That was the campaign motto of Jean-Marie Le Pen, an old-guard anti-immigrant presidential candidate, running in today’s first round of the French presidential election. He lost coming in fourth place.
Like the soon to be exiting French president, Jacques Chirac, Le Pen was the only one of the four major candidates with any memory of WWII. As happened in the US with Bill Clinton and in the UK with Tony Blair, a changing of the guards is about to occur in France. In addition – as might soon be replicated in the US – the winner may be the first woman in French history.
The two candidates who will advance to the next round, to be held in two weeks, are the socialist – you can have your cake and eat it too – Segolene Royal and the more conservative (moderate by American standards) Nicolas Sarkozy. Royal believes that the best way to solve the problems of France is by taxing and spending more. Sarkozy, in stark contrast, believes that the biggest problem in France is a lack of incentives and rewards for work through stifling levels of regulation and taxation.
Whichever candidate wins, they will soon be dealing with problems that are arguably of an even greater difficulty than the next American president will be faced with in terms of both economic and immigration reform. Immigration in France is not the kind of problem that it is in America. In the U.S., whatever side of the debate you are on, you know that most likely very little will be done to prevent illegal immigration, or to give those who are already here any more rights and benefits. The American immigrant continues to live on the margins of society, and American employers love to keep them coming to depress wages, and there are no riots in the streets.
By contrast, in France, racism, economic inequality, and religious hatred between whites and African muslims has unleashed violence, in the last few years, that we have yet to witness from immigrant populations in the U.S. The next French president will have to seek a path of culturally and economically bringing muslims into the mainstream of French culture. Like America in 25 years, France will no longer be a majority white country. If change does not begin now more divisions and more violence will ensue. White France, like white America, will soon be a minority – living without ethnic privilege – in a multi-cultural world
I have been meaning to write a eulogy for some time for the French sociologist/philosopher Jean Baudrillard, once called the “high-priest of post-modernism”, who died last month at the age of 77. Rather than tell you more about him and his work, I will leave you with a masterfully written piece from the French riots of 2005. A writing that may well prove to be prophetic…
http://newleftreview.org/A2595
