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France and Your Faithful Correspondent Go Insane
I don’t know how other journalists are even reading the news fast enough to make their deadlines right now. It’s easy enough to criticize the media; I do it all the time; I even do it more than anyone, I reckon. But this week all I can say is that I admire any colleague who managed to do the one thing a journalist has got to do to survive in this business: submit his report before the story’s no longer news.
I’ve been writing two pieces this week, one about last Sunday’s referendum in Turkey, the other about the upcoming election in France. I’ve worked to the point of near-tearful exhaustion on both, but neither are done. Nor, I fear, will either be finished before they’re no longer of use to any editor. So much has happened, so fast, and there is so much to explain, that I just can’t do it quickly enough. Those who can do it will be published; and even if their articles are riddled with errors of fact and interpretation or horrors of English prose, it is only right that theirs will be published and mine will not, because editors do need to fill their pages with something, after all. They can’t wait for writers like me to figure out how to compress my frantic thoughts about the history, the drama, the complexity, the personalities, the sheer weirdness of these epic events into “Five Facts You Need to Know Today” — and I can’t even blame them for it. The chief attribute you need to succeed in journalism is the ability to get 800 readable words on an editor’s desk before the day’s end, every single day, and I don’t have it. When yesterday Theresa May yesterday announced her plan to call a snap call a snap general election, my first thought was that another election was going to do me in — and I didn’t just mean the stress of living through it, I meant the prospect of explaining it.
So all I can say is thank God — and thank you — that I have a book to write, because it means that what I’ve written won’t be wasted. To everyone who’s made this book a possibility, I am truly grateful: The thought that none of what I wrote will be wasted is all that’s keeping me from staggering off the ledge into madness along with everyone else I’m writing about.
And to anyone in a generous mood, please consider contributing, or contributing again: I can say with absolute confidence that the book is being written even as I blow through deadline after deadline; because this book is what I’m really writing, and this book, for sure, will answer all your questions about Turkey’s referendum, the real meaning of France’s election cliffhanger, Britain’s future, and the way these stories unite to form a portrait of the ill-starred continent to which we’re bound, like it or not, its tragic and tangled history, and its uncertain future.
For those of you who can’t wait for the book, however, let me recommend a few articles about what happened in France this week by writers who managed to make their deadlines. All three are surprisingly good, despite not being written by me and despite being finished on time.
In Slate (of all places) Yascha Mounk has written a fine piece called A Primer on the French Elections: Four Candidates, three nightmare scenarios:
For many years, Mélenchon has been about as marginal a political figure as his endorsement of Fiscal Combat might suggest. After breaking with the center-left Parti Socialiste of President François Hollande, he has called for a 100 percent tax on incomes over 400,000 euros (about $426,000) and endorsed dictators such as Hugo Chavez. And yet, the latest polls see Mélenchon in a dead heat with centrist Emmanuel Macron, conservative François Fillon, and far-right populist Marine Le Pen. Any two out of those four might come out on top in the first rounds of the upcoming presidential elections.In other words, less than a week before the first round of the election, and less than three weeks before a runoff between the two leading candidates that will determine the next inhabitant of the Élysée Palace, the country’s political future is completely up in the air. France might soon be ruled by a self-described communist, by an untested centrist whose political movement was founded less than a year ago, by a traditional conservative under investigation for blatantly corrupt practices, or by the far-right leader of a party with deep fascist roots.
(And please, I beg you: Before averring the irrelevance of Marine Le Pen’s fascist roots, please, at least, wait for my book, or for the article that, God willing, I’ll finish in time to explain this, and to explain why they should frighten us. I spent most of the week writing about her and her lunatic family and about how criminally reckless it would be to dismiss the words “fascist roots,” words so overused that they have even perhaps come to sound anodyne to American ears. But at the very least, watch this. That is what is meant by “fascist roots,” and those are the roots from which her rotten branch grows — as last week she clearly reminded us.)
In The Daily Beast, Christopher Dickey gets right to the point with a piece called The Insane French Elections That Could [Redacted] Us All. It isn’t just vulgar sensationalism, I’m afraid.
Less than three weeks from now, in the final round of the presidential elections, the only choice left to the voters of France could well be between Le Pen, a crypto-fascist, or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a charismatic communist, both of whom are strongly anti-EU and anti-NATO.
Victory for either one would mean an end to the political, diplomatic, and economic order that has protected the United States as well as Europe for the last 70 years, preventing the kinds of cataclysms—World Wars I and II—that cost millions of lives in the first half of the 20th century while containing first Soviet and now Russian adventurism.
There are other possibilities, but as the French prepare to go to the polls (or flee them) this Sunday, April 23, the possible outcomes are a total crapshoot. The four top candidates in a field of 11 are in a virtual dead heat; the differences between their scores is within the acknowledged margins of error by the pollsters. The top two finishers will vie against each other in a run-off on May 7. And the reason something like panic has set in among many French, from the heights of the political establishment to conversation over espressos at the counters in working-class cafés, is that the candidate with the most solid base is Le Pen, while the one with the most momentum is the far-left Mélenchon.
