Middle East Focus-Arabia Deserta: On Sarkozy, the French Right, and the Burq’a Menace, Tea and Wine Parties………..

Arabia Deserta

On Sarkozy, the French Right, and the Burq’a Menace, Tea and Wine Parties………..

“When the French goverment rescued banks 18 months ago, it did not in return take shares, which could have been sold later at a handsome profit, preferring instead to grant a loan on favourable terms – for the banks. Twenty billion euros ($27bn) more for the shareholders, almost as much as the social security deficit last year ($29bn) and 40 times as much as the state saves each year by replacing only half the civil servants who retire. The rise of the National Front, and the far right in general, in the European elections is not unconnected with the amount of public attention devoted to minor issues, while important matters are claimed to be too complex for ordinary mortals to understand. With the fiasco of the regional elections behind him, Sarkozy is about to tackle pensions reform. The social and financial stakes are high and the French government will naturally do all it can to distract the punters by reviving the “debate on the burqa”. The answer to this disingenuous move is not to get bogged down in the muck by defending the burqa. Still less to claim that anyone – male or female – who takes a feminist line on this symbol of obscurantism is a racist. However, it is peculiar that the right, which is usually on the side of the Church, patriarchy and the moral order, should suddenly be so keen on secularism, feminism and freethinking…….”

Which goes to show that religion and nationalism are the tried and true refuges of the right-wing on both sides of the Atlantic (and the Middle East, of course).
What next? Will we see French equivalent of Tea Parties complete with angry Teabaggers? Not likely: the French people are quick to take up real pitchforks, not the rhetorical corporate imitations pushed by Pat Buchanan and the American Right when it suits them and their corporate allies. Besides, they will likely be Wine Parties, complete with stoic French brownbaggers.
Cheers
mhg

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