Advice To The French, Which They Won't Heed

[Annie]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_11_06_corner-archive.asp#082465

FRANCE: WHAT NOW? [Andrew Stuttaford]

Writing in the London Times, Anatole Kaletsky draws some useful lessons from Britains recent past, and concludes thus:

If President Chirac and his ministers had any sense, therefore, they would stop philosophising about the ideals of the French Revolution and would focus instead on the practical policies required to accelerate the economys growth rate. In doing this, they could hardly do better than recall the policies that pulled Britain out of the terrible recession of 1979-81. Between late 1980 and 1984, interest rates in Britain were slashed from 17 per cent to 8.5 per cent. As a result of these dramatic rate cuts, the value of sterling halved from $2.40 in early 1981 to just $1.05, giving what was left of Britains manufacturing industry an enormous boost. The monetary stimulus from these rare cuts and devaluation was what triggered the recovery of the British economy  far more than Mrs Thatchers labour and trade union reforms. Significantly, only one of the great supply-side reforms for which Mrs Thatcher is now remembered was implemented before the economic recovery of 1982-84. This was the sale of council houses and financial deregulation that helped to produce the house price boom of 1982-85. The labour reforms and privatisations that came later were absolutely necessary to consolidate the recovery of the early 1980s and to prevent it developing into an inflationary spiral; but it was the monetary easing, devaluation and housing boom that got the economy moving. And it was, in turn, the post-1981 economic recovery that created the conditions for Mrs Thatcher to push through her labour market reforms, as well as to defuse the racial tensions of the early 1980s.

The lesson for France should be clear. The French Government must use every tool it can lay its hands on to produce an economic recovery. The strongest and most reliable of these tools are interest rate reduction and currency devaluation. A useful adjunct to lower interest rates would be mortgage deregulation and privatisation of social housing. Selling  or giving away  social housing is also invaluable politically because it gives disenfranchised minorities a direct ownership stake in capitalist society. Of course, monetary and exchange rate policy today are not in the hands of the French Government but those of the European Central Bank. But luckily for France, the President of the ECB happens to be a Frenchman. In the end he will surely recognise his responsibility. The question is how many more French cities will have to burn before Jean-Claude Trichet recalls his duty to la patrie.

Somehow I suspect that Frances problems will take more than economics to solve, but theres a great deal to what Kaletsky is saying. Interesting to note that one of the obstacles to France doing what is in Frances best interests is the European Central Bank (we are seeing the same thing in Germany, where the incoming Grand Coalition will, actually increase consumption taxes, madness in an economy on the edge of deflation). Sooner or later, someone at the head of one of these two countries is going to have to admit the truth: the euro has been a disaster.

 

[Annie]

A warning to what may well happen in France, Le Pen and his ilk are dangerous, I think even PE will agree with that:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007576

Back in Business
The French riots revive rabble-rouser Jean-Marie Le Pen.

BY MATTHEW KAMINSKI
Saturday, November 19, 2005 12:01 a.m.

STRASBOURG, France--Jean-Marie Le Pen has a twinkle in his right eye. (The left, replaced with glass, was lost in a fight during a political campaign 40 years ago.) And why shouldn't the populist founder of France's National Front be in good spirits? For the past three weeks, young first- and second-generation immigrants, mostly Arabs from North Africa, have torched cars and schools and shops in some 300 towns, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency well into next year. No, there's probably nothing quite like screaming "I told you so!" to the whole world to warm this old bruiser's heart.

"LE PEN l'avait dit!"--"LE PEN said so!"--is, in fact, the new slogan that his party unveiled when the immigrant ghettos exploded. "People say you can love him or hate him but you must admit that Le Pen was right. Le Pen was clear. He said, 'Voilà, this will happen if we continue down this political path.' And we do continue on, listening to Jacques Chirac's pretty words and not stopping immigration, not cutting the supply pipelines, not reclaiming sovereignty over our frontiers. It can only get worse. The next explosion will be even more violent."

