Endlösung

Last week just one day after Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled a visit to a poor neighborhood because of anti-Sarko protests, Jean-Marie Le Pen went to the suburb of Argenteuil, the exact spot where Sarkozy in 2005 vowed to rid the poor neighborhood of the "scum" he said were ruining life for other residents.

During his 50-minute visit Le Pen proclaimed the following:

"We want to help you get out of these suburban ghettos where French politicians have parked you... only to call you scum later. Thank you for allowing me to speak here, where even our former interior minister dared not come. I want to prove that there are no 'no-go' areas as far as we are concerned."

To fully understand the widespread support Front National has gained at the turn of the century, it is necessary to consider the real essence of its political success: populism. Publicly Le Pen has, since he re-entered the political scene in 1972, first and foremost presented himself as the defender of the French people against malevolent forreign forces and internal corruption. A kind of warped male version of Jeanne d'Arc, using simple sentences and radical logic to point at issues the general public perceive as either problematic, unjust or self-motivated politics of the UMP and the Socialist Party. The recent propaganda posters of Front National claiming that the gauche/droite has ruined everything is nothing more than a "soft" extension of this modus operandi.

In a recent TF1 broadcast Le Pen demonstrated how simple politics can be:
when asked "what should be done, so that modest households are able to provide for their expenditure housing?" he answered "regulation of the problem with immigrants and the building of social housing." - Le Pen sur TF1

Another and perhaps more advanced example of radical logic applied:
"Mr. Chirac's hostility to Mr. Le Pen has been consistent. As a result, Mr. Le Pen said to the authors of the Chirac book, France could never have a government reflecting the country's conservative character. Instead, he said, a Jewish conspiracy had prevented parties like his own from sharing power." - International Herald Tribune

Anti-Semitism has since the founding of Front National been a steady current within the party, an explicit example of this is vice-president Chaboche's relation with neo-Nazis. - ref

Speaking in Argenteuil last week Le Pen did not offer any concrete solutions as to how they intend to get people out of the poor suburbs, Front National has however done so in the past. In a standardized pamphlet delivered to all French electors during the 1995 presidential election, Le Pen proposed the "sending back" of "three million non-Europeans" out of France, by "humane and dignified means".


Reuters - France's Le Pen suburb visit challenges Sarkozy