Le Pen’s Ilk Preys on Fears About ‘Unlikes’

I remember Jean-Marie Le Pen from many years ago: We were both young paratroop officers--boarding different planes, taking off in formation for a jumping exercise. He was a regular of the French “para” forces, and I was a foreign officer training with their crack special forces. I didn’t mingle with his crowd, but I remember noticing him. He was popular among the guys, flaunting tremendous bravado and natural, aggressive leadership. The soldiers followed him with glee.

“This guy’s going to pull himself up and probably become the commander of France’s paratroopers,” Maj. Pierre, my host in that French special unit, predicted. Little did he realize how much then-Capitan Le Pen would shake France and Europe with his stunning electoral showing years later.

I have studied Le Pen, Joerg Haider of Austria and several other far-right leaders and have concluded they should instead be called far-right manipulators. All of them command with strikingly similar characteristics--traits they were probably born with. They all have a burning ambition and lust for power. And each possesses a sixth sense about which issue is likely to inflict the most pain on his constituency. Then, each one analyzes that issue or problem--the most common is economic hardship or personal safety--and throws into the ring the “solution.”

With Hitler it was the “Final Solution,” and with Le Pen, as well as Haider and the newly successful right-wing extremists in Switzerland, Denmark and Holland, it is the “we’re preparing a solution” against new immigrants, especially Muslims. Anti-Semitism is now virtually being replaced by anti-Islamism, but Europeans are not yet aware of that.

Let us not forget that Europe for the last 4,000 years has been a very bad neighborhood. Only under Roman rule did Europe know some relative calm. Before and after the Romans, all hell broke loose because xenophobia was the name of the game, and the game’s main rule is “the dislike of the like toward the unlike.” The more “unlike” you are, the nastier the repercussions. The Jewish community in Europe eventually learned this in the hardest way possible.

During the last few decades, impressive numbers of “unlikes” flooded Europe. The bulk were, and are, Muslims. For Europeans, Muslims are perhaps the ultimate “unlikes” because they seem to cherish their differences and even flaunt them.

While we learned in America that the Italian, Irish or Norwegian immigrant wishes so much to become an “American,” the new Islamic society in France, which now numbers more than 6 million, in recent years built 1,550 mosques there. Muslims have established neighborhoods that are entirely Arab, where residents dress in traditional Muslim clothing, eat traditional North African foods and mainly study the Koran and Arab history. They rarely make an effort to mingle in French society or to adopt French history and tradition as their own. They don’t have even one member in the French Parliament.

Capitan Le Pen, who jumped out of military planes at 2,000 feet, is now gladly jumping into the depths of the fears of the French blue-collar soul, and harps on them like a maestro.

The wishful thinking of the French, voiced by this week’s polls, anticipates Jacques Chirac winning with 78% of the vote in Sunday’s second round, and Le Pen receiving only 22%. Considering all of the above, France may be shocked again this Sunday: Le Pen may pull more than 35% of the vote.

If France won’t stop basking in its traditional “equality” slogans and really do something about them, Le Pen’s group and other parties like his all over Europe will surprise all of us very much in forthcoming elections.