French Extremists Gain Foothold in Mainstream

It was a sorely tested but generally respected tenet of French public life: Mainstream conservatives did not curry favor with the extremist, covertly racist National Front. But the rule has now been breached, and French politics may never be the same.

In five of the country’s administrative regions, members of traditional conservative parties have been elected to regional presidencies with votes of Front politicians after giving tacit support for some elements of the far-right party’s platform. In some or all of the cases, a formal pact might have been concluded in secret.

“Now that the barrier which separated the NF from other parties has fallen, everything is possible,” said Rene Remond, a historian who has written extensively on French politics.

On Monday evening, President Jacques Chirac went on television to warn ordinary citizens and politicians of his own center-right camp that the organization led by former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen, one of Europe’s largest extreme-right groups, is “racist and xenophobic.”

“Politics in a democracy means honesty and respect of others,” said Chirac, urging the French to remember their country’s heritage as “a beacon of liberty.”

Last Friday, Charles Baur in Picardy, Jacques Blanc in Languedoc-Roussillon, Bernard Harang in Centre, Charles Millon in Rhone-Alpes and Jean-Pierre Soisson in Burgundy--all members of the Union for French Democracy coalition, or UDF--were elected or reelected presidents of their regional councils with the support of National Front counselors.

The local conservative barons sought or accepted Front backing despite clear, repeated orders from their leadership in Paris not to make deals with Le Pen or his lieutenants.

Officials of the Front, which wants to deport foreigners en masse and enact “French first” laws, were jubilant at the unprecedented willingness of so many in the political establishment to work with them. “People recognize us as a republican and democratic movement, legitimate and representative,” said Bruno Megret, the Front’s No. 2 official.

Former Socialist Culture Minister Jack Lang complained that some conservatives had chosen to “slurp the vile soup” of “neo-fascists.”

On Monday, it became clear that the Front had not managed to totally escape the box where other French parties, right and left, try to keep it confined. The previous night, Le Pen had declared that since his party helped the moderate right in the five regions, he expected its aid, under the principle of “reciprocity,” for his bid to become president of the important Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region of southern France.

But there was no quid pro quo on Le Pen’s behalf, and the far-right leader was beaten by Socialist Michel Vauzelle, a former justice minister, without getting a single vote from outside Front ranks.

Simultaneously, in the Midi-Pyrenees and Upper Normandy regions, conservative politicians were voted into the president’s chair Monday, but both men--one from the UDF, the other from Chirac’s Rally for the Republic, or RPR--resigned as soon as it became clear that they owed their victories to support from Le Pen’s forces.

In this month’s regional elections, National Front candidates garnered a little more than 15% of the popular vote nationwide. Millon, a former defense minister, and some other figures on the moderate right contend that they have no right to spurn those votes if it would entail handing victory to the Socialist-led “plural left” of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

The right, still reeling from Chirac’s blunder in calling last year’s early parliamentary election that it lost, might be at a fateful crossroads. Though organized into the neo-Gaullist RPR and the more liberal UDF, a new schism has surfaced: between those who agree to an alliance with the National Front, and those who refuse it. Former RPR General Secretary Jean-Francois Mancel, who was expelled from his party for demanding that it negotiate with the Front, predicted that the French right will now “explode” into two groupings consisting of those willing to join with Le Pen’s forces, and the others.