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He'll Be BackM. Le Pen is down but not out.

By Anne ApplebaumPosted Monday, May 6, 2002, at 1:55 PM ET

"Vous votez Chirac, eh?" It wasn't quite a question, but rather a statement, addressed to myself and a friend as we walked through the Goutte d'Or, one of Paris's immigrant quartiers: "You are voting for Chirac, no?" Among other things, the Goutte d'Or boasts a hidden synagogue—it is inside a courtyard, invisible from the street—and a mosque, as well as a church festooned with posters proclaiming "Peace" in many languages. Yesterday the polling booths in the Goutte d'Or were packed, as they were across the rest of the city, and the posters put up all around them matched the words spoken to us in the street.

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"Erase the Shame of France," read one. "No room for Nazis," read another. The anarchists had put up yet another: "Immigrants, please don't leave us here alone with the French." Posters of a suave Jean-Marie Le Pen, placed, according to the regulations, outside the polling booths, had all been destroyed, whereas those featuring Jacques Chirac and his anodyne campaign slogan ("All of France, France Together") were marvelously undefaced.

And Paris responded: The city gave the sitting French president more than 90 percent of its votes, a higher percentage than did the rest of the country, which gave him 82 percent. Chirac, and just about everyone else, proclaimed a massive victory. "L'immense victoire," read the headline in Le Figaro. "Ouf!" was the headline in Libération, an expression which translates roughly as "Phew!" The paper's lead editorial wrote that democracy had triumphed, as had "liberty, equality, fraternity." What was less clear, the morning after, was whether France's political class had learned anything from the brief shock it had received from the far-right's surprise success in the first round of the French presidential elections, and whether anything will change as a result.

From the coverage of the campaign, one would guess not. In the speech he made to his supporters last night, Le Pen spoke of the media's campaign against him as "hysterical" while another National Front leader complained Le Pen had been caricatured as a cross between "Frankenstein and Adolf Hitler." Neither was entirely wrong. Although the Goutte d'Or is an unusual French neighborhood, its Election Day atmosphere of total support for Chirac was not.

For the past two weeks, there has been relatively little national discussion of the issues that were supposedly at stake in this election: immigration, Frenchness, the European Union. Instead, there were many emotional calls—from philosophers, actresses, journalists, school children—for the French to "unite" against the mortal danger of fascism and the international embarrassment of having such a large and popular far-right political party. There was also coverage that was either neutral or blatantly biased in Chirac's favor. When pro- and anti-Le Pen rallies were held simultaneously on May 1, for example, the anti-Le Pen rally received far more coverage while the pro-Le Pen rally wasn't even mentioned until rather late in that evening's news programs.

Chirac encouraged this attitude, perhaps not surprisingly. He refused point blank to debate Le Pen, who was in turn given relatively few opportunities to state his case—leaving some feeling a touch uneasy. Le Pen's case may be repugnant, or at least some aspects of it may be, but it would have been nice to hear it soundly and frequently defeated nevertheless. "I know they're preposterous," a Parisian friend confessed to me, speaking of the National Front, "but I would have liked to see them squirm."

Strangest of all, the touchy issue of France's large immigrant population, their alleged failure to assimilate, and their supposed responsibility for France's huge crime wave has received relatively few mentions in public. Even the postelection TV coverage on French state television—at least the first few hours of it—included virtually no mention of immigrants or immigration. Strangely, to my American eye, no Arab or black leaders had even been invited into the studio to offer instant comment on the results.

At home, people are talking, however—and one hopes that France's politicians know it. I overheard one woman's comment in a restaurant on Election Day in another part of Paris—the Left Bank— that voted overwhelmingly for Chirac:

… and sometimes their children don't speak French either. …

She was speaking, of course, of immigrants in Marseilles. It made me think of a passage in a recent, much-lauded book by Larry Seidentop, Democracy in Europe:

Here we come again upon the pattern which has haunted French history since the Revolution, a pattern in which the political class or elite loses touch with popular opinion, only finally to be called to account by widespread civil unrest, if not revolution.

My worry is this: If people's fears about immigration, crime, and national identity are not addressed in the next few years of President's Chirac's tenure, there may not be "widespread civil unrest," but there may well be an even larger vote for Le Pen next time around. There is no reason France's politicians shouldn't be relieved by Chirac's triumph—but the events of the past two weeks are no excuse for renewed complacency either.

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Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.

Photograph of Jean-Marie Le Pen by Charles Platiau/Reuters/Corbis.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

Why must the French debate? Which insight is debate going to provide? The French, like most European colonial countries, committed numerous genocides in Africa and Asia. They participated in the Holocaust. Also, when they did have a large Jewish minority, there was lots and lots of debate of how to integrate Jews. The French, it seems from my knowledge of history, have been debating about similar topics for centuries. Does Anne [Applebaum] think that the election of Le Pen is going to change something that, all of the above mentioned, hasn't?

--Adam Morgan

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

Le Pen got about 19% of the French vote, which was the same percentage of votes Ross Perot got in 1992. An interesting coincidence? Perhaps not. Le Pen, and with less vitriol, Perot, both highlighted immigration and fear of lost jobs (remember Perot's "large sucking sound" when discussing NAFTA?) They both appealed to those unhappy for whatever reason with the political establishment. Both candidacies were primarily driven by the candidates' persona.

There are differences, of course. Perot may be little crazy and have some weird ideas about how the Constitution works, but he isn't a fascist and he isn't a racist. Perot was also running as a third candidate, while Le Pen was only running against Chirac.

Still, I'd guess that if you take most democracies and add up the percentages of people who are some combination of far right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-establishment, anti-globalization, racist, populist, "looking for a change," "wanting to send a message," plain crazy, or the like, you'd probably get about 19%. Most of the time, I suspect these people either don't vote or their votes are absorbed by the "normal" party candidates, but when they get a chance with a Perot or Le Pen "type," they spring free.

Perot faded away. I suspect the same thing will happen with Le Pen.

--Adam Masin

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

I am generally loath to suggest that we may learn about life, let alone democratic political behavior, from interactions in the Fray. But it seems to me that Applebaum's basic error in this article is illustrated quite well by attempts to confront bigoted cyber-personas.

When somebody's ideology is truly beyond the pale, engaging them in debate can only legitimize--and encourage--them. Far better to identify any issues they raise that may be worth serious argument, and doing so with civilized beings. Le Pen, I submit, does not fall in that category.

--Moloch

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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