As for Mélenchon’s astonishing sudden rise, my friend Arun has done an outstanding job of explaining this terrible turn of events, to the extent they can be explained:
… When I saw these numbers, my jaw dropped. This is, objectively speaking, insane. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not exactly a newcomer on the French political scene. He’s been around for a while and anyone with a merely passing interest in politics knows him and his trash-talking gauchiste persona. So WTF is going on here? This cannot be just his performance in the March 20th and April 4th multi-candidate debates. Ça ne peut pas suffire. The fact of the matter is, JLM has tapped into something profound in the id of a sizable part of the French electorate—both left and right—which I personally do not relate to but that is there. On this, I received an email a week ago from a faithful AWAV reader in Marseille—who is French, secular Jewish, a retired advertising executive, on the moderate left but no gauchiste—after JLM’s rally in the city. What he wrote is interesting and instructive, as his sentiments are no doubt shared by many:
Il y a la politique et puis il y a la politique.
I gave up on joining the crowd sur le Vieux Port, because it was already past 2 pm and I wanted to hear Meluche [Mélenchon’s nickname-ed.] in good conditions, so I stayed home and watched him on TV… The magic worked, I had to admire the man and the talent.
He brought tears in my eyes. I didn’t agree on all of what he said, but I agreed on his choice of words, the value and the weight of the words, the tone, the gravity, the music, the emotional content.
It is part of my French heritage. It speaks to my roots. This is what France is all about. Something lyrical, fierce, generous and noble as is the Marseillaise.
Read the whole thing.
France, in short, has gone insane, and anything could happen.
Now I’ll go back to work in the hope of finishing both of my own articles before events overtake them. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll share a few of my thoughts about what just happened in Turkey. These are not trivial developments, and it is hard for me to feel that I’m not trivializing them by compressing my responses to them. But in the end, saying nothing at all would be worse. So I’ll do my best.
Published in General
Do you grant the socialists the same good faith when they debate the scale of and “communism versus socialism” aspect of Soviet and Maoist atrocities?
For apologists/fellow travelers for terrible ideologies, the “agreed-upon assumption” is usually given lip service but not really believed.
Again, do you extend this good faith when evaluating the claims of American socialists?
The old joke I once heard was: A man goes to the library and asks for a copy of the French constitution. The librarian says, “I am sorry, sir. This library doesn’t subscribe to any periodicals.”
Thanks Claire, my sympathies. It really is an unbelievable election. Melenchon is nuts, and probably the one guy who could make me hope for Le Pen – just as Sanders might have made me actually vote for Trump.
You need a vacation…You do well explaining many complicated things, so maybe don’t put too much in, just the basics. I hate to say it, but when you (or anyone) go into extensive history and it gets very lengthy, I skim over and zero in on the current facts. Maybe that is cheating, but you are right, in this fast-paced world (and journalistic environment) people only have so much time (and energy) to get up to speed. Don’t think it affects the quality. Get the stuff submitted, get paid and move on. You are more qualified to write on these issues than most. PS…Love the picture – it is how most brains feel today…..no matter your profession!
That was a great video, and I wish I could have made my kids see it when they were in school. I would have discussed it with them. Now we can see why the Left wants to get rid of the Electoral College – it’s one step closer to Democracy, the rule of the mob. Of course the Rule of the Mob would lead to Queen Hillary, controlled by the Communists Oligarchy
I wish I could give you more than one Like.
Claire,
Now Claire calm down this can be handled easily enough.
As far as the french election:
All you need to know about the French presidential election
….hmmm..I still don’t know much but gosh it’s exciting!!
I wonder what the 40% who haven’t committed yet are up to?
I’d like to know what checks & balances that Erdogan’s new constitution still has for him? Unfortunately, from the sound of it, he has so many people under arrest already that it may not matter.
Regards,
Jim
@columbo, is this really what you want?
Claire, did you see this poll about the voting patterns of expatriate Turkish voters, in that recent referendum?: Anadolu Agency (http://secim.aa.com.tr/)
The English-language commentary I read on it at The American Interest said that “European Turks vote far more heavily in favor of Yes than their countrymen back home” – I found that interesting (and, yes, disheartening).
Couldn’t resist.
A man went into the London Library and asked the woman at the reference desk for a copy of the French Constitution. The woman replied, “We don’t keep copies of periodicals.”
Sorry you had to make this comment – most of us could ‘see’ your tongue in your cheek.
Wrote my comment before I read yours – h/t to you (and to WFB, Jr., which is where I first read it) …
What good faith? Claire indicated the link would show the fruit of her fascist roots. The link didn’t tell us one policy position or action taken.
Fine, make the case with something she actually advocates.
Again, what good faith? I’m not defending any position she has taken. No actual position of hers was cited in the link that was suppose to prove she was a fascist.
Hey American’s elected a Lee Penn named Wilson. Heck I would actually pick Lee Penn over Wilson. So even supposedly much more conservative voter base can have moments of insanity.
I sure did and have been writing about what that means … and it means bad things, yes.
