The French Spectateur/Malaise
Oppenheimer, Franz M.
Malaise Paris perhaps Francis Fukuyama is not as nutty as we thought. Many Frenchmen, at least, have begun to believe that we are living the end of history. In all the commentaries on France's...
...Only defections among the Socialists in the„ National Assembly could then prevent such an outcome...
...The devastating defeat of Francois Mitterrand's Socialist party is seen only in its domestic dimension...
...It is enough to make a good European blanch...
...Arecent long profile in the newsmagazine L'Express confirms what most commentators have long held: that Le Pen is not only a brute but a liar as well: he has claimed falsely to have fought with the Resistance, for example...
...11 66 The American Spectator June 1992...
...In all the commentaries on France's elections of last March that I read in the newspapers and heard on radio and television, there was not one reflection about the loss of credibility of a French government that has no more than 18 percent of voters behind it and its ability to conduct diplomacy in such traditional theaters of influence as Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa...
...The two environmental parties—the Greens and Ecological Generation—together took 15 percent...
...That motley minority bloc would pose a threat only if Mitterrand were to make good on his frequent promise to reintroduce proportional representation to parliament...
...too much by any calculation, but less than many commentators had feared...
...What remained after the fall of Communism of the Gaullist foreign policy—French dreams of dominating the EEC, of mediating between the United States and the Soviet Union (or between Germany and the Soviet Union)—has been swept conclusively into the dustbin of history...
...Even from a purely domestic standpoint, the decimation of a party that a decade ago took more than half the vote by promising social justice, full employment, and "singing tomorrows" is a momentous event...
...When he helped found the National Front in October 1972, its six-man executive committee included not only Le Pen but also two veterans of the Waffen SS and a member of the notorious Vichy militia...
...Le Pen's personal associations are also unsavory: a close friend from the 1960s, who became the godfather of Le Pen's youngest daughter, served two years in prison for brothel-keeping...
...Whether President Mitterrand will be able to defend France's odd-man-out position in GATT's Uruguay Round, whether he can make France adhere to the EEC's Maastricht agreements, whether the European currency will be the Ecu or a unit more palatable to the Germans, are all questions left unanswered—unmentioned, in fact—by the commentators...
...If he were to succeed, with the help of the Communists, France would be in danger of returning to the follies of the Third and Fourth republics, to say nothing of the Weimar Republic...
...Adding the Communists, who hung on to 8 percent, over a third of all voters endorsed parties opposed to responsible, modern, democratic government...
...Indeed, the only strong views I heard during election week came from an acquaintance, an innkeeper, railing against the ecologists, on the grounds that they planned to take away the "major achievement of the French Revolution": the right of every citizen to hunt and fish...
...And he is certainly an anti-Semite, by the testimony of his first wife...
...It would have been cheering if the collapse of the Socialist party had led to an ascendancy, if not a majority, for the Franz M. Oppenheimer is a Washington international lawyer center-right, i.e., for the combined forces of former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and former prime minister Jacques Chirac...
...Meanwhile, the French elections have been marked by a singular lack of political passion...
...But the two party leaders and their lieutenants had squabbled for too long a time among themselves, and they took only 33 percent of the vote—a decline of 4 percent from the last national election (for the European parliament) in 1989...
...Thus, at least 29 percent of the electorate has strayed out of the mainstream of French politics...
...The French seem not to mind...
...Though he denies it, the charge is givenby Franz M. Oppenheimer probative support by the sleeve copy of the record "Voices and Songs of the German Revolution—The Third Reich," released by his own record company...
...The Front obtained 14 percent of the vote—up 2 percent...
...On the brighter side, Jean-Marie Le Pen's radical-right National Front failed to capitalize on discontent with the Socialists' performance and unease with Moslem immigration...
Vol. 25 • June 1992 • No. 6
