By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
For the first time since the defeat of German Nazism in 1945, a political force with a fascist origin and far right “character” is now contesting power in one of the most important European countries, through the far-right “National Coalition” of Marine Le Pen and the young Jordan Bardella (a “Tsipras” of the far-right, chosen as Le Pen’s favourite).
In the previous elections in France, the possibility of Le Pen’s election was used as a scare, but in reality it was non-existent. Now it is very real. And it has become real because a significant part of the French and global financial oligarchy, faced with the deep crisis of the system and the need to escalate the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, openly accepts the possibility of resorting to “fascist”, i.e. extreme authoritarian solutions, as it did a century ago, albeit in a quite different form today. It has also become real because of the incredible hatred the French people have accumulated for Macron: they are ready to vote for anyone against him. While the left has only partially offered if it offered a convincing alternative.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, says the proverb. Despite persistent, systematic and largely successful efforts over many years, or rather decades, with the help of the mainstream media, to “wash itself out”, embellish itself and appear as something it is not, despite the removal of some of the more “extreme” (or more outspoken) of its cadres, the political current that now claims power in France is nothing but the heirs of the Vichy regime, the Nazi collaborators, that is to say under Field Marshal Petain, the OAS organization that tried to overthrow and assassinate General de Gaulle, the Algerian butchers and torturers, the extremely violent Occident and Nouvel Ordre groups, the employer gangs https://ujfp.org/la-
One of the two co-founders in 1972 and for nine years treasurer of the “National Front”, which was subsequently renamed “National Rally”, served as an officer in the Waffen SS, which massively exterminated the populations of Ukraine and were also responsible for other crimes in Europe like the slaughter of all the inhabitants of the Greek village Distomo
The fact that the politics of the French bourgeoisie and the Socialists have managed to make such a force attractive to a significant part of the French population, who are certainly not fascists, or at least did not start out that way, is the best proof of their historical bankruptcy.
Should we be worried about the far right?
Some will object at this point that the criterion of the past is not decisive. But in fact we all use the criterion of the past in all matters, in all relationships and very massively. Why should we make an exception only for the French Far Right? Some others argue that today’s European societies are too “worn out” to produce true Fascism or even left-wing social revolution, as they did a hundred years ago, and that at most a “repetition of the tragedy as a farce” may occur. This may be true, but if the crisis of Western capitalism continues to deepen – and this is by far the most likely scenario – and, even more so, if the West’s wars against the rest of the world escalate (Middle East, Ukraine, China tomorrow), then the demand for strongly authoritarian solutions in the West itself will increase accordingly.
What difference does it make, one way or the other? some will say. A hundred years ago this was the policy of the Communist Party of Germany following the orders of the Communist International (“Third Period”). It even allied with the Nazis to bring down the social democratic government in Bavaria with the “red referendum”. Their slogan was “after Hitler comes (the German Communist party’s) General Secretary Thälmann”. Thälmann died in a camp and the Nazis were stopped by the Soviets on the outskirts of Moscow at a terrible price. We are not claiming that the same thing will happen today, however it is a fundamental experience that any analyst would be a complete fool not to take it into account and keep it as an analytical tool.
After all, if it happens, if we go that way, it won’t happen tomorrow and it won’t take obligatory the form of the interwar. Today international capital is far too integrated to allow individual fascisms. If Trump is elected in the US, one can imagine a collective West, organized along authoritarian lines, ready to wage the wars globally that the maintenance of its global domination requires, with “satellites” of Le Pen or Meloni-type regimes in Europe. An interesting analysis of contemporary forms of fascism is contained in the study “La Finance Autoritaire” La finance autoritaire and https://www.cairn.info/revue-
Ukraine
The “Rassemblement National” (as well as Trump) could certainly play a very positive role if they actually contributed to ending NATO’s military involvement in Ukraine, but we don’t have serious reasons to believe they will do it if an important component of the empire of Finance, of the real power of the world does not decide to go to such a direction. Marine Le Pen has not advocated such a position, and her party has radically changed its positions on Russia and Ukraine as the election was approaching in order to be accepted by big business and the establishment in France, Europe and the collective West. The Bolloré media empire, which controls much of the media and fanatically supports Le Pen also fanatically supports NATO in Ukraine. We should note that historical experience is also unsatisfactory on this point. Trump was considered a “friend of Russia”, but the only result of his tenure was to arm Ukraine to the teeth. A century ago, Hitler also lured Moscow into a trap that proved utterly disastrous for Soviet interests and nearly led to the defeat of the USSR.
