18 February 2006DirelandDoug Ireland
Yesterday's New York Sun -- a small, conservative New York daily noted for its slavishly pro-Israel, pro-Likkud politics and its pandering to the worst fears of New York's large Jewish community -- yesterday published a hallucinatory article, "France's Le Pen to Strike a Deal with Muslims," It claims that neo-Fascist and notorious anti-Semite Jean Marie Le Pen (left) -- the Führer of the racist Front National party -- is "poised to strike an alliance with France's large immigrant Muslim community."
The author, one Michel Gurfinkiel, goes on to assert, "Islamic
leaders in France are advising their followers to act as 'democratic and responsible citizens,' i.e., to register as prospective voters and to enter as full-fledged activists into all major political parties, either right of left. Indeed, a reconstructed, Muslim-friendly National Front stands a good chance to win many of them."
Now, I lived in France for nearly a decade, and have written frequently on the European extreme right (see, for example, my article in The Nation explaining how and why Le Pen created a political earthquake when he defeated the Socialist Party's candidate for a place in the 2002 presidential run-off, "Le Pen: The Center Folds".) My immediate reaction to the Sun's article was that it was bilge. But just to make sure I hadn't missed any recent developments, I e-mailed the article to several French journalists of my acquaintance -- and all agreed that the Sun's claims were complete tommyrot.
"Claiming that Le Pen could get 'many' Muslim votes, as the Sun does, is equivalent to
having pretended that George Wallace (right) could get a lot of black votes in Harlem," sneers Helene Hazera, a friend at France Culture, the public radio network, who knows the French ghetto culture well, adding, "Le Pen is the embodiment of everything the Franco-Arab population detests--he represents for them what their racist neighbor 'gaulois' thinks of them."
Ever since Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) in 1972, racism has been his electoral stock-in-trade, as he has crusaded against immigrants of color, both Maghrebins (those of Muslim North African origin) and blacks from France's former colonies. He has called immigrants "a mortal danger" to France, and campaigned to have 3 million "non-Europeans" deported, while the platform of the FN -- which claims to be the "inheritor" of the legacy of "the Crusaders and the [French] Empire-builders" -- calls for a total halt to immigration, opposes the right to vote for immigrants, and favors a "national preference" for "native French" in government social welfare programs. (Above left, a Front National poster, which reads: "The Immigrants Vote -- and You Abstain?!!")
During the ghetto riots in France last October and November (which I explained in
"Why Is France Burning?" ), not only did Le Pen call for the declaration of a state of emergency and the imposition of a curfew in the ghettos before President Jacques Chirac ordered them, Le Pen went further, demanding that the army be sent into the ghettos. (Above right, a FN poster from last Fall calling for a "large demonstration," and reading: "Riots, Immigration: Enough! Everybody with Le Pen.")
Le Pen is well-known to have engaged in torture when he was a non-commissioned officer during France's colonial war in Algeria, as Le Monde has documented carefully in the past -- and that is something that Franco-Arabs (the majority of Algerian origin) will neither forget nor forgive. That is why it is
patently absurd to postulate, as Gurfinkiel's article in the Sun does, that the FN "is surprisingly popular among Muslim immigrants or second-generation Muslim citizens." Quite the opposite: when Le Pen, the FN's presidential candidate, made it into the 2002 run-off against Chirac, the anti-FN mobilization in the Muslim community was total because the party and its leader were both seen (correctly) as quintessentially racist, and Le Pen garnered only a handful of votes in Franco-Arab communities. (Above right, French TV reports the results of the run-off Chirac-Le Pen duel in 2002)
There are many other idiocies in Gurfinkiel's article. He claims that the once-popular comic Dieudonné (left) -- who in recent years has become stridently anti-Semitic -- "has turned into an enormously popular French equivalent of Louis Farrakhan (lower right)," and affirms (by quoting the indigestible Bernard-Henry Levy, a.k.a BHL) that Dieudonné is
morally "Le Pen's son." But, as Xavier de la Porte of Radio France (author of a number of political books, including one on BHL) e-mailed me this morning, "Dieudonné has always been a militant opponent of Le Pen. He ran against the FN on an anti-racist platform in several elections. BHL has blown a fuse when he claims that 'Dieudo' is 'Le Pen's son,' because his anti-Semitism is of a very different character than Le Pen's -- the comic is pro-Palestinian, a primitive Third Worlder, vaguely pro-Black, and infinitely less ideological than Farrakhan. Most of all, Dieudonné has never organized a 'Million Man March' and has no organized troops as Farrakahn does-- he's a total pariah today on both the political scene and in the media landscape, and is seen as a pathetic loser. In fact, what is happening politically in France today is the Le Pen-izatiion of the political landscape far more than the Arab-ization of the FN, as the center takes an increasingly hard line and moves radically right-ward." Well said, Xavier.
