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May 7, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
May 6, 2002
Fran Schor
Invasion
of Iraq:
Coming Soon
Dave Marsh
Love Hurts
John Chuckman
The
Paradoxes of Israel
Rep. Ron Paul
End Corporate Welfare, Pull
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Hussein
Ibish
Devastation
Only Feeds Resistance to Israeli Rule
May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
May 3, 2002
Arundhati Roy
Democracy and
Religious Fascism
Wayne
Madsen
Dispatch
from Paris:
Le Pen's Strange Coalition
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
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Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 2, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Rep.
Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians
Rami Kaplan
Israeli Soldiers Resisting
the Occupation:
Why We Refuse to Fight
Carol
Norris
Subterranean
Mini-Nuke Blues
Bernard Weiner
A Peek Inside Colin Powell's Personal
Diary
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
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The New Crusade:
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May
8, 2002
No Earthquake in France,
Nobody Dead
by James Masterson
In the face of the recent hysteria over the "rise"
of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a large dose of scepticism is in order.
Who gains most from calls for "unity": the electorate
in any nation-state, for whom unity is a delusion so long as
social divisions persist, or the politicians and their servants
in the media and the academy, for whom unity is a tellingly easy
and familiar posture? Who, in any case, is chiefly to blame for
a situation in which, in every liberal democracy, genuine political
choice has been suppressed by and for politicians who are at
least as authoritarian as Le Pen is, but are better trained in
public relations? Last but not least, who has most need for extreme
rightwingers to be set up as the latest scapegoats for the plight
of ethnic minorities, working-class communities and others excluded
from the neoliberal feast?
It is the selectiveness of the mainstream
commentators that is most revealing. Once again, they have almost
all avoided any discussion of one essential factor: voter turnout.
In Britain, for example, they like to pretend that a majority
of voters chose New Labour in 1997 and again in 2001. Yet in
both elections the numbers voting against Blair and Brown's madeover
Thatcherism exceeded the numbers voting in favour, and the numbers
not voting at all rose to unprecedented levels, producing "landslide"
victories based on the support of barely a quarter of eligible
voters. Again, the shenanigans in Florida in 2000 amazed most
non-Americans who noticed them, including the reporters and commentators
who had mysteriously failed to notice similar shenanigans in
all previous US elections. Yet the spotlighting of Jeb Bush's
little empire also drew attention away from the fact that his
brother, Al Gore and Ralph Nader between them failed to persuade
a majority of registered voters to take part in the electoral
process.
Similarly, the sudden canonisation of
Jacques Chirac helps to obscure the fact that not much has changed
in France since the last presidential election, in 1995. Le Pen
has not gained much additional support, and poses no more or
less of a threat than he ever did. The real story of the first
round--the one from which valid comparisons and conclusions can
be drawn, given the unique circumstances of the second--was that
Chirac lost some votes while Jospin lost many more, partly to
leftist rivals, but mainly because former supporters refused
to vote for him. More broadly, the insistence on ignoring turnout
exaggerates the support given to all politicians. We are told,
for instance, that Jacques Chirac won about 20% of the vote in
the first round (as against 80% in the second). In fact, fewer
than 15% of French voters positively supported him, an indication
of how little appeal he really has, and of how useful the hysteria
has been to him. As for Le Pen, even after decades of diligently
working toward the peak performance of his absurd career, he
received the support of only a little over 12% of all French
voters in the first round (and barely 16% in the second).
Not content with misrepresenting the
electoral statistics, mainstream commentators generally go on
to misrepresent the social significance of the results. It is
convenient for these servants of the elite to depict those who
voted for Le Pen, in either round, as a monolithic bloc, mysteriously
unlike voters for any other party in any western country. Bear
in mind, however, what Le Pen actually is and what he says. In
addition to remaining a fascist and a racist, while toning down
his rhetoric this time round, he is the only leading French politician
who did not attend any of the elite educational institutions
in Paris. Further, he was frightening voters with what are now
all too familiar lies, about "rising" crime, "excessive"
public spending, "progressive" education and so on,
years before Chirac and Jospin stole these themes from him, just
as Blair and Schroder stole similarly reactionary ideas from
their rivals. Le Pen is also resolutely opposed to neoliberalism,
the European Union, and all that goes with them. It is not really
so very mysterious that he attracts votes--some as expressions
of serious commitment, but most as inchoate protests--from many
who resent the elite, others who believe what the elite and its
tame media tell them, and still others who are frightened about
globalisation. None of this presents a plausible basis for the
imminent restoration of the Vichy regime. The one episode in
French politics that it does recall--at least for Le Pen himself
and for Chirac, though not for the ignoramuses who pass for "experts"
in the media--is the rise and fall of Poujadism, that earlier
vehicle for petty-bourgeois ressentiment that gave Le Pen his
start in politics before collapsing in the face of a revived
Gaullism.