So says Mr. Le Pen about Mr. Le Pen. His habit of speaking in the third person isn't even that jarring; as he knows better than anyone, "Le Pen" is a symbol as much as a politician, the latest incarnation of xenophobic French nationalism. "Le Penism" also taps into anger at the closeted elites' inability to tackle France's chronic economic and social problems, yet does so--in spite of scoring around 15% in elections since the 1980s--without ever endangering the elites' hold on power. He is invariably called a racist, and he certainly utters opinions that would put him beyond the pale in America. In France, the media establishment prefers to ignore him, which only strengthens his "outsider" bona fides.

Mr. Le Pen and his brand of politics have been a constant on the French landscape for five decades for a reason. He emerged in response to public outrage at the "System with a capital S," in his own words, yet his National Front fits right in, providing a non-PC safety valve that lets the establishment resist pressure to change. In person, the 77-year-old's political longevity becomes easier to understand: While his big glasses and reddish jowls make him look menacing on TV, he is not without a rough-hewn charisma. At his office in the European Parliament, where he holds his only elected post, Mr. Le Pen wears a monogrammed ("JMLP") striped shirt and a bright yellow tie and handkerchief. "I've always been in opposition," he clucks, with a certain vanity.

Three years after his greatest triumph, when he finished second in the presidential elections, party infighting and age seemed to be wearing him down. The riots have revived him. Following detours into euroskepticism, anti-Americanism (he opposed both Iraq wars), gay-bashing and Nazi revisionism, this is more familiar territory. "For 30 years, I've said that the crazy growth of immigration from the Third World would submerge France," he declaims. "I put forth policies that defend our identity, our territory, our prosperity. And my ideas challenge the ideological currents of globalization as well as the partisans of the free flow not only of capital and merchandise but also people." In his attacks on liberal economics, JMLP is squarely (if disconcertingly) in the French mainstream, alongside Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who also proposes that France can opt out of globalization.

Mr. Le Pen argues that globalization must be reversed altogether. "The 10 million foreigners mostly from the Third World" are impossible to "integrate or assimilate," he says. (According to the last census, there are 4.3 million immigrants in France, population 60 million.) But didn't France assimilate Armenians, Poles and others? He waves his hand. Those immigrants were "a little like your Mexicans in the United States: They are Christians--even if not practicing, they are culturally Christian. Our immigrants are principally Muslim, guided by the precepts of Shariah that aren't only political but religious."

So are the troubles in the poor projects rooted in culture? "No, no, no," comes the quick reply. "We can assimilate anyone if he is part of a minority, when he must adapt himself to the local culture. But if he arrives and he is in the majority, as is the case in our banlieues, the reverse happens. At this moment, by a natural reflex, he refuses to integrate." Mr. Le Pen's voice suddenly gets edgy. "In the schools in the banlieues even the little kids of French origin speak Arabic like this"--and here he goes into loud, guttural French, mocking the accent of the Arab young in the projects. As if imitating a rap singer, he waves his arms and swivels his roundish body in his chair. He smiles at his little performance.

Mr. Le Pen is not long on detail. His solution would be to close borders, cut off immigrants' welfare benefits and then look into expulsion, French passport or no. "Their presence here is contrary to national interest," he says. With no real power, he doesn't need to worry about the consequences of his words. Yet he manages to change the terms of debate. Earlier this week, the government moved to expel foreigners arrested in the rioting--a largely empty gesture considering that the bulk of the rioters were citizens. After the National Front campaigned against an estimated 30,000 polygamous Muslim families in France--"You have guys with three or four wives and 25 to 30 kids," says Mr. Le Pen--the employment minister promptly cited polygamy among the causes of the rioting, to outrage from the mainstream press.