As part of his scary story, Gurfinkiel claims that "more than 50%" of under-20 youth in the "big citiees" are Muslim. How does he know? The official French census is both racially and religiously blind, because the government is forbidden in law by "republican principles" from gathering any data on religion or ethnicity. Gurfinkiel cites no sources for his statement, and I was unable to locate any data confirming his wildly exaggerated claim.
Then, Gurfinkiel claims as more evidence of his thesis a recent book by Jean-Claude
Martinez (right), a Front National member of the European Parliament, entitled "To all French who may have voted for Le Pen if only once in their life" (left), which, Gurfinkiel says, argues the FN must "welcome immigrant blacks and Arabs into the national fold" -- and adding that Martinez is supported by Le Pen's eldest daughter, Marine (right). But
what Gurfinkiel doesn't tell you, as Claude Angeli -- editor of the investigative-satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé and the dean of French investigative reporters -- said to me on the 'phone from Paris this morning, is that "the book actually attacks Le Pen, and Martinez is on the outs with Le Pen and in a distinct minority within the party. Moreover, when Marine Le Pen made similar noises to those of Martinez, she was slapped down in public by her father, who distanced himself from her and put her into political isolation within the Front. And the idea of Muslims voting en masse for the FN is ridiculous."
So, just who is this Michel Gurfinkiel (left), author of the Sun's deranged article? He's the editor of a small 
magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, noted for its anti-immigrant and homophobic views, and that -- as Angeli put it -- "is ideologically very extreme right." The president of the editorial committee of Gurfinkiel's magazine is a former leader of the French extreme right, Francois d'Orcival (above right.) This d'Orcival was a leader of Jeune Nation (Young Nation), a violent group of ultra-rightists dissolved by the French government in 1958. In 1960, d'Orcival was a founder of the Federation of Nationalist Students (FEN), which participated in the violent bombing campaign of the OAS (the pro-Algerie francaise Organization of the Secret Army) during France's Algerian war -- for which d'Orcival was interned by the government in a prison camp with other OAS and FEN members in 1962. A close associate of the theorist of a "Nordic Europe," the extreme-right ideologue Alain de Benoist (right), d'Orcival co-authored with de Benoist a book
in praise of the OAS and of Ian Smith, the then racist prime minister of Rhodesia, entitled "Le courage est leur patrie" (Courage is Their Country). D'Orcival was also a founder of GRECE (Reserach Group for the Study of European Civilization), an extreme-right caucus of Nordic-pagan ideologists, grouped around de Benoist and noted for their strident anti-Americanism. D'Orcival is today the editorialist for the magazine Gurfinkiel edits, Valeurs Actuelles, and serves as the mag's public face on radio and TV shows.
"When Gurfinkiel became editor of Valeurs Actuelles," Angeli told me, "he was widely criticized, particularly in the French Jewish community -- 'how can a Jew be part of such an extreme-right magazine?' they said." Valeurs Actuelles is owned by the right-wing French cosmetics king Pierre Fabre -- whose director of information for eight years was (according to the weekly L'Express) none other than Bernard Antony, a longtime Front National leader, one of the Front National's elected members of the European Parliament and an ultramontane Catholic fundamentalist, anti-Semite, and notorious gay-baiter who insists on mass being celebrated in Latin.
So, why is the New York Sun publishing the unfounded fantasies of a toady of France's extreme right? Gurfinkiel's hallucinations include the following declaration: "The Islamicization of France is largely a fait accompli." That certainly sounds like pure Le Pen-ism to me. But if that is true, will the Sun kindly explain to us why there is not a single Muslim member of the French parliament.? Sheesh!
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Comments
Dieudonné is "a primitive Third Worlder"A nice gallic touch. Grotesque but nice.
Posted by: Seth Edenbaum | Feb 19, 2006 10:48:17 AM
I don't dismiss a Nazi-Islamist Alliance elsewhere but in France LePen wants to deport Muslims and chase out the Jews, as I understand it. The Sun published this piece where the author wants to allow Holocaust deniers their rights in Europe. It immediately found its way into all the Nazi newsgroups as proof that Zundel, David were denied their rights. This idiot claims to know that deniers, like LePen, are a bunch of crypto-Nazis, and not only do they know that the Holocaust went down, they want to see another one and then deny that one ever occured too. But he fails to realize that Holocaust denial is allowed the next thing will be the existence of the Nazi Party. This is some neo-con dogmatic doctrine to impose "democracy" on the rest of the world just the way we "enjoy" it here.
http://www.nysun.com/article/27580
February 14, 2006
Cartoons & Holocaust DeniersBy HILLEL HALKINFebruary 14, 2006
Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.
