French connnections

In local elections yesterday (March 28) in France, the Socialists were the big winners. After them, however, came the candidates of the Front National, a group widely regarded as far-right, perhaps even neo-fascist. Since 2008, the FN has been headed by Marine Le Pen, daughter of the founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Under her leadership the group has moderated some of its extreme positions.

It continues to benefit, however, from French (and European) uneasiness about the assimilability of Muslims. This aspect clearly is affecting politics in localities like Henin-Beaumont, a depressed coal-mining town in the north of France with a large Muslim population (story in the New York Times, March 27). In this account a young woman named Marion Rohart explains why she switched her vote to the FN: she had seen Muslims spitting on several of her homosexual friends.

As I have noted in these pages before, Muslim aggression towards gays is commonly played down by the European left, which has become Islamophile. To be very candid, these leftist observers are in denial. They have no difficulty in blaming homophobia in Uganda on Christianity (which is largely correct), but they refuse to acknowledge that gay bashing by Muslims in Europe is supported by the Quran and mainstream Islamic tradition.

This latest Socialist victory notwithstanding, the left continues to decline in Western Europe. One reason for this decline is ostrich multiculturalism, which simply counsels ignoring the problems that have arisen. Multiculturalists revel, or so they say, in the fact that Europe has become more diverse. It has also become more right-wing. It seems that these two facts are causally related.

In other words, the strangers, welcomed by the left, are also responsible for the downfall of that political brand.