Beyond France, similarly incoherent and
ephemeral electoral bases have already propelled extreme rightwingers
into coalition governments in Portugal, Norway, Italy and Austria,
while similarly exploited anxieties have already infected governments
in Britain, Germany and Spain as well. All these governments
are applying policies, on immigration, welfare, education and
many other matters, that would have been rejected as extreme
rightwing fantasies until relatively recently. We have already
reached the point where that perennial bandwagon-jumper Anthony
Giddens can exploit the Le Pen hysteria to demand--in The Guardian,
not the Daily Mail--that New Labour becomes "tough on immingration",
apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that most nonwhite people
living in Britain today are not immigrants, and that only racists
still imagine they are. With the guru of the third way indulging
in such careless rhetoric, who can blame the far right for imagining
that their cause is gaining respectability.
How interesting, then, that, in response
to what is probably the last campaign of an ageing fascist, who
has never been in government, so many commentators have sought
to convey the utterly false impression that there are Nazis on
the march in full uniform the length and breadth of France--regardless
of the fact that large numbers of these sad people are too old
to march very far, too fat to fit into tunics and too confused
to form up in lines. How interesting, too, that these commentators
have failed to convey any impression of what it is like to be
(for example) young, black and poor in any of the "advanced"
liberal democracies today, at the mercy, not only of sporadic
criminal attacks by individual racists, but of sustained and
perfectly legal attacks by racist institutions. Again, who stands
to gain most from attempts to frighten people into trusting the
elite once more, regardless of that elite's hypocrisy, corruption
and cynicism?
The fact is that, in France as elsewhere,
elections, even when they are as hyped up as the Chirac/Le Pen
contest was, can do little to alter the consistent process of
intellectual and moral degeneration that has characterised mainstream
politics across the West for the past three decades. Democracy
as such is not under threat from fascists--though ethnic minorities
certainly are. The greatest threat to the limited and distorted
forms of democracy that characterise the West comes, as ever,
from corporate power, which has no need to cultivate fascists
as long as it can find, and finance, mainstream politicians,
journalists and academics willing to do its bidding. As for what
happens when any of these groups attempts to defy corporate power,
the name of Salvador Allende may yet ring some bells.
So much for the 12-16% of French voters
who, probably to their own bemusement, attracted so much international
attention. What then of the other 84-88%? On the one hand, only
a few among the mainstream commentators pontificating about the
first round even deigned to notice that, while a little over
26% chose either Chirac or Jospin, 33.9% plumped for candidates
other than Chirac, Jospin or Le Pen. The performance of the three
Trotskyist candidates, and the continuing death throes of the
Parti Communiste, did attract the attention of a few self-consciously
"leftist" journalists, but only as an excuse to write
nonsense about the "self-indulgent" splintering of
the French left--as if Stalinists and Trotskyists ought to unite,
either with each other or with Jospin, and as if doing so would
have made any significant difference. However much respect one
may have for the clarity and intransigence of some of the left
sects in France, who put the truly self-indulgent infantilism
and academicism of most British "Marxists" to shame,
it is absurd to pretend that their electoral record says anything
more than that they still form an isolated and ineffective minority.
Blaming such vilified and marginalised groups for the stupidities
of the system that has kept them isolated is just one more example
of the mauvaise foi of so many "social democrats",
who still yearn for the kudos of appearing to be radical while
enjoying the rewards of being sycophantic.
On the other hand, 28% of French voters
abstained in the first round, and 20% abstained in the second,
despite the blizzard of emotional blackmail against them. Thus,
in France as in every other western country, the largest single
political grouping--again, the extraordinary and unrepeatable
second round aside--now comprises those who do not vote, or vote
as seldom as possible. True, this grouping is at least as heterogeneous
and unstable as the support bases of the political parties, and
there have always been people who simply cannot be persuaded
to take any interest in politics. Yet the sheer size of this
minority, unprecedented outside the United States, cannot be
glibly explained away. Some of these nonvoters, at least, are
not apathetic at all, but extremely angry. They have grasped
the fact that there is no significant difference between the
main parties any more, so that voting for any of them is generally
(albeit not always) a waste of time.
Predictably, the politicians and their
friends in the media blame such voters for being irresponsible.
