The obvious
Every so often, somebody will write to inform me that my great fondness for France is misguided because of the existence of the Front National fascist party.
Needless to say, I never write back – always tempted to put such drivel down to immaturity, or the deep human compulsion to refuse to recognize one’s own demons, and so to project them onto someone else. (And the hope that the obvious will soon dawn on them.)
But, in deference to this obvious, let me say that one of the few things helping to keep European democracies relatively healthy is that they are multi-party systems, and not multi in the sense of two. Here in France, for example, we have quite a gamut of official parties: the Workers’ Struggle Party, Revolutionary Communist League, the (apparently not so struggling) Workers’ Party, the Communist Party, Greens, Socialist Party, Radical Left Party, Republican and Citizens’ Movement, Hunting, Fishing and Nature Party, New Union for French Democracy, Union for a Popular Movement, Independence from Europe Assembly, Assembly for French Sovereignty and Independence, Movement for France, National Republican Movement and, yes, the Front National.
And even though most get only a small fraction of the vote, it is an unquestionably good thing that their voices have the chance at a forum that they wouldn’t under a less diverse system.
Pushing further into the realm of the blatant: in any country with a population of over a million, it seems ludicrous to think that two parties alone could be capable of embodying the range of opinions and goals of its citizens.
While I in no way support the Front National, quite the contrary, I’d be willing to bet my aunt Mary that, should such a party exist in any country, it would have the same base of around 15% of the population as it does here in France. If not more. There is no denying the undying existence of small-mindedness and paranoia in our species.
But when an overwhelming plurality of opinion is forced to choose between A and B, there will necessarily be extremists in each camp. Some, may even push the analogy and reduce issues big and small to right and wrong, us and them, playing to humans’ temptation to latch onto any falsity that lets us believe we’re the noble and blameless guys – any wrong we do is only because we’ve been provoked by the enemy, be it our neighbour, the guy in the other car, the girl we envy, the other whose foreign lifestyle permits us to dehumanise him.
It is so much more comfortable to believe we’re right than to accept our share of the blame.
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Comment
- I agree with what you have said but to me this is not why you shouldn’t be fond of France. As a Jewish American living in France the last 6 years I can assure you something is rotten here and it’s not the FN. When the Grand Rabbi of France has to instruct his fellow Jews to remove their kippas so as not to endanger themselves there’s a real problem. The Jews who are so well integrated, now have to live in fear from an increasingly extremist Muslim population who are marginalized from society. Europe as a whole is just waking up from its slumber; we all saw what happened in Holland with the brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh and in Madrid.
It’s hard for someone who isn’t Jewish to feel the heavy atmosphere of fear in their bones. I’ve never felt like this in my life. I who was so enamoured of France upon arriving in 1999 now find myself feeling so estranged here, wondering if there is any real future here for the Jews.
The Jews are the canaries in the coalmine; once they start moving, and they are leaving France at an alarming rate(7,000 already, another 30,000 expected over the next 5 years), it can be assumed that there are dark days ahead.
I would like to point out that I’m a Jew who speaks Arabic and who loves the Arabic culture so it’s not out of hatred or paranoia that I speak.
The fact is today in France Jews are afraid to openly say they are Jewish.
The major problem facing France today is the rabid antisemitism of the Islamic and Arabic world surfacing here (evident in the UOIF with its strong ties to the Muslim Brothrhood) and the sympathies it finds amongst the left-wing (à la Dieudonné and his Franco-Palestine party last year).
So while for non-Jews living in France nothing much has changed , look to us to get a glimpse of the future . It looks like the FN has some bright days ahead.
— Al Apr 7, 11:28am # - lovely and spot on.
— ruth Apr 9, 7:03am # - Nicolas Sarkozy? Finance Minister? Likely to run for the presidency? Of France? Before, or after he leaves?
— Ajax B Apr 9, 10:53am # - I must say, I enjoy your writing style quite a bit. It’s unusual to find someone with some form of writing talent writing to blogs. Thank you!
As for what you’ve written, I agree entirely. I did not realize that the fact that we, as I am an American, are limited by the primarily two-party system until just now. Thank you for shedding light on why I felt that our political system lacked so much.
Thank you for expressing your thoughts.
Matt
— M. Todd Apr 9, 3:41pm # - I have to agree that two parties for our country is a little absurd, but I am pretty sure that France is not the country we want to be emulating. I don’t mean that to come off as confrontational as it sounds, but I did want to say it. I don’t think America’s dislike for France has as much to do with politics as it is cultural, but the Front National is a good point to get people on our side of the argument.
— Mike Apr 10, 5:52am # - WOhw that was an excellent thing you wrote. YOU ARE SO RIGHT! Very observant mashAllah (God bless you)
— Abdul-Rahim Apr 12, 5:32am # - sitting in a similar chair (except mine is in Italy), i have often been frustrated by the absurdity of the two-party (right-or-left / right-or-wrong) system as well. moreover, i have a secondary frustration: i don’t know much about “what happens” to all those parties you listed in France, but i’d be ineterested to know if it’s similar to what seems to go on in Italy (as far as i have understood in the meagre two years i’ve lived here)...
here too, there are a few big parties (Lega Nord, the Allianza Nazionale, Berlusconi’s famous Forza Italia and several others of varying size, and at varying ends of the left and right spectrum). and in theory, it seems encouraging that all these parties exist, and that there is representation of more than just two points of view. but as the practical aspect of it gets better explained (and illustrated) to me by many of the Italian voters i quiz on the electoral process, i am disappointed. and not just because of the way they seem to coagulate anyway into the usual two-option choice (like the recent regional elections, which you had to choose between (1) the coalition of all the rightward groups, and (2) the coalition of all the leftward groups).
no, what bothers me even more, is that even when there aren’t coalitions, and you can vote for your particular, small-but-perfect “niche” party, nobody ends up doing so. the reason (as has been patiently explained to me many times) is that “it won’t matter”—because if the party secures less than a certain percentage (i think it is 4), it “comes to nothing”, and your vote will have been wasted. and so in the end, most Italians won’t vote for the smaller parties at all.
i see their rationale; i understand the need to make your vote count. but (as with those individuals who refuse to recycle because “what difference can one person make in the world’s environmental problems”), it drives me nuts . does this happen in France too?
— shiraz Apr 13, 1:47pm # - Well, it’s true that usually in national elections only a couple of parties concentrate the vote. This is a little less true in regional elections. And I suppose it often comes down more to voting against someone than for the person you really want—going for the guy with the best chance to beat the incumbent.
But, oddly enough, during the last presidential elections, voters were so disenchanted that they did end up voting for all the little parties, with everyone presuming that it would inevitably come down to the two front runners anyway.
But it didn’t. The then PM got fewer votes than the Front National, so the second round of voting was between incumbent Chirac and the fascist pig. Which is why Chirac got such a huge majority.
— gail Apr 13, 2:37pm # - I like Preferential voting – where you number each candidate in order of preference; if your Sunripened Warm Tomato Party candidate doesn’t get a guernsey (a small party when Canberra had self-government thrust upon us), your vote goes to your #2 preference, and so on. So you can vote for who you really want, and then who you’d tolerate if your guy doesn’t get in.
whttp://ww.aec.gov.au if you want to read more.
— /anne... May 10, 7:08am # - um, that was meant to be http://www.aec.gov.au :-(
— /anne... May 10, 7:17am #
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