French voters yesterday turned out in record numbers to cast their ballots in the first-round of the 2007 presidential elections, choosing the leading center party candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) and Ségolène Royal (Socialists), to face one another in the May 6th run-off election. Randall Burns earlier commented on the election here. This is how I saw things from Paris…

Like all observers, I was astonished by the extent of voter mobilization. In the run-up to the election, 3.3 million new voters were added to the rolls. More impressive yet, fully 84% of registered voters made it to their polling stations (the highest figure since 1965) compared with roughly 71% five years ago. As an American, it’s hard not to envy such numbers.

The traumatic memory of the 2002 presidential elections did much to generate this surge in voter participation. On April 21st, 2002, Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen beat out Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin for a slot in the second round of voting. Five years later, many voters seem to have decided that it would be too dangerous to stay home.

Which leads to my second observation: if yesterday’s election was a referendum on Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was one which Le Pen massively lost. Heading into the election on a wave of confidence, the Front National suffered what one supporter referred to as a “cruel and major defeat”, down 6 points and a million votes from its 2002 performance.

Le Pen’s loss was Sarkozy’s gain. As I noted in an earlier post, containing the FN has been central to Sarkozy’s electoral strategy from the outset. This strategy seems to have paid off, with a number of FN strongholds (Marseille, Alsace) going over to the UMP candidate.

What does all this mean from a restrictionist perspective? At the center of Sarkozy’s platform are a number of sensible and long overdue measures aiming to stabilize and reduce immigration to the country, including annual ceilings by category, “selective” recruitment of immigrants and a requirement that candidates know French before being granted residency permits. And yet while Sarkozy looks good on paper, his actual record, including two years as Minister of the Interior, has led many on the right to question whether his supposedly get-tough stance on immigration is anything more than an electoral ploy.

Yesterday’s results have left the French far right in disarray, even as some of its signature positions have gone mainstream in the person of Nicolas Sarkozy. But it would be too early to claim even discursive victory. Having eliminated the threat to his right, the next two weeks may reveal a very different Sarkozy as he competes for control of the center with Ségolène Royal.

In a recent editorial for the Washington Times, Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal warns that demographic trends spell electoral disaster for the European right, where the growing immigrant-origin populations of major cities have recently out-voted the right’s homegrown base in a string of electoral defeats in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Turning to consider the French case — of special interest with presidential voting just days away and the largest Muslim population in all of Europe — Belien notes the curious but unmistakable overtures recently made towards France’s Muslim voters by Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. What does it all mean?

Belien:

Some politicians on the European far-right, however, seem convinced that the Islamization of Western Europe has become inevitable. Like the parties of the left, they hope to counter electoral decline by striking a deal with the Islamists. This explains why last week Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant National Front in France, emphasized that, unlike Mr. Sarkozy, he does not want to “clean the suburbs out with a high pressure hose.” Mr. Le Pen told the Muslim youths in the suburbs: “You are the branches of the French tree. You are as French as can be.”

We are on the eve of a crackup of the so-called European far right between pro-Islamists and anti-Islamists. [In Bed with Islamists, 11 April 2007]

An important shift does seem to be afoot. As an Agence France Presse article recently observed: “The phenomenon is unlikely to have much effect on the election - there are after all some 5 million Muslims in France - but even the FN’s opponents agree that loyalties are shifting” [Muslim National Front Voters Challenge Stereotype, 6 March 2007].

A March 2007 article in Le Choc du mois, an organ of the French far right, examines the dynamics of rightward shift in the Muslim electorate (article unavailable online, see link below for translation):

Like the majority of their compatriots, most immigrant-origin French people are correctly formatted. They remain in the grip of official interpretations: the FN is the enemy of immigrants’ children. Yet things are changing. In the first place, banlieu resentment has crystallized around the figure of Sarkozy-the-American. But it is also because, more than anywhere else, the conditions in the banlieues are favorable to support for the FN’s platform (without, for the moment, an FN label). The conservative make-up of the Arab-Muslim electorate, the FN’s stance on foreign policy and the populist temptation which cuts across French society are all factors that may play in Le Pen’s favor. [F.Bousquet, Sketch for a Front Alternational, March 2007]

The full translation is available here as are excerpts (here) from an interview with Franco-Arab scholar Chiheb Nasser on immigrant-origin FN voters.

With only six days remaining before the first round of voting in the French presidential elections, what at first seemed a staid and unpromising campaign season has once again veered into the rocambolesque.

Agence France Presse reports:

According to the UDF candidate’s campaign team, François Bayrou’s headquarters, located in Paris’ VIIth arrondissement, was occupied by illegal aliens [sans-papiers] late Friday afternoon.

Around 4:30 P.M., “around a hundred” illegal aliens, among them mothers and small children, entered the headquarters according to our source. They left shortly before 7 P.M.

