut spending, they too will benefit and, eventually, prosper.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011