On the French election

LA to Tiberge of Galliawatch (April 24):

Re: Marine

You haven’t updated since you said on Monday that she had 17.9 percent of the vote instead of the 20 percent that had been reported earlier. Is that now the official figure?

Tiberge replies:

Yes. It’s the official figure. Not good, but not bad either. They had a chance to save their country and they chickened out. Still, she is delighted and is now going to try to undo the UMP party of Sarkozy. The discussions at all the websites focus on what her strategy will be if Sarkozy loses, and whether or not she will try a rapprochement with him if he wins. All of a sudden Catholics are saying they will vote for Sarkozy because he is the lesser evil, or as one writer called him, “the least worst.” This is due to their profound fear and loathing of Socialism, and its long history of hatred of the Church, as well as bioethical issues, especially abortion. Some are even fantasizing that Sarko has learned a lesson and will bend to the will of Marine Le Pen!

After five years of saying that the UMP and the PS were identical, now all of a sudden, faced with a decision on May 6, they are rationalizing. But of course we did that too in the last two or three presidential elections, when we knew we would go to the polls and make a choice. [LA replies: Not all of us. See my discussion about my vote on November 3, 2008.]

Marine Le Pen has NOT issued instructions to her voters. She has said that she cannot tell them to vote for either man because they are both bad. Still the media are calling her the “kingmaker,” since her voters can decide the election. I feel many of them will cast a blank vote, except, as I said, for those terrified of François Hollande and his crew.

Here are the official figures:

Hollande—28.63 percent—10,273,475 votes
Sarkozy—27.18 percent—9,754,324 votes
Le Pen—17.90 percent—6, 421, 808 votes

Here is a French article that gives the figures.

The abstention rate was 20.53 percent.

LA replies:

Thanks. Why is 17.9 such a big deal? Since her father came in second in 2002, didn’t he get that much? And what good did it do him?

Tiberge replies:

The French media are obsessed with figures. They were calling her result a “spectacular surge” that surpassed her father’s 16.8 percent in 2002. They were almost in a frenzy when she was reported by one poll (Harris) as having 20 percent. Twenty per cent is considered the critical figure, and the fact that she even came close is for the French MSM big big news. The earlier polls during the campaign had her at 13 percent, while she insisted she had 20 percent. So in the final outcome, she was better off than the official polls had predicted. And in sheer number of votes, she did very well.

Many of her supporters feel the worst has happened, because no matter what, France has five more years of decay and deterioration (both cultural and civilizational). It was crucial for her to get into the second round, but we knew in the week before the election that it would be impossible, despite her truly heroic effort.

The big surprise is that Nicolas Sarkozy may actually win again. It didn’t seem possible a week ago, a month ago or three months ago.

Between my last e-mail to you and this one I have skimmed several articles where people (mainly Catholics) are begging her to sign a truce with Sarkozy. They are insisting now that there is a major difference between the UMP party and the Socialists, even if it does not appear that way.

The Legislative election will take place sometime in June. The National Assembly may become a Socialist body if Hollande wins. The French Senate is already Socialist. Perhaps, in some way, it is better to have the false conservatives than the outright Socialists-Communists (the French Communist Party had a comeback in this election. Its candidate came in fourth.) I don’t know. I’m only interested in what she does. So far, she has made no major error. But it’s bound to happen eventually.

LA replies:

” … (both cultural and civilizational).”

Hah. I see you’ve been reading VFR.

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman writes:

It seems nobody’s excited about the French election except voters on the far right and the far left. Everybody else is treating it like a trip to the dentist.

One interesting thing I heard was that Jean-Luc Melenchon (the Communist or “Left Front” leader) wanted to avoid a replay of 2002. Ten years ago, the far left split the Socialist vote and kept Lionel Jospin off the final ballot. The runoff that year was between Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Gaullist Jacques Chirac. French socialists had to hold their noses and vote for the Gaullist to keep the National Front out. This time, Melenchon made a strong and at least partially successful play for Marie Le Pen’s white working-class voters and won some of them back on economic issues. If your friend Tiberge has any more information about that, I’d like to hear it.

The left’s standard playbook says you don’t do what Melenchon did. You go after your nearest ideological competitor because that’s where your potential gains are. You don’t draw attention to your farthest ideological opponent. If you scare your own voters, you’ll just herd them towards the center.

The other thing about Melenchon was that he threw away the lowest-common-denominator focus-group-tested talking points and talked to the voters like they *weren’t* complete mouth-breathing idiots. He’d give these long, high-brow speeches full of classical literary references as if his audience was capable of understanding them. This is also breaking with the standard playbook. Ever since Bill Clinton won on 1992 and Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994 it’s been gospel on the left that you do not do that, you have to talk down to the voters, seventh-grade reading level or lower.

John McNeil writes:

Tiberge writes:

“Perhaps, in some way, it is better to have the false conservatives than the outright Socialists-Communists (the French Communist Party had a comeback in this election.”

I would personally prefer having a radical socialists elected who are open in their hatred of white people, rather than fake conservatives like Sarkozy, Romney, Cameron, Merkel, and Putin who put on the appearance of being nationalistic and conservative when it suits them, and then backstab their own native subjects whom they work towards dispossessing.

I believe white people have a greater chance of waking up when they see how the system is utterly racist and anti-white. The race-blinders in Iowa that I once complained about are slowly coming off, as white people in Iowa are realizing how all of this Section 8 housing is harming them and the safety of their families, and how the government is actively pushing for this. White Iowans are now connecting the dots between skyrocketing violent crime with the new arrival of black people from Chicago. A lot of locals are also not buying into the Trayvon Martin lies, and are not intimidated by bullying from the local college. I believe a France-hating Hollande will have a similar effect.

Will this yield any long term political benefits? Probably not. But it’s too late for that. Native French people need social activism more than ever, and I think an overtly hostile regime will help push the French in that direction.

April 26

Mark Eugenikos writes:

John McNeil said:

I would personally prefer having a radical socialists elected who are open in their hatred of white people, rather than fake conservatives like Sarkozy, Romney, Cameron, Merkel, and Putin who put on the appearance of being nationalistic and conservative when it suits them, and then backstab their own native subjects whom they work towards dispossessing. I believe white people have a greater chance of waking up when they see how the system is utterly racist and anti-white.

I get it why he would characterize Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron that way, maybe even Romney to some extent—not a completely fair comparison since Romney hasn’t yet become president, so he doesn’t have a track record like the others do. But Putin? I follow world news more closely than most, and I don’t know where John got the idea that Putin is working towards dispossessing the Russian people or that he’s anti-white. From what I know, it’s pretty much the exact opposite, if one can even make such comparisons between countries that are so different.

What I mean by that is, Russia doesn’t promote itself today as a destination for unassimilable minorities like the other four countries (Britain being the worst offender). Of course Russia has some fraction of its population that is incompatible with the rest, mainly Muslims in the Caucasus region, but that is a result of territorial expansion that dates back centuries, so it’s a historical given somewhat comparable to having Black people in the U.S.

If John can point to a source showing that it’s a policy of the current Russian government to import vast quantities of incompatible minorities, legally or illegally, who are working against Russian interests, I would like to see it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 25, 2012 08:10 AM | Send