(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #241 - National Front: A success in perspective (fr, pt)

 [machine translation]

Coming after his success in the municipal elections in March, the scores obtained by the 
FN in the European elections in May (25% of the vote in national average and even 33.6% in 
the North West electoral district in which Marine Le Pen) has caused consternation and 
even a near panic in some activist circles. Neither of these two reactions is justified: 
this result was predictable and it is not particularly worrisome. But panic is 
characterized precisely by the fact that it loses its usual means of analysis... ---- If 
one wants to remain not fascinated by the percentage of votes and consider the absolute 
number, the performance of the last European elections FN appears modest lists the Blue 
navy totaled "only" 4,711,000 votes, Marine Le Pen herself collected more than 6.4 million 
votes it two years ago in the first round of the presidential election. With a very 
mediocre 42.4% of registered voters, not more than other political parties voters, the FN 
has made the full potential of his voice, he could have done better, or rather worse still.

Impotent rage

Thinking in these terms does not only relativize the score of FN. It also allows a better 
understanding and above all the political problem we pose. On his election victory is 
ultimately less the result of its ability to better mobilize the electorate that the 
consequence of the inability of other political parties to mobilize their own, which also 
explains the high rate of abstention. Europhiles and Eurocrats that party (UMP, UDI-Modem, 
EELV, PS), in principle, a large majority of the electorate, have not been able to bring 
their voters to the polls said the extent of indifference or skepticism that there raging 
against a European Union (EU) which has been able to respond to the 2007-2009 financial 
crisis that hit in pay and budgetary austerity redoubled after organizing the rescue of 
the financial capital through an explosion of public debt.

Especially indifference and skepticism give way to a resounding rejection of the EU in a 
growing part of the electorate of the lower classes who were most directly affected by the 
crisis and its neoliberal management, with its attendant increase unemployment and 
precarious employment, train mass layoffs, declining incomes and purchasing power, rampant 
dismantling of social protection, etc. For these working classes identify with because the 
European institutions (Commission and Central Bank head) as the instances, with open or 
covert complicity of various national governments, they impose the yoke of these wage and 
fiscal policies.

And it is within these layers that the FN manages its high scores and it has its tanks 
voters. It does this by capturing and thematizing their resentment, their impotent rage 
and passive revolt rumination of their ills, pointing their real leaders (formations 
ordonnatrices government neoliberal policies) and imaginary culprits (abroad under all its 
forms, both inside and outside national borders) and offering them a way of salvation: the 
return of a strong nation-state, master of its currency, its laws and its borders.

Sirens nationalists

However, success does not come automatically. If these layers victims of neoliberal 
policies surrender to the songs of the sirens of the nationalist FN is fault they find 
alternative. Their resentment is also the result of their inability to fight on their own, 
relying on professional, trade union and political organizations able to provide a 
framework for mobilization and awareness designating their main enemy (capitalism) and a 
credible emancipatory project. Ultimately, the success of the FN is first ransom for the 
lack of a center of radical left in France, combining anti-liberal and anti-capitalist 
consistent. The poor results obtained by the Left Front lists (6.3% nationally), and the 
insignificance of those far-left lists (1.6%) are illustrated along that they indicate the 
urgency of the establishment of such a center [ 1 ]. And, of course, it can not be reduced 
to the establishment of an electoral cartel: the constitution requires a long and patient 
work of consolidation and even reconstruction of organizations that can serve as points of 
support for the struggle against deteriorating conditions of employment, working hours, 
pay and wider existence of the working classes but also executives to strengthen their 
autonomy and class consciousness. Collective work in which libertarians have their place.

One step closer to power

That said, we should not ignore how the two recent electoral success of the FN FN allowed 
to take a further step in the fulfillment of the strategy to assure him the conquest of 
power at the national level. This strategy requires the establishment of an alliance with 
at least part of the right, whose condition is pronounced and prolonged weakening of the 
latter, leaving him little choice but to enter into this alliance or leave governmental 
left (PS and rallied) win by default. The internal crisis currently affecting the UMP, it 
is true due to both political and financial consequences of the period Sarkozy extended by 
his clone Cope, that the shame of being behind the FN arrival in open view. Everything 
will depend on how this crisis will be closed: a fratricidal war chiefs, made possible by 
the return of explosive Sarkozy or worsening of any scandals (Karachi affair, Bettencourt, 
Bygmalion case, etc.) could lead to a breakup of the UMP, some of which could then combine 
with the FN or even be orbited by him, while another would reconstitute a new combine with 
a center also in full re ( de) composition.

But the story also has its downside. Since the accession of FN municipal responsibilities 
will also confront new challenges. In the field test, the facilities of propaganda and 
demagoguery their limits and "blunders" of any elected as "disappointment" that voters are 
more likely, as shown by the previous management municipalities won by the FN in 1995.

Alain Bihr (AL Alsace)
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[ 1 ] The anti-capitalist forehead that AL calls for and the constitution which it works 
should be placed in the broader context of the construction of a radical left pole 
involving substantial anti-liberal perspective, which of course can also place their 
struggles in the electoral arena without us feel obliged to follow them or not even 
support them in this area.