Tigerge on the French election and the ascendancy of diversity

Tiberge at Galliawatch has been closely following the French election campaign. I asked her if she would like to give VFR readers a brief overview of where the campaign stands now. Her answer is below.

I just posted tons of material. You may find some of it of interest. But I did not make any prediction. As of now the leader is Nicolas Sarkozy with Ségolène Royal not too far behind. This is what Sarkozy wants—to oppose Royal whom he feels he can defeat in the second round. Bayrou is third and Le Pen fourth. So it does not look as if Le Pen will make it to the second round. The group of dissidents within his party insists this is what he wants. He had no intention of winning, only of getting his point across and of being as provocative as he could. His words to the ghetto-dwellers—that they are as French as anybody—put off many staunch Le Pen supporters.

However, at the same time he has been so demonized by the press, so vilified, that some voters may vote for him out of spite for the media. If he makes it to the second round he will be as shocked as anybody—he will have to put off retirement for five years if he becomes president!

It does not look as if Bayrou has any real shot at the second round, but again, it’s not sure. Royal has made an impressive “comeback” these last couple of weeks and she seems to have more votes now than a month ago. So the original opposition of Sarkozy and Royal is what is most likely to occur in the second round.

The question on everyone’s mind really is whether Le Pen just might squeak by into the second round and fool everybody.

And my own concern is how well (or badly) Phillippe de Villiers will fare. The media give him less than two percent of the vote. He is by far the best candidate. But maybe his turn will come in 2012.

The dissidents in the Front National are talking about starting a new national movement that brings together all the nationalist parties and groups including de Villiers, but excluding of course the new FN which will be run by Marine Le Pen. Whether they can really unify is the question.

Wish I could be less vague.

I hear the French in New York came out in numbers to vote.

One last thought—the French media really do manipulate the minds of the voters. Bayrou was largely a media creation to stop Le Pen. Royal and Sarko got huge coverage while de Villiers did not. You never know if the people are really brainwashed or just pretending to be. There may be some surprises.

Once during the campaign, Le Pen said that Sarko, Royal and Bayrou were interchangeable. Having read their words and their designs for France, I have to agree.

LA replies:

“Le Pen said that Sarko, Royal and Bayrou were interchangeable. Having read their words and their designs for France, I have to agree.”

Has Sarko talked about total diversity, France being a “mixed-blood” country, etc., as Sego has?

Tiberge replies:

Yes he has on several occasions. He has said that France is already a country that is “Multiple, Colored and Spiced.” He has indicated often that “métissage” is here to stay. He has promised affirmative action on the highest levels of government. Here and here are other links on his embrace of a diverse France.

He doesn’t actually have a project for a non-white France in so many words. He has shown by his actions that he is not to be trusted as a traditional conservative. He is an ideological mercenary who accepts almost anything that is trendy. Recently he advocated a new Ministry of National Identity, but he did so only because the idea of national identity was “in the air” thanks to Le Pen and Villiers.

All three—Sarko, Sego and Bayrou—have been pro-metissage. Even Le Pen came close, though he stopped short of advocating mixed blood.

Sometime last year, a reader who had visited both France and Italy said in a comment that the contrast was striking: France is already very mixed compared to Italy. He was speaking not only of the presence of blacks and Muslims but of mixed couples.

LA replies:

Ok. Suicide of the West and of the white race, explicitly pushed by the three major candidates. Sego’s statement a few months ago that France must be a mixed-blood country, for which she was ridiculed at the time as a leftist nutball, is in fact the unopposed mainstream position. While in the past diversification and intermarriage were things that just happened as a result of immigration and were not an explicit aim of policy, they now have become an explicit principle and goal of French politics. And for a people like the French who are ruled by abstract concepts, “diversity” will become their overarching concept.

But this was inevitable. Once a country like France has a universalist liberal ideology with no counter-ideology, plus actual racial diversity on the ground, there is no direction left for it to go in but toward ever increasing diversity and nonwhiteness, even in a country with a once-proud sense of peoplehood like the French. Any view other than diversity as the society’s direction and goal becomes impossible to speak aloud or even to conceive in one’s private thoughts. While I dismissed Le Pen some time ago, his recent statement that the Muslims are entirely French represents his own surrender to the prevailing ideology.

The only possible way to halt this juggernaut toward racial and civilizational extinction is by an explicitly non-liberal ideology that affirms and seeks to preserve the historic cultural, racial, and religious character of France and other Western countries. De Villiers seems to be the only leading French politician remotely close to such a position, and he is far back in the polls.

(Note: French accent marks have been left out of this article because my Internet Explorer browser is barely working at present and the Opera and Firefox browsers have the bizarre and unsettling characteristic of turning all non-regular characters into hideous code. This is also the reason I have been using the unsightly straight quotes and double hyphens for the last couple of weeks instead of the more aesthetic curly quotes and the em dash.)

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Tiberge sends this further quote from Valerie Pecresse, Sarkozy’s spokeswoman. It is from Vox Galliae, August 2006:

France is a mixed society that refuses to see itself as such. And yet, one must be aware that the inhabitants of the ghettoes and those of the better neighborhoods will end up mixing together. Our borders will open to new forms of immigration from Asia and countries to the East. We are at the crossroads and we are afraid. Fear of the Other, of the Foreigner.

The future is built more easily when one is proud of what one is, when one is reconciled with one’s past. The history of France is one of grandeur, humanity and we should be proud. There are also memories that hurt, of people sacrificed and of martyrs. But if, as responsible leaders, we expend all our energy treating our wounds, and re-writing our past to make it more acceptable, we will not be able to project ourselves into the future, that is, the construction of a mixed society.

This is the strongest “diversity” statement I’ve yet seen from the likely next president of France. According to Sarkozy, France’s destiny is proudly and without fear and with a sense of national grandeur to … let itself be swamped and extinguished by a mass influx of all the peoples and races of the world.

Sarko’s statement is reminiscent of comments made last year by Tony Blair, hero of American conservatives, who said, “What do you leave behind?”, meaning what do we bequeath to the Muslims as they dispossess us, and by Mark Steyn, another hero of American conservatives, who urged that the West must “assimilate” the Muslims to our culture even as the West is going out of existence.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2007 03:15 PM | Send