I don't find myself agreeing with the prime minister of Iran about many things, but about one thing, I believe, he is right. It is inconsistent to claim, in the name of freedom of expression, that a Danish newspaper has the right to publish any cartoon of Muhammad that it wants and at the same time to have laws, as do at least seven Western countries, outlawing denial of the Holocaust.
Mr. Ahmadinejad has a point. Either freedom of expression exists as a general principle or it doesn't. If it doesn't, Muhammad cartoons should be bannable even in a democracy. If it does, denying the Holocaust should be permissible, especially in a democracy.
Holocaust denial, needless to say, is a form of anti-Semitism. No one but an anti-Semite - a very rabid one - would make the preposterous charge that the Jews invented the Holocaust, or wildly inflated the number of Jewish deaths in it, and then successfully fobbed off this fabrication on a gullible world. There is no such thing as "innocent" Holocaust denial. All Holocaust denial is vicious and bigoted.
But denying many things can be vicious and bigoted. If I were to say, for instance, that black slavery wasn't so bad because the slaves were well treated and lived better on southern plantations than they did in Africa, that would be vicious and anti-black. If I were to say that the Japanese deliberately exaggerated the loss of life in Hiroshima to win world sympathy, that would be vicious and anti-Japanese. If I were to say that the Bosnian Muslims supposedly slaughtered in Srebrenice were actually killed in battle with the Serbs, that would be vicious and anti-Muslim. Should there be a law against each of these things? Should there be a million laws for each of the million ways in which it is possible to vicious and bigoted?
But the Holocaust is different, goes the argument. What happened in it is so horrendous that denying it is not like denying anything else.
This strikes me as a very weak argument indeed. Yes, the Holocaust was the most horrendous atrocity committed in the history of humanity. But why shouldn't the second most horrendous atrocity, whatever that was, also be protected by law from would-be deniers? Why not the top ten? Why stop at one?
Moreover, Holocaust denial laws are not only unjustified infringements on freedom of speech, they're counter-productive. It is likely that Holocaust denial would never have grown as astoundingly as it has, to the point that the head of one of the largest, most populated, and most powerful Muslim states in the world has taken to repeatedly championing it in public, were it not for these laws.
This is so because these laws do two things. On the one hand, they encourage the claim that, if the Jews and their allies are so eager to make denial of the Holocaust a crime, they must have something to hide. One only has to consult some the Holocaust denial bloggers on the Internet to see what a popular line of reasoning this is. Why be afraid of a free discussion, they ask, if you believe the truth is on your side? It can only be because the Jews know the truth is against them that they're so afraid to have things aired openly.
Secondly, Holocaust denial laws provide a convenient excuse for the total nonsense that passes among Holocaust deniers for "historical research." Yes, they say, our case isn't airtight - but how do you expect us to build it when you don't allow us to publish or disseminate our findings? Stop harassing us and we'll show you what legitimate historians we are.
Nor, even if Holocaust denial laws are in some sense unique, can they be detached from the general atmosphere of political correctness in which they exist - an atmosphere that is unhealthy for the intelligent discussion of many other things. Although offending groups of people or making prejudiced remarks about them has little to recommend it in itself, the social taboos that now exist against anything that is definable as offensive or prejudiced, or that might possibly be construed as such, are in the long run far more damaging. They lead to self censorship and fear to speak out on a wide variety of issues, and are far more pernicious than open prohibitions like Holocaust denial laws.
We are now seeing the consequences of this perniciousness in the debate over the Muhammad cartoons. It is worrisome to anyone who cares about free speech to see how many people in Europe and the United States (including, according to polls, nearly a third of all Danes) think these cartoons should not have been published. After all, they hurt Muslims' feelings. Is that really what a modern, democratic society should want to happen in it?
No, it isn't - but not hurting Muslims' (or Jews', or Christians', or vegetarians') feelings should not be a supreme social value either. When ideas are expressed, feelings sometimes get hurt. To hear it said that "Zionism is racism" is as hurtful to me as a Jew as it is for a Muslim to hear it said that "Islam encourages terror," but if we are going to live in a world in which the possible relationship of Zionism to racism, or of Islam to terror, is a forbidden subject, we have given away our freedom to say what we think without even waiting for it to be taken.
As long as they're not openly inciting to anti-Jewish violence, people should be allowed to say what they want to about the Holocaust. We Jews are grown-ups and can take it. And only if we are and can are we entitled to tell Muslims that they should, too.
Posted by: AJ WEBERMAN | Feb 18, 2006 1:05:47 PM