In the aftermath of the much publicized Gare du Nord riot, today’s raid on the centrist candidate’s headquarters [for Bayrou's relatively wimpy stance on immigration, see here] only serves to confirm the central place accorded immigration and national identity in a campaign that has, so far, been largely defined around these issues.

Sarkozy and Le Pen, one must suppose, are rubbing their hands in glee.

In a recent post, Peter spoke of “what appears to be the continued knee-jerk commitment of Jewish organizations to facilitating the immivasion”. It is interesting to compare the American case with that of France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish community (estimated, much like in the US, at around 2% of the total population).

As in the US, French Jews until recently generally voted left and generally supported liberal immigration policies. Lately, however, an important part of the Jewish vote has shifted right in response to continued mass immigration and persistent tensions in the Middle East.

Not coincidentally, France also has Europe’s largest Muslim population. For quite a few French Jews, yesterday’s policies no longer fit today’s realities.

Alain Finkielkraut is a prominent case in point. A leading French-Jewish intellectual and much denounced “new reactionary”, Finkielkraut recently made headlines with remarks at a Tel-Aviv think tank. There, he is reported to have said (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, “A Racist Attack”):

“There is a future for Jews in France only if France is a nation, but there is no future for Jews in a multi-cultural society, because then the power of anti-Jewish groups is liable to be greater.”

Finkielkraut’s remarks nicely illustrate what I take to be a central aspect of the immigration debate: with rare exceptions, the politics of immigration is an exquisitely positional affair. Mass immigration can change the political balance in unexpected and sometimes undesired ways and a policy that once seemed to advance group interests can, given a little time, just as well undermine them.

It’s something that America’s leading Jewish organizations, for the moment united behind open borders, may wish to consider.

Writing last year on the massive influx of Eastern Europeans to Britain following the 2004 European Union enlargements, I observed:

Open borders enthusiasts have been quick to point out the story’s bright side. The vast majority of the new arrivals are young, few bring children or elderly relatives with them, and a remarkable 97 percent are employed full-time. The Slavic invasion of Britain, they conclude, has been a smashing success.

Increasingly, however, it appears that the newcomers have come to stay, with “a massive rise in pregnancies and abortion requests” [Immigrant Pregnancies Stretch NHS, March 26, 2007] an unintended consequence in some areas.

UK Commentators’ Laban Tall has more on the story. One reader of his blog had this to say about immigration-driven anomie in contemporary Britain:

“… underneath many people are unhappy with what’s developing. Without any seeming alternative they just quietly leave. I know many people of Afro-Caribbean descent, many of whom I like a lot, but sadly, on balance, I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather live in a more English setting. It’s not just British culture that’s affected. The days of the blues parties and sound system clashes are pretty much over. It’s just too dangerous. I’m not overly taken by Indian culture either. I have 4, living in a tiny one bedroom flat above me, and I appear to have absolutely zero in common with them. They talk in their own language amongst themselves and mostly listen to Indian music and radio. My culture is slowly falling away in so many subtle ways. It is’t only immigration Labour has got wrong. For me, in some ways quite worse, is the state of Education. That seemed to be the tipping point for most of my friends with families who’ve left.”

On Tuesday night, the evening news of France’s major TV networks all opened with dramatic reports of ongoing rioting at the Gare du Nord, one of Paris’ main rail and metro junctions. Up till now, debate in the run-up to French presidential voting has gingerly stepped around the issue of the 2005 banlieu riots. Suddenly, and as if on cue, the rioters have once again burst upon the political scene, this time in the heart of Paris.

From a purely literary point of view, their timing couldn’t have been better. In an electoral context increasingly defined around questions of national identity, it’s as if the rioters wished to illustrate the perils of mass immigration.

Tuesday’s rioting began as a protest against the rough arrest of a 32-year old Congolese man who jumped a metro stile and then assaulted police officers. But it soon spiraled out of control, as hundreds of young people, alerted by friends, rushed to the station to confront police and loot local businesses. Like the man whose arrest set off the riots – an illegal alien with a long criminal record and an outstanding deportation order — most of the rioters were of black African origin.

Yesterday’s violence recalls earlier episodes. In March 2005, hundreds of young black and Arab men turned out to rob and beat students protesting a recently passed education reform bill. In November of the same year, similar groups set fire to suburban communities across the country in what has since become known as “les émeutes”, three weeks of violence from which France has yet to recover. A year later, rioters commemorated the events of November 2005 by, among other things, nearly burning to death a young woman on a bus in Marseilles.

Despite a request on the part of France’s newly appointed Interior Minister François Baroin to refrain from “surfing” on Tuesday’s events, the Gare du Nord riots were immediately politicized, with all major candidates advancing their preferred interpretation. In an increasingly insecure and resentful France, however, the images on the television screen spoke for themselves. More than ever, the first round of voting is up in the air.

At 77 years old, this is Jean-Marie Le Pen’s last election. It may also prove to be his vindication. All the worse for France.

With less than a month to go before voting begins in the French presidential elections, the controversy over national identity carried on over the weekend with the major candidates struggling to define their positions and score points off opponents.