Far Right, Gaullism and Israel
All the political factions in France after the war have always considered any collaboration with the Far Right to be totally unacceptable. The Lepenists themselves, of course, want to appear to be the heirs of de Gaulle, but in reality they represent everything the General hated and fought against, a fact symbolically confirmed by the ‘last of the Gaullists’, Jacques Chirac’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin – who represented all civilised humanity by opposing the American invasion of Iraq at the UN – when he said that he he will vote for the New Popular Front.
With regard to Israel in particular, de Gaulle distanced himself from this state and warned its leadership that if they insist on occupying the territories won in the war, this will inevitably lead to resistance, repression and terrorism. In contrast, Marine Le Pen is a strong supporter of Israel and a denier of De Gaulle’s and Mitterand’s legacies Marine Le Pen’s self-proclaimed Gaullist credentials have not stood up to the war in Gaza
The “patriotism” of the “Lepenists” is rather contradictory. They are bothered, for example, by the religious beliefs of French workers of Arab-Muslim origin, headscarves and the illegal entry of immigrants, while they want to prevent undocumented people from being treated in French hospitals, i.e. they prefer to see them dying in the street.
But they are not at all bothered, on the contrary, by the enormous influence of Israel and its lobbies in French foreign policy. It was this lobby (CRIF) that forbade Sarkozy to appoint Hubert Védrine as Foreign Minister, as he had decided. ‘One of the results of these influences was the destruction of Gaddafi’s Libya by Nicolas Sarkozy, at the recommendation of Bernard Henri Levy on behalf of the American Jewish neoconservatives and despite Obama’s reservations, a disaster that caused a huge wave of refugees and migrants that annoy so much the French Far Right.
“Empire of Money”, the “matchmaking” with Le Pen and the alliance between Israel and the Fascists
The traditional policy of excluding any collaboration with the far right began to change when the far-right communication mogul Bolloré, the so-called French Murdoch, got to control important media in the country, provoking great protests from the French journalistic world https://www.france24.com/en/
Developments were accelerated by the massacre in Palestine. Already for a long time the leader of the Israeli far right Benjamin Netanyahu has developed a full alliance with almost all the movements of the European far right https://www.defenddemocracy.
The basis of the alliance of the Far Right of Israel, Europe and America, one of the geopolitical bases of modern Western Fascism, is that we must fight the White Man’s war against the Muslims, i.e. it is a particular form of Huntington’s view of a “war of civilisations”. There are other versions, as some people prefer the Russians and others prefer the Chinese as enemies, while in practice we have been led to starting a general war with Russians and Muslims, and we are preparing for war with China.
It goes without saying that only insane people can believe that the organization of such conflicts can lead to anything other than a global catastrophe. And they are insane, as the development of events in the Middle East (as well as in the Ukraine, in the ecological and almost all the issues of a world that seems to be in a big bang in slow motion) proves. The only peaceful and democratic solution that allows the survival of humanity is to move towards a multipolar world of international cooperation that gradually begins to address the huge, exploding problems of humanity, problems that for the first time endanger its very existence.
Netanyahu used the genocide in Gaza and the criticisms that Israel began to face internationally to convince the other components of the powerful Lobby that dominate today the politics of the whole West in order to drop any reservations and finally include the French far-right, despite their anti-Semitic past (if it really is only a past), in the fight against “anti-Semitism”! While the Israeli army was slaughtering, demolishing and torturing in Gaza, the leaders of all the political parties in France, including Le Pen, with the honourable exception of the leader of the radical left (France Unbowed) Jean-Luc Mélenchon, took to the streets to demand not an end to the massacres, but an end to … “anti-Semitism”, i.e. to the criticism of Israel’s crimes! A climate of unbleievable hysteria was established in the country against anybody criticizing Israeli crimes and, in particular, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Unbowed.
It was the first recognition of the Far Right as a legitimate partner in France’s post-war history.
As the former director of Monde Diplomatique and one of the best French specisalists on the Arabs world, Alain Gresh, notes, the support of the extreme right for Israel has allowed it to be whitewashed in France. Anti-Anti-Semitism: the Far Right Whitewashedby its Support for Israel.
