Sunday 1 June 2014

Oradour and the vote for Le Pen

In Oradour-sur-Glane, site of one of the worst Nazi atrocities during the war (over 600 civilians massacred in one afternoon with no apparent motive other than reprisals against the whole region's resistance to occupation and the advance of an SS regiment towards the Normandy landings) - Marine Le Pen's Front National scored over 20% of the vote. 

That means she has successfully detached the party from fascism and Nazism and Vichy-ism. She has done this by making out that she is fighting for France. She has done the classic thing of alternating between saying the enemy is the 'other' (immigrants etc) and the 'big guys' (in this case the EU). The truth is that of course fascism is not against the big guys. It makes a historical marriage between fascists and the big guys...or put it the other way round: the big guys make a historical compromise with the fascists.