Though among the first to condemn Sarkozy’s “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity” proposal, Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal spent much of last week changing tune — literally, as it happens — after polls showed a majority of voters support the idea. At two separate mid-week rallies, Royal surprised (and embarrassed?) supporters by closing her remarks with a rendition of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem. And it got better this weekend, with Royal expressing her sincere hope that, one day, all French families will have their very own drapeau to hang out the window come Bastille Day.

In a televised interview this weekend, Sarkozy described the Socialist candidate’s about face this way:

“It’s amazing! A week ago, François Bayrou and Ségolène Royal were saying I was wrong. With what we now know to be her characteristic sense of moderation, Mme royal even said that it was disgraceful. And after having said this word, she gives an entire speech on national identity. [...] But I’m not angry with her. I think it’s important that she understands.”

Sarkozy has every reason to be pleased with himself. By provoking a debate over “national identity”, he picked a fight he couldn’t lose and which could only aggravate rifts within the Socialist Party. Royal fell for the ruse and so has spent the past week (dignity be damned!) singing the national anthem and praising the flag in a desperate attempt to convince voters that, no, she does not hate the nation. To the contrary.

Those of you wondering whether France is still a serious country now know the answer. With opinion polling and political marketing playing a larger role in campaigns than ever before, it’s not for nothing that these have been called France’s first American elections.

Yet the recent controversy is not entirely vacuous. It is — and is intended to be understood as — a proxy for a debate that will likely never happen over immigration and assimilation. By calling for a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, Nicolas Sarkozy is positioning himself as an opponent of multiculturalism and third world migration (even if, in reality, he is neither). By singing the Marseillaise and the praises of “a mix-raced France” [une France métissée], Ségolène Royal is asking voters to believe that a purely political conception of national identity will indefinitely hold up as a locus of allegiance and solidarity as France is transformed from within by the demographics of mass immigration.

Never mentioned but always present is the memory of the riots which engulfed the heavily immigrant banlieus of France’s major cities in November 2005. Early on in the campaign, Le Monde warned of what it called the “mainstreaming of Le Pen’s ideas”. With France’s leading presidential candidates facing off over what were until recently Le Pen’s signature issues, this election is confirmation that the political center of gravity has indeed shifted to the right.

For French restrictionists, long relegated to the ghetto of far right politics, it’s a major discursive victory. On April 21st, French voters will decide if it’s anything more than that.

Earlier, I posted on the central place of immigration and related issues in the run-up to the French presidential election. For those interested, I’ve selectively translated a Le Monde summary of candidate positions on immigration (translation here).

It’s interesting to note that even the wimpiest of the four candidates I discuss — centrist politician François Bayrou, France’s answer to Al Gore — looks damn good from an American perspective:

M. Bayrou supports “case by case regularization” [of illegal aliens] on the basis “of clear criteria and established rules” over a specified period (five years, for example) provided that the candidate holds a work contract, speaks French and has mastered the way of life and “basic values of France”.

In a recent speech before supporters of his center-right UMP Party, front-running French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy called for the creation of a “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity”. The proposal – which is neither new nor particularly controversial in itself (most European countries have some sort of immigration ministry) – was immediately condemned by political opponents on the left and even by certain members of Sarkozy’s entourage, who claimed to find something dangerously ambiguous in the term “national identity”.

No sooner had the controversy broken out than it was resolved in Sarkozy’s favor. With a majority of those polled saying they favor the idea and respondents on the right – Sarkozy’s target audience – indicating overwhelmingly support, Sarkozy could claim victory over his wrong-footed rivals on the left, none of whom, in the words of Le Monde, “dare directly address the theme of immigration” (translation here).

From the outset, Sarkozy’s campaign has carefully ridden the immigration issue, at once appealing to and distancing itself from the sensibilities of far right voters (e.g., by calling for assimilation and more rigorous “selection” of prospective immigrants while endorsing the principle of labor migration).

In part, the aim of this strategy has been to contain Front national candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen whose April 21st, 2002 shock victory over Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is still fresh in the mind of French politicians.

But, just as importantly, the Sarkozy team hopes that their candidate’s tough talk will rally undecided voters on election day. By consistently returning to the issue, Sarkozy not only protects his right but also forces the left to fight on terrain where they are at a distinct disadvantage.

So far, this two front strategy on immigration has been a resounding success.
While Sarkozy’s overtures do not seem to have made much of a dent among Le Pen voters (Le Pen, who is systematically under-estimated by the polls, is stable at 14%), they have dissuaded center-right voters from crossing over to the Front national. In the meantime, Sarkozy’s lead on Socialist Party rival Ségolène Royal continues to grow, jumping by two points following his “Ministry of Immigration” announcement.

With just a month left before voting begins, Nicolas Sarkozy looks increasingly like the next President of France. If so, it will be the clearest sign yet that, where immigration is concerned, the political center has shifted in Europe.