Sabine Herold

[HankMorgan]

Rich Miniter and Alberto Mingardi guest commentary for the NRO (where else?). (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/miniter-mingardi200311060837.asp)

The Reagan revolution makes its way to France of all places. Even the French know a good thing when they hear it.

[redstar2000]

Le Pen will eat her for lunch.

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[Don't Change Your Name]

I'm starting to develop a big hate and intolerance for this neo-liberals (or should I say neo-fascists). They are a disease, with their false democracy and liberty, and their egoism, and their military spending, and their love for exploiting workers. I mostly hate how they have that authoritarian speech which keeps believing they are right and that the "collectivists" are wrong. Assholes.

[HankMorgan]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2003, 12:08 PM
Le Pen will eat her for lunch.

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Redstar, I confess I hadn't heard of Le Pen until I saw your reply. This could be fun since I got little or no response to my post about Schwarzenegger taking California. The denizens of che-lives (long may it prosper) are more international than I am and probably know far more about French politics than I know about California politics. I'll follow your lead.

From what I read about Le Pen I don't see how your comment about Jean-Marie Le Pen eating Ms Herold for lunch makes sense. Le Pen and Herold don't seem to be on opposite sides of an issue or competitors for support on the same side of an issue. Le Pen's beef appears to be with the European Union which is quite different then Sabine Herold who speaks against the debilitating effects of socialism.

To me, Sabine Herold is part of the same taxpayer revolt that spawned Reagan and Thatcher and part of the same revolt that brought down Gov. Grey Davis of California. That she's in France where chronic unemployment is tolerated is what interests me.

What relation do you see between Jean-Marie Le Pen and Sabine Herold?

[redstar2000]

French politics (and European politics generally, I think) are far more "ideological" than is the case in the "Anglo-Saxon" tradition.

In European eyes, the major political trends in England, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.--whether "left" or "right"--are simple-minded and even down right moronic.

Le Pen appeals to an established constituency in France: Catholic, nationalistic, traditional authoritarian values, opposed to any immigration that does not result in total assimilation to traditional French culture (and suspicious that North African Muslims "cannot" ever become "truly French")...in short, the children and grand-children of the people who supported Pétain and the Vichy regime.

They have a well-developed (and quasi-fascist) world view in which excessive taxation plays a minor role (the tax-wise Frenchman has always kept his money in one of the near-by countries where anonymous bank accounts are available).

Mme. Harold might well be an asset to Le Pen if she is willing to sign up (Le Pen has rivals, by the way, and she might sign up with one of those groups).

Or, of course, she might sign up with one of the "mainstream" conservative parties...perhaps running for mayor of a minor city or one of the Parisian neighborhoods.

But, in one way or another, she would be expected to offer a well-reasoned account of her principles in a way that an "Anglo" political figure would find incomprehensible.

A recent poll, by the way, suggests that 31% of French voters would "consider" voting for a "far left" party...prompting the formation of an electoral alliance of two Trotskyist parties there.

The bourgeois electoral process in Europe still has considerable credibility...while in the "Anglo-Saxon world" it is seen more clearly as a "show", a "circus" for the rubes, an irrelevant distraction from "real life".

No one (with any sense) takes seriously what politicians say here; they will do what their corporate sponsors tell them to do, no matter what they have said.

The Europeans, and particularly the French, are more "old-fashioned" and still think that politics has something to do with principles.

Not much, perhaps, but some.

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A site about communist ideas