And…France Moves Hard Right

I mentioned in the previous comments that Mark Blyth sees Trump as part of a larger, global trend. Blyth predicted France’s further move to the right as well.

It is not just Hollande. It is the Socialists in general. They embraced neoliberalism in much the same way that Clinton and the Democrats did. Today’s Socialist party is not the party that many of its members remember growing up with in just the same way that today’s Democratic party stopped being the party of the New Deal decades ago. Both parties are running on empty. They are intellectually, morally, and spiritually bankrupt.

It is important to remember that the Europe of the EU and EZ was largely a creation of a French-German alliance. France’s participation allowed for the re-integration of Germany into Europe and for the dominant position Germany now has. I think the French-Germany relationship has become increasingly strained, but I do not see it yet as at the breaking point.

Why is Martine Le Pen labelled “neo-facist” in this piece and Trump always gets a free pass here? Why the double standards? Is it because she’s a woman?

I am not sure if waiting for the older generation to die will be enough. I suspect that as young people age they will become more right-wing, or at least some of them will. As they get married and have kids and feel more pressure from work, bills, etc., they will probably become more susceptible to right-wing propaganda.

Here is how I have seen it work. Right now in the United States public sector workers and their unions are a huge target because they are being blamed for high taxes and budget problems, especially at the state and municipal level. The Republicans have a very simple and effective message to hard-pressed people: the lazy government workers and their unions are stealing your hard-earned money to shore up their fat salaries, pensions, and secure, do-nothing jobs. You work hard, don’t have a union, no pension, no job security and low or inadequate salaries/wages, so why should the lazy government workers have it better than you?

This message is very effective in getting ordinary Americans to buy into the right-wing program. It is the reason why Scott Walker succeeded in Wisconsin and why the Republicans have been winning big, especially at the state level. You can add on other successful right-wing talking points such as all of the lazy people on welfare living it up and the government wanting you to pay for someone else’s education and health care. This is the kind of right-wing populism that encourages people to punch down and it is very effective. I don’t know if this is just an American thing but I wouldn’t be surprised if it also applied to France and other countries too.

What is the response from the mainstream Left? Identity politics and more education. The Left has no countervailing class-based narrative to combat right-wing populism. Ever since the Left discarded class conflict in favor of multiculturalism, identity politics and educational meritocracy ordinary people have been left without an ideology to direct their anger in a fruitful direction. So it is not surprising when the right-wing populists fill up the void left by the demise of the old class-based Left.

1) Agreed w/Tony and everyone right down the line about the left’s need to provide actual policy prescriptions that people can believe will make their life better. Right now, our leaders are mostly not doing it.

Now, at the risk of being suddenly laughed at or hated by everyone else here, which would make me sad because I really like this site and some of the people here, but I have to do this . . .

2. Okay, I’m not an expert on French politics. But I just read Marine Le Pen’s wiki page, and I’m not understanding how she qualifies as hard right. I disapprove of her desire to provide the right opportunities to “increase the birth rate” as the page said, and she made a stupid comparison back in 2010 (people should not be blocking streets and intersections for their prayers, fully agreed, but this should NOT be compared to the Nazi occupation of WWII), but otherwise … she sounds like a real populist, not a fake one, and WAY to the left of any American Democrats who ran this time except Bernie and maybe O’Malley. What am I missing? If my reading of this is correct, then if she is hard right then every single American candidate running except Bernie and O’Malley were foaming at the mouth crazies, and those latter two are verging on right wing themselves.

I know, different continent and all, but, I’m not getting something.

I just sent in a guest post on the subject to Ian, but in a nutshell, the problem with the FN is not MLP’s economic program but the usual tradeoff between a left-wing economic nationalist program and the right-wing cultural politics of MLP’s base, coloured in by the difficulty of implementing a left-wing nationalist program in a European context where European-level systems are designed to make the costs of self-extrication catastrophic. Result: violence in the streets and likely eventual reassertion of neoliberal politics.

@MojaveWolf, do let us know if you figure that one out.

My own belief (as an irredeemable racist transphobic deplorable) is that the answer lies in a nationalist vs globalist frame. The Money Power increasingly needs globalization (mass migration and “free trade”) to feed its hunger for never-ending growth. The left has mostly aligned with globalization because they see it as increasing the living standards of impoverished 3rd-worlders, and also because importing dependent populations increases their power base in the Western nations.

But the globalists’ flank is seriously exposed, because globalism is screwing over the Western lower-to-middle classes in the form of vanishing jobs, declining wages, and social service cuts due to strained national budgets. The nationalists are poised to fill this void, hence the strident denunciation of them as “hard-right white-nationalist neo-Nazis”, even when, as you noted, their positions are really very moderate. Le Pen is “hard right” when she opposes ending public funding of abortions? Okay then.

Oh goodness, make that French citizen passed to me. Not an FN party member.

Thing is, median wages in France (unlike the UK the past decade or the US the past 4 decades) has been improving impressively (French government has traditionally been much more willing to put their thumb on the scale to save jobs compared to Anglo countries). So why would they turn populist? Granted, youth unemployment is high.

Think France may be going through their Thatcher/Reagan phase. People take for granted the benefits of a strong welfare state and because of crime/social issues, put in power a right-winger who dismantles said welfare state. Inequality then soars. Scapegoating right-wing populist demagogue then wins.

One other thing: The rise of the Left (Peasant Revolts, French Revolution, or orkers and Unions) is a consequence of the Power of the Right.

Only when the right, the aristocracy, is firmly in power does the left have a clear target.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. That is the Left at the current time. The Right was planning for the last 30 years.