French Presidential election

[Donut]

Jean-Marie Le Pen the extreme right-wing leader of The National Front party has stunned France and most of Europe by winning through to the second round of voting in the French elections. He won 20% of the popular vote. Many French people are now having feelings of guilt and shame at the results. Spontaneous demonstrations (some violent) have been erupting throughout the country since the result was announced.

Le Pen stands on a platform of extremism, racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia. He promises to send 3 million immigrants back to where they come from and famously spoke of the Holocaust as a 'detail of history'.

So come on Moiraine - what happened?

[Yorick]

Oh man. For one horrible second I thought he had won the Presidency itself.

The second round? How many rounds are there?

Let's hope the French get it together and send him out on his racist arse.

This is the guy who said he would pull France out of the EU?

[Melusine]

Originally posted by MagiK: This is the guy who said he would pull France out of the EU?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/1947616.stm

[WOLFGIR]

I think it was only the Maastricht protocoll Magik.
None the less, this guy and several others in the countries around Europe are getting dangerously big in popularity now adays. Weird that the countries that suffered from equal ideaologies during the WW2 now is trying to get a leader that think like A.Hitler...

One would hope that mankind had kept some membrance and some empathy for human life during the years and that with our nice "civilisation" we could root things like this out. Seems like the things said about Kulius Ceasar is still tru..

[Donut]

"Mr Le Pen has blamed rising crime on mass immigration and said he would implement policies of "national preference," meaning that in France "the French are treated better" than others.: (From the BBC)

Well I hope he starts on the French Football team before the World Cup starts.

[Ar-Cunin]

Well I hope he starts on the French Football team before the World Cup starts.

LOL - so do I - We're in the same group as them (again!)

On a more serious note I don't worry to much - Le Pen got 17% of the vote ( the last two times he got 14% and 15%) so France has not had a sharp turn to the political right. The left got a combined vote of nearly 40% but it got spread out over so many candidates that Joispan failed to win thruogh to the second (and last) round. I don't worry though - Chirac will win that round easily - just look at the protest in French cities the last couple of days. The voters on the left will have to vote for Chirac - and will do so to keep Le Pen out of office.

[khazadman]

On a more serious note I don't worry to much - Le Pen got 17% of the vote ( the last two times he got 14% and 15%) so France has not had a sharp turn to the political right. The left got a combined vote of nearly 40% but it got spread out over so many candidates that Joispan failed to win thruogh to the second (and last) round. I don't worry though - Chirac will win that round easily - just look at the protest in French cities the last couple of days. The voters on the left will have to vote for Chirac - and will do so to keep Le Pen out of office.

i think the right is going to get more votes than the french want to admit.there is a backlash building around the western countries to the policies of the left.and liberalized immigration laws seems to be the #1 problem.look what it's done for us.we have millions of them here in the u.s.

[Donut]

Originally posted by Ar-Cunin: quote: Well I hope he starts on the French Football team before the World Cup starts.

On a more serious note I don't worry to much - Le Pen got 17% of the vote ( the last two times he got 14% and 15%) so France has not had a sharp turn to the political right. The left got a combined vote of nearly 40% but it got spread out over so many candidates that Joispan failed to win thruogh to the second (and last) round. I don't worry though - Chirac will win that round easily - just look at the protest in French cities the last couple of days. The voters on the left will % in have to vote forChirac - and will do so to keep Le Pen out of office.[/QUOTE]I accept that Chirac will win by a landslide but the worse thing to do is not worry. The right wing extremists have been gaining support all over Europe in recent years.

Most famously Jorge Haider's Freedom Party in Austria. They increased their vote from 9.7% in 1986 to 27.2% in 1999 and formed part of the coalition government.

In Belgium Vlaams Blok, led by Filip Dewinter, regularly wins about 16% of the vote and is the largest party in Antwerp although it is kept out of power by a coalition of smaller parties.

In Denmark the Danish Peoples Party, although technically not in government, has a huge influence on the centre-right coalition government.

In Germany, the law and order movement of Ronald Schill a magistrate known as "judge merciless" - won 19 per cent of the vote in Hamburg last September.

In Italy the Northern League joined Berlusconi's coalition last November and Italy became the second EU country to include a far right party in government.

The Dutch vote on May 15 and Pim Fortuyn's party is expected to get between 12 - 16% of the vote and be the fourth largest party. They may well form part of a coalition party.

In Britain the British National Party are hoping to perform well in next weeks local elections in some northern towns which have large Asian communities. We do not have proportional representation here so it is virtually impossible for fringe parties to become members of coalitions.

In 1928 the Nazi Party won 18.3% of the national vote (remarkably similar to Le Pen's vote). In 1933 this rose to 37.2% and Hitler never looked back. Admittedly the world has changed since then but this is no time for apathy.

If one good thing comes out of the French Election it must be that this will sound as a wake up call to everyone who opposes racism.

One side note. The Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger (a Frenchman would you believe) has spoken today of his feeling of guilt that he didn't vote in Sunday's election. He said "I feel quite guilty as I didn’t vote. If you multiply my attitude by 180,000, it takes Le Pen out of the top two. France is the country of human rights, but we have woken up with a headache now."

[ 04-24-2002, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: Donut ]

[Donut]

Originally posted by khazadman: quote: On a more serious note I don't worry to much - Le Pen got 17% of the vote ( the last two times he got 14% and 15%) so France has not had a sharp turn to the political right. The left got a combined vote of nearly 40% but it got spread out over so many candidates that Joispan failed to win thruogh to the second (and last) round. I don't worry though - Chirac will win that round easily - just look at the protest in French cities the last couple of days. The voters on the left will have to vote for Chirac - and will do so to keep Le Pen out of office.

i think the right is going to get more votes than the french want to admit.there is a backlash building around the western countries to the policies of the left.and liberalized immigration laws seems to be the #1 problem.look what it's done for us.we have millions of them here in the u.s.[/QUOTE]Millions of what?