Arron Banks, aged 51, was busy retweeting a message from the account of Leave.EU, the organisation he heads, which is a sort of Ukip gone awol without the charm: “The French rolled over in 1940. This time they’ve saved Germany the fuel and bullets.”
UKIP backer Arron Bank's claim that Macron's victory was a historical parallel to Vichy France is, of course anti-German doublethink, as well as bad history, because Le Pen's FN was created by those in continuity with the 'real France' that Hitler is believed to have saved from evil liberals and leftists, as well as weak conservatives as De Gaulle.
De Gaulle was especially hated by the FN. Jean Marie Le Pen and the Algeria francaise advocates in the 1960s saw the sinister hand of enemies within as equally as responsible for this capitulation as they were for endangering France in the 1930s with their grubby obsession with finance and threats to national integrity.
The FN under Marine Le Pen lies in continuity with Vichy France. Instead of Communists and sinister secularists and Jews, the threat is now from 'cultural Marxists' attempting to destroy the fabric of the nation by deliberately appeasing 'Radical Islam' through open borders and an economy run by rootless financiers and globalists.
UKIP has a similar 'narrative' and political base to the FN, so a loss for Le Pen means that the EU's reprieve is staved off for a while longer, something that could both benefit Britain in that Brexit negotiations are less turbulent but also pose a danger as President Macron is a staunch supporter of the EU and that is his function.
The problem is that Macron is widely regarded as a 'lame duck'. He's without any stable power base in the French political parties and only marginally less despised than Le Pen was understandably hated as a fascist who could actually help generate a civil war in France as well as permanently sinking the Eurozone, if not the EU itself.
The task of those such as Banks is to portray Macron as a 'German puppet'. For its actually Germany alone almost maintaining the EU politically and economically amidst widespread discontent in the Mediterranean nations with the Euro and the resurrection of an actual national-authoritarian PiS regime in Poland.
Brexit removes Britain to the West and Italy's probable election of Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement could well cause the final crisis that brings down the Euro. Along with Macron's likely inability to rule in France, this could well have implications for Germany as it struggles with Merkel's botched handling of the migrant crisis of 2015.
If France shows every sign of instability under a weak and 'vacuous' President Macron, Britain could well be resented a lot more by Germany and this could accelerate a nationalist backlash not only there but to the east in Poland where PiS under Kaczynski's grip would be increasingly paranoid about German domination.
Poland has led the way in Europe in moving towards an open dismantling of a constitutional republic and to create a politicised judiciary and army, one based on mobilising volunteer militia groups to act as a national defence of a purified real cleansed of evil enemies within, from atheists, liberals, leftists and 'terrorists'.
Poland under Kaczynski gives an indication of a Europe to come and preceded the imminent threat of a Le Pen Presidency in France. Hungary under Orban is actually liberal compared with the regime in Poland with Kaczynski itching to set up a show trial to punish EU head Donald Tusk for conspiring to kill his brother with the KGB.
Events in Poland simply have not been giving the media attention in the West as much as they should. The forces that almost led Le Pen into becoming President of France have already led to one of the largest and newest of the EU member states openly praising and practising the Turkish state under Erdogan.
The Polish example already proves that a state very closely ideologically aligned with forces akin both to Le Pen, but very much in tune with the Spanish regime of General Franco until 1975 though having roots in the 1930s dictatorship and the National People's Republic until 1989, could exist within the EU without it doing anything.
The EU is clearly weak enough to have a state such as Poland, and to a much lesser extent Hungary, openly defy it on fundamental values it was meant to be there to entrench and spread. Brexit could only intensify both the paranoia of Poland in losing its Western counter balancing partner against Germany.
Timothy Garton Ash is right that Macron's victory is only a reprieve at present. But the EU as a federal project has clearly failed and the future belongs more to sovereign states within a looser union of nation states. The problem is that could instead of being a reality to be adapted to it could be a cause for nastier nationalisms.
No comments:
Post a Comment