See, I can’t even say, “Read what I wrote!” because I haven’t published it, so I can’t blame anyone who doesn’t know why I say she’s Bad News with a capital B. All I can do to fix this is get back to work. But fix it I will; it’s a new day, and by the end of it, you’ll have a real argument to reply to. Promise.
Sorry my responses to your encouraging comments and questions have been so terse — I’m going to *get this done,* and even Ricochet’s not going to keep me from it. But thank you for all of them, even the one that compared me unfavorably to Mark Steyn. Steyn is, by the way, a great writer, so I can’t hold that comparison against anyone who makes it. But I’m trying to write something very different — that’s the problem really — I’m trying to write two really serious pieces about this situation that tell people how it looks to live through these experiences and why the conventional wisdom about them, which Steyn spells out beautifully, just isn’t right. When I’m done — and I will be soon — I’ll post the links, and then you can tell me whether it was worth it. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t, and that’s just the way this kind of thing goes.
Thank you, everyone — especially those of you who made a contribution. That lifted my morale sky-high, and made me even more determined to wrap these up before the day’s out.
Here’s to you, my partner in deadline-madness. And yes, I see exactly why that would happen when the subject in question’s North Korea this week. If it’s any consolation, there are few people’s views about this I’d value more highly, so please keep it up, and I will read it with interest no matter how late the piece is — so long as that conflict hasn’t by then succeeded in blowing up the world. (That must add an extra-special urgency to that deadline pressure.)
Back to work with us both!
Actually, I kind of liked that. Lil’ Kim had almost two weeks imagining that Trump was going to paste him one. There was no good reason to disabuse him of that belief. All that time there would have been briefings and meetings and assessments; contingencies to arrange and plans to review. And now he has to wonder whether or not the Chinese knew, and if they knew why they didn’t tell him, and just what does that all mean?
I am fairly certain Le Pen is mad and convinced her party could not govern in the rare event she is elected.
Is she is a crypto/unreconstructed Vichy fascist, as Claire suggests, or merely a nativist party leader similar to those other EU states have conjured up of late? I defer to Claire on that one but absent the long history of the NF would we really view her as a fascist threat of the same order as Stalin-Hitler? She has clearly broadened her daddy’s base in interesting ways. The bigger wild card is Melenchon because the socialists are in total disarray.
I include both the Nazi and communist regimes as fascist for convenience. The former merely subcontracts it’s slave labor through private industry while the latter nationalizes everything. They may harbor different racial/class forms of paranoid fears re the enemy of the state but still treat them with similar violence and contempt.
I think this podcast from the Spectator gives a good read on the election
The Spectator in Podcasts. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-spectator/id793236670?mt=2&i=1000384562875
Here in San Francisco, a fascist is someone you either don’t like or don’t agree with. It can even be the operator of a freight train who blocks the highway for too long. I know it is a word with history and meaning – something about getting the trains to run on time, and was worked out by Mussolini, and unpopularized by Hitler. Its just no longer a useful term for communicating ideas anymore in California, and maybe even the entirety of the USA.
Its terrible. I hear the term and dismiss the speaker, which I should never do with Ms. Berlinski
Let’s hope the Left gets nice and drunk and forgets to vote, and everyone else wakes up and gives conservative François Fillon a 70% win.
Actually, isn’t this roughly the same as US Republicans in primaries reacting viscerally to tough guy Donald Trump’s promises to do whatever (make Great Deals, get Great Health Care, etc.), in direct contradiction of world history, his own history, and of the actual facts?
That’s how I usually expect fascist to be used. I figured the label was meant to mean more than that, so I followed Claire’s links.
I didn’t see anything substantial at the link. I think it was intended to suggest her redirecting blame from France to Germany was some sort of endorsement of the holocaust, or at least holocaust denial. I don’t see it.
I looked at her party’s Wikipedia page and found they were considered anti-communist at one point. That is the communist/socialist definition of fascist, but I don’t think that’s how Claire meant it. I thought I’ve also heard LePen and her party described as socialist. There’s certainly some confusion out there.
I assume the fascist label is directed at the party’s immigration stance. Is there something that sets the party apart from other immigration restrictionists, or is fascist being used as a smear against anyone advocating for immigration restrictions?
I think fascist is a useful term, but it’s also much misused. Also underused in places where it actually applies. It’s usually not hard to figure out whether it’s just being used as an empty epithet, or for actual purposes of communication.
@retaillawyer highlighted the first attribute of fascism: the desire for muscular government to do something favored. Fascism was the Progressives wet dream until Hitler spoiled it by using muscular government not only to war on his neighbors but to create and punish “status crimes”: race, ethnicity, sexual preference. So today muscular government gets a pass on the “fascist” label (because, Progressives) and is only used as a cudgel against anyone who is deemed not to hold progressive views.
See also Friedman, Thomas.
France has been flirting with and episodically sleeping with fascism since before fascism was fascism.
And Like “Moderate Muslim”?
I see no mention of immigration. Isn’t that the big issue in this election? But for the refugee problem Le Pen wouldn’t be a factor. So maybe the divisions aren’t all that insane. I’m waiting for Claire to clarify.