France’s frightening fascist flirtation.

There is precisely one bright spot in this depressing story about the rise of anti-Semitism and national socialism* in France.

…people debating the issue of a resurgent anti-Semitism would resort in good faith to the reassuring remark that “after all, Nazis were not marching in Paris.”

Since the Jour de Colère rally, even die-hard optimists must recognize that this is no longer true. Nazis are marching in Paris, unchecked.

Postmodern Nazis, to be sure: no brown shirts. But Nazis nevertheless — nazis who relish in anti-Jewish paranoia and are eager to spread it everywhere.

Radical politics usually develop when classic politics fail. According to an Ipsos/Steria poll published on January 21 by Le Monde, 8% of the French — only 8%! — trust the political parties. Only 23% trust their National Assembly representatives. Trade unions do not fare much better: 31%. Nor does the judiciary, at 46%.

Real confidence starts only with local powers: 63% of the French trust their mayors. The increase culminates with such last-resort players as the police and the army, credited, respectively, with a 73% and a 79% confidence rate.

It’s that Revel’s Law is still in effect:

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

Speaking as somebody in the current opposition party, I’m kind of counting on that law.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane

*I don’t know if it’s exactly national socialism.  It could be a blood-and-soil mystical populism that doesn’t mind free markets, as long as those markets adequately support La Belle France.  Then again, the French do so love their aristocracies and their top-down economies.

10 thoughts on “France’s frightening fascist flirtation.”

  1. Well .. part of that is because some of the stereotypes of 1950-1970 Hollywood were true.
    .
    Evidently, unlike France, the U.S. recognizes (or used to..) that the threat is real, and that the young need some “memeic inoculation” ..
    .
    Unfortunately, we either never developed a good thought-vaccine for communism or stopped deploying it at some point.
    .
    Mew

  2. Well for Europe National socialism is the Right wing. Personally I think it’s a problem with the parliamentary system, all the parties devolve into some brand of Leftist. You would have to look long and hard to find any party under a parliamentary system that believed in anything like Libertarianism or Conservatism. So naturally when the Left in a parliamentary system fails they go looking for an alternative and inevitably find National Socialism. And Acat we never developed a good thought-vaccine for communism. If we had it probably would have taken out the whole socialist spectrum as they all seem to end up in the same place, Failure(i.e, see Venezuela).

  3. Out of how many countries with parliamentary systems MC? Likud has to exist because for a Jewish state in the middle East failure is not an option. The Tories I’ve always seen as similar to establishment Republicans here a big government-lite party and UKIP is a cross pollination of the Tea party from this country.

  4. Who was it who said that fascism is always descending on America, but always winds up landing in Europe?

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