What is the nature of the le Pen phenomenon?

Is Marie le Pen fascist – or not?

Seemorerocks

There are comments on Facebook with off-the-cuff comments about France frogmarching to fascism.

Is this really true?

Let me start off by saying I don’t support anyone across the political spectrum, in my own country, let alone France.

As we live in the era of consequences – of economic, social, poliical and above all – ecological – collapse the best we can do is to is to act as observers.

That, at least, is my intention.

The results in France represent the logical result of what has come before – a quarter century of neo-liberal experimentation, a kind of anti-proletarian International.

France has almost a quarter of its youth unemployed and its economy is imploding.

France has been first off the queue when it comes to bombing its former colonies into the stone age unleashing 2 million refugees unchecked into Europe. This has had a terrble social consequneces for the social integrity of societies from Germany to Sweden, to France.

The natural reaction of the people to a policy imposed on them by a faceless, unelected and anti-democratic European state is to want to take their own national sovereignty back and to reverse the tide of refugees unleashed by a real fascist (Erdogan).

It is opposition to the wars of the Deep State.

And yet in this context Marie le Pen and others like her are painted as fascist by the very countries and political parties that have created chaos and think nothing of subverting democracy when it suits them.

I prefer to be fairly exact about definitions.

What is it exactly that qualifies Marie le Pen as a fascist?

Is it her anti- immigration position? Is it her opposition to wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere? Is it her father Jean-Marie le Pen who definitely fitted the bill?

Fascism has many definitions but would have to meet all, or most, of the following criteria:

• Idealising war and the military
• A contempt for democratic procedures
• Suppression of workers’ rights
• Supprssion of women’s rights
• Rampant anti-intelletualism
• Violent suppression rather than following the rule of war

If we take the first factor – the militarism – then Marie le Pen’s consistent anti-war position would have to qualify her as an anti-facist as opposed to her liberal counterparts who think nothing of a policy of unleashing bombs on the people of other countries.

As for the others – the anti-intellectualism, the suppression of democracy (already more than achieved by the liberal fascists in power). - I cannot see any signs from anything that le Pen says.

Have a listen for yourself.

Meanwhile there are some real fascists abroad – and they are not Orban of Hungary or le Pen. They are real-live fascists in Ukraine who beat up or lynch their opponents (whose only sin may be they speak Russian) or Erdogan who has had an Enabling Act past.

I suspect that a Trump that has been totally turned by the Deep State may qualify as a fascist.

But these people are quite acceptable to the faceless bureaucrats of the EU – even allies.

I have been forced to look at a whole lifetime’s assumptions so I can suggest the same to people who are locked into binary thinking – good vs evil, facist vs democrat.

You cannot be watching collapse and then suddenly when it gets close for comfort suddenly flip and start to support those forces that created the crisis situaton in the first place. This happened after the American election. People took fright, stopped being observers and fell back on old positions.

The die is cast, both with abrupt climate change and the collapse of the old world order. We cannot go back.

In this context what concerns me most is foreign policy, questions of war and peace.

In thi context Marie le Pen is one of the better people in public life right now, certainly in the context of France or the European Union.

I find myself in broad agreement with Adam Garie of the Duran.

In the end none of us has a crystal ball and so we cannot predict what the consequences of current events may be.

I have learned to expect nothing but the worst.