The local elections in England evoked the same pious drivel here
as in France: we have a duty to take part in the electoral process
because "people died for the right to vote". Certainly,
many of those who died in protests against poverty, oppression
or exploitation believed that voting might be an instrument for
beginning to address such issues, but to pretend that the best
of them saw voting as inherently virtuous in all circumstances
is an insult to their memory. They would have understood that
nobody has a "duty" to take part in a cynical farce
just because it happens to share some superficial features with
what was once a serious and worthwhile activity. In societies
where the "centre-left" is further to the right than
the governments of Heath and Giscard d'Estaing were 30 years
ago, even mildly progressive people, let alone real socialists,
should be praised, not blamed, for withholding their support
from Blair, Schroder, Jospin and the other Bodysnatchers, who
have proved to be better at entryism than Militant or its continental
counterparts ever were. In societies where social democrats,
liberals and conservatives all claim to oppose racism--while
vilifying "asylum-seekers" (refugees), turning a blind
eye to racist propaganda and violence, and creating the conditions
in which extreme rightwing groups can grow--the deepdyed racist
minority are at least displaying more honesty and consistency
than their rulers by turning to such groups or, again, giving
up on conventional politics entirely. Finally, in societies where
potential first-time voters are not as tribal as their elders
once were, and rightly find all the efforts of mainstream politicians
to put "clear water", of any colour, between themselves
and their rivals totally unconvincing, they cannot be blamed
for not troubling themselves about the bland, interchangeable
nonentities who occupy centre stage, while the really interesting
and important deals and decisions are made in the wings.
It is not the voters but the politicians,
and their friends in the media and the academy, who have changed
for the worse. They are the ones who should be ashamed about
the transformation of elections from ideological confrontations
into meaningless spectacles, if only they were capable of feeling
such a self-reflective emotion. In Britain alone, even as the
hysteria over Le Pen was still getting going, the government
was pushing its Immigration and Asylum Bill through Parliament,
the Institute of Directors was welcoming the war criminal Henry
Kissinger as an honoured guest, and David Blunkett was reviving
the Thatcherite language of "swamping". When "centre-left"
politicians are eager to seek the support of racists--rather
than, as the admirable Bob Marshall-Andrews did in 2001, forthrightly
telling racists that their votes are not wanted--is it any wonder
that more and more voters turn away in disgust?
Hostility to mainstream politics is all
the more likely to grow as the public relations game that has
taken the place of political conflict carries on and on. Thirty
years ago, voting Socialist or Gaullist in France, Social Democrat
or Christian Democrat in Germany, Labour or Tory in Britain--or
even Democat or Republican in the United States, the country
that first adopted the euphemism "public relations"
to disguise propaganda--could bring about real changes in policy,
and thus in people's everyday lives. Today, however, Aneurin
Bevan would be prevented from getting a nomination even for a
seat on the local council, if need be by sending AEEU officials
in to swing the vote (which, by the way, refers to yet another
story that Blair's friends in the media have all but completely
buried). Meanwhile, the extreme right has learned how to hide
its true agenda, and to talk in terms that mirror the feelings
of confusion and loss that a small group of mainly elderly, white
and petty-bourgeois voters--les vieux schnocks--undoubtedly harbour.
But who taught the fascists how to make themselves over?
Politics has been reduced to little more
than the marketing of differently packaged brands of the very
same product, so that the only practical choices available within
the system are between neoliberalism-plus-authoritarianism administered
by Blair, Chirac, Schroder or Bush, and neoliberalism-plus-authoritarianism
administered by their rivals. With the left rendered ineffective,
all too often by its own grave blunders as much as by the elite,
the mainstream parties need a new scapegoat to blame for the
social disintegration that is the direct consequence of their
policies. Le Pen, the BNP and their analogues in other countries
thus end up rendering a service to the very system that they
despise--which goes to prove how stupid, ignorant and vain they
truly are, since that system has happily compromised with fascism
in the past, and is doing so again whenever and wherever it seems
necessary.
Nevertheless, amid the constant bombardment
of elite propaganda, and the sporadic scattering of fascist propaganda--each
increasingly overlapping with and borrowing from the other--more
and more of the "consumers" refuse to accept any of
the brands on offer. This, too, is a direct consequence of the
neoliberal hegemony. Compared to the stifling of democracy by
the elites of the West and their willing accomplices in the media
and the academy, the threat posed by the Front National, or any
other fascist group, is really not very great.
James Masterson
writes for BICEPS, the fortnigtly publication of The
British Institute of Contemporary Economic and Political Studies.
He can be reached at: biceps@btinternet.com
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