The rioting has made law and order the big issue. The tough-talking Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy saw his popularity soar during the riots. Mr. Le Pen first showed that crime was a vote-getter in 2002, and takes to the topic with alacrity. "This explosion was in effect anarchy. And we're in a time of constant violence. Listen, 9,000 cars were burned in three weeks, but normally there are 3,500 cars burned every year. Insecurity is taking hold in France." To a nation traumatized by a weak economy and rising crime rates, and stuck with political leaders who lack credibility, Mr. Le Pen manages to sound invigorating even after all these years.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was drawn into right-wing politics as a law student in Paris. "I received an education that was rigorous, Catholic and patriotic," he says. "I am above all a patriot." His sympathies were with Vichy and Petain, both of whom he has defended since; he can't stand de Gaulle for losing Indochina and Algeria.

In 1956, Mr. Le Pen rode Pierre Poujade's populist wave into Parliament, becoming its youngest member at 28. Brought to life by a small shopkeepers' revolt against intrusive taxation, Poujadism attracted Vichy nostalgics and xenophobes, before petering out. But it gave Mr. Le Pen a start. Since the Dreyfus affair in the late 19th century, French politics has reserved a place on the fringes for politicians to exploit the supposed "menace" to French identity. Mr. Le Pen has occupied that lot since founding the Front in 1972.

His story mirrors the traumas of postwar France. A parachutist in Algeria, Mr. Le Pen is accused of torturing suspects fighting for independence from France: He denies personal involvement but admits that French troops did use torture, and defends its use when "faced with a terrorist organization one of whose principal weapons is the secret." Anyway, he adds, "the terrorists don't find [torture] abnormal." He fought to keep Indochina and Algeria in the French empire, and now fights to keep immigrants from there out of France. He doesn't dwell on the contradiction. "Algeria became independent. The situation changed," he says. "Look, I'm not a xenophobe. I'm not hostile in principle to Arabs but I am hostile to communitarianism. I don't believe in the coexistence of separate communities on equal terms in the same country."

His ex-wife called him a raving anti-Semite who refers to Hitler as Uncle Dolfie. Given his emotional association with the collaborationist Vichy regime, the charge resonates. Mr. Le Pen once called the Holocaust a "detail" of history. When I ask him about it, his voice grows loud: "I only said that I didn't witness the Shoah, I didn't say it didn't happen," he says. "But it is a detail of the history of the war. I never said the Holocaust is a 'detail.' I didn't say the concentration camps are 'details.' I never said the Jews weren't massacred--I said the gas chambers were a detail of history, but not coldly. It seemed to me that one must keep the role of this criminal instrument in perspective in the history of the war. All the Jews weren't killed in the gas chambers. They were shot blindfolded, died of hunger and dehydration, of bad treatment. So that tells you that [critics] hang on to this word in a dishonest way. . . . If I were an anti-Semite, I wouldn't put Jews on my electoral list."

What's his real goal? JMLP appears briefly flummoxed. "It is the same as the goal of all political activity--to exercise power," he answers. On how his party can build a majority, he offers few specifics. "History is written in the meeting of men of ideas and events. If there was no French Revolution, and if we hadn't bought Corsica from the Genoese, Napoleon would have ended up an Austrian officer." He laughs, looking like a man who thinks himself droll.

His 2002 "triumph" in the presidential elections came as a shock, most of all to him. Although he claims that he predicted his second-place finish, and promises an encore for 2007, Mr. Le Pen barely campaigned after the surprise in the first round. Was he scared that he might actually win? Mr. Le Pen waves off the suggestion. The media "diabolized" and ignored him and Mr. Chirac refused to debate him. He implies that ballots were stuffed. "I should have won 30%," he says. He took 18% in the run-off against President Chirac. Last May, Mr. Le Pen got some revenge by helping lead the coalition that defeated the EU Constitution in France.

At his age, Mr. Le Pen hangs on by raising taboos, saying what many Frenchmen think, but their politicians--often with good reason--cannot bring themselves to say. He connects, no doubt, with something deeper in France--namely, a disconnect that many ordinary citizens feel from the elites in Paris.

"No democracy is perfect. But we in France have only a superficial democracy. The grand forces--social, economic--want stagnation," he says, before reverting back to his third-person swagger. "Le Pen, he has felt it. If he is elected, everything will change."

Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.