This is one of the reasons that Le Pen’s National Front party seems posed to win control of most of France’s regional councils in the next election.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1045358,00.html

“This is one of the reasons that Le Pen’s National Front party seems poised to win control of most of France’s regional councils in the next election.”

I did not know this. I’ll be on my knees giving thanks if this actually happens.

From the article which Thrasy linked in his comment:

“Mr Mariani knows what he is talking about. In the four southern French town halls it has controlled, Orange, Vitrolles, Marignane and Toulon, the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote ‘traditional’ French culture.”

What’s frightening to these leftist Brits at “The Guardian” all sounds just fine and dandy to me.

“Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held ‘non-French’ events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications.”

I don’t know about Moslem children but Jewish children don’t eat special meals in school. They eat what all the other kids eat. At least in New York City where I grew up they did. Jewish religious avoidance of pork, shellfish, and of “mixing meat and dairy” was never a problem in New York City that I was ever aware of, and I strongly suspect it’s not one for Jewish kids in France either. Insertion of this detail into the article sounds like a bogus piece of deliberate, groundless alarmism to me.

“In Vitrolles the Front town council briefly offered an illegal £500 ‘baby subsidy’ to couples who added to their family — providing that both parents were of white European origin.”

That’s just the ticket! It’s exactly what Europe needs! I wish we had some of that in this country!

An amusing tangent in the story is that the center-right faction in the French legislature has come under fire for their reforms of welfare state programs and their handling of the heat wave last summer. This reminds me of the fact that whichever administration is in power when a natural disaster occurs (e.g. the heat wave), or when an economic downturn occurs (often for reasons having nothing to do with the current administration), always gets the blame. Indeed, if you campaign on tax cuts, stimulating the economy, etc., which are apparently all that the Republican Party dares mention, then you invite such trouble if a cyclical downturn should occur.

On the other hand, if you campaign to reduce immigration and give society a breather from all of its costs (e.g. the bilingual education costs, overpopulation and sprawl costs, etc.), then what possible downside could there be? Once elected, what events outside your control could possibly be blamed on you?

Even in invincibly stupid America, I don’t think the media or the public would believe that a budget deficit, or recession, or unemployment, were based on reduced immigration. It seems like a pretty risk-free platform, if someone had the courage to face down the Left during the campaign itself.

Here’s how Europe faces reality in this matter:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0903/steyn.html

Mark Steyn’s excellent article revealing that 65% of the rapes committed in Denmark are by non-Danish — which is mostly Mohammedans — who are only 2%-5% of the population. Almost all the victims are ethnic Danish girls or women.

But we must be CLEAR on the reasons for this. As Mr. Steyn quotes Prof. Monroe Reimer: “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because their manner of dress would be regarded by Muslim men as inappropriate. “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

In Mr. Steyn’s follow-up column, he quoted Prof. Flemming Balvig thusly, “Over the last five-10 years there has been an increasing tendency to marginalize and alienate immigrants. As a result, many second generation immigrants have reacted against this through various types of criminal activity, including rape.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3452

So it’s our fault you see. Well, it is in one respect — we let these people in. France, Denmark … (the U.S.?) … Different countries, same problem.

From Joel’s comment:

“But we must be CLEAR on the reasons for this. As Mr. Steyn quotes Prof. Monroe Reimer: ‘Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes’ because their manner of dress would be regarded by Muslim men as inappropriate. ‘Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.’ “

The part I don’t get is why Norwegian women dressing inappropriately have to get raped because of it. I mean, is that weird, or what? Is that the punishment, or something? I don’t get it. I might see a woman walking down the street dressed suggestively but I don’t go over and rape her or get together with my friends and gang-rape her. So, someone explain it to me. I’m trying to think like a Moslem here, or like a Norwegian left-liberal dhimmwit.

I’d say, unlike this Norwegian dhimmwit Professor, just scrap the multi-culti nonsense and go back to being Norwegians again. Oh, and, … uhhhh … deport every single Moslem from Norway if that’s the way they’re going to behave.

“In Mr. Steyn’s follow-up column, he quoted Prof. Flemming Balvig thusly, ‘Over the last five-10 years there has been an increasing tendency to marginalize and alienate immigrants. As a result, many second generation immigrants have reacted against this through various types of criminal activity, including rape.’ “

Yeah, as if this really made sense. Let’s see … we trad-conservatives have spent the last X number of years in this country being marginalized and alienated by the mainstream culture. That means we’re supposed to start going around raping everybody?

Wake up, liberals! Get your heads screwed on frontwards for the first time in your lives!

For the interested reader, when you follow Joel’s link to jewishworldreview.com, you will need to scroll down to about August 23, 2002, to see the Steyn column he is talking about.

I have often had a visceral liking for Le Pen and the National Front, but I do not honestly know what to make of them in reality. Are they neo- Nazis as portrayed by the (liberal) media, or are they French patriots, a sort of Virginie Dare type crowd, who get a bad rap? Anyone care to comment?

Gracián, here is an interview with Le Pen in Haaretz.

http://news.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=153419

That was a most interesting interview in Haaretz. My overall impression is that Le Pen is first and foremost a French nationalist. If he has issues with Jews, it would appear to be with the secular leftist variety - some of the very folks who support the importation of millions of Mohammedans in the name of multiculturalism. I have no idea of what percentage of France’s Jewish population is secular and leftist vs. religious and non-leftist, but this could color his view of Jews in general, as I expect it has with some Paleos here.

Jared Taylor wrote an article about the split within the Front National mentioned in the Haaretz link provided by Thrasymachus. It is not a pretty story:

http://www.amren.com/992issue/992issue.html (Second article down)

Thanks, Thrasy, for the link. Le Pen certainly comes off as pretty cagey. Sort of an arch Pat Buchanan. I can’t disagree with much of what he says, but the anti-Semitism just won’t go away, and try as I might, I just can’t work up any animus towards Jews (as a people anyway).

When Le Pen shocked the French establishment by knocking Socialist Premier Lionel Jospin out of the way to reach the second round of 2002’s French presidential elections against the incumbent faux-Gaullist Jacques Chirac, I did a bit of research about the Front National and its policies. I wrote for VDare about what I found: http://www.vdare.com/sutherland/le_pen.htm, if anyone is interested. (I cannot take credit for the Goldwater analogy there, an editorial addition with which I am not entirely sure I agree. By the end of his life Goldwater had renounced much of his former conservatism. It is very difficult to imagine Le Pen doing anything similar.) My conclusion was that Le Pen is a Frenchman who wants France to remain French. I could not agree with him more, and I believe his anti-Semitism, if it actually exists, is grossly - and deliberately - exaggerated.

There is another French politician of whom traditionalists should be aware: Philippe de Villiers, a strongly traditional and Catholic Frenchman whose main concerns are preserving France’s sovereignty, primarily against the European Union’s encroachments, and her national character, through controlling immigration and illegal entry. His party’s website is here: http://www.mpf-villiers.org/. He is more traditionalist than Le Pen (of the two I prefer him), but has less of a base. Free market Americans will not like all of Le Pen’s and de Villiers’ economic ideas. They are in the French tradition: no objection in principle to (national, not Euro) central planning and advocacy of protectionism. In the face of the pressing cultural, religious and racial challenges to France’s integrity, those are quibbles.

The best source of unfiltered news about the ongoing cultural destruction of France is the Front National’s daily communiques. (Subscribe here: http://www.frontnational.com/) The stories that somehow never seem to make it into Le Figaro and Le Monde are there. The social situation is even worse than the IHT article to which Mr. Auster links would lead one to believe. HRS