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[Odler]

You think Pat Buchanan is bad, that?s because you have yet to meet Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of Front National, a French political party of the far right. Even the KKK would be wary of Le Pen.

Le Pen is racist, xenophobic (anti-immigrant), isolationist, anti-Semitic, fascist. He wants all immigrants out of France. He wants France out of the European Union. He thinks all crimes are committed by non-Caucasians. He calls the Holocaust (the massacre of six millions Jews during WWII) a ?detail of history?.

Last night, in the biggest political upset in the history of France?s V Republic (meaning France since de Gaulle), Jean-Marie Le Pen has been elected to take part in the second tour of the presidential elections, a one-to-one race against Jacques Chirac, the current President. The too-rightist Le Pen did no wrong this time.

Just think of Pat Buchanan (or Oliver North or Rush Limbaugh) getting the nomination of the Republican Party. This is what the spectacle amounts to, since last night in France. The country is sad, and Europe is shaken by the thunderbolt. Thousands of students, workers, urbanites, human right activists have already taken the streets protesting this upheaval.

In a strange turn of events, Jacques Chirac, a conservative himself, has received, within hours of the results of the primaries, the support of the traditional left, made up of his arch-enemies of the socialist and communist parties, among others.

Now, let me ask you: Don?t you see a pattern here? First, you have a conservative in the White House. Then last year, a racist, neo-nazi Prime Minister comes to power in Austria. Recently, all the so-called left progressive movements lost their bids in Italy, Portugal, Denmark? Even in Germany, Gerhrard Schroeder is losing ground to the conservative Christians. Only England remains on the moderate left.

Wherever these blows come from, the train of social and political liberalism is being delayed. Last night?s election of Jean-Marie Le Pen is a night of infamy for France, the country whose legislature wrote the 1789 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Yes, this is a night that will descend in infamy?

(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Monday, April 22, 2002)

http://www.jeanlouie.com