Beware of the drift to Populist Nationalism

I met a French acquaintance recently. He is young, urbane, witty and has an interest in culture. He likes art house movies and rock’n’roll and reads Hot Press.

The conversation turned briefly, as it so often does now, to hard times and the extent to which ordinary people feel betrayed by the political classes, who colluded – and continue to collude – in the socialisation of massive private debt that is currently crippling the European economy.
“Just watch what is happening in France,” he said to me, “in the Presidential election.”
I took it that he was predicting the demise of Mr. Sarkozy and the return of a Socialist to the Élyséé Palace, in the shape of the unprepossessing Francois Hollande. No controversy there.
“I think Marine Le Pen will do very well,” he said and I stepped in a little closer to make sure that I was hearing him correctly. “She is speaking for a lot of French people who are sick of the way the system has been treating them. I think we need someone like this who is prepared to challenge the bureaucrats. I predict a lot of people will vote for her.”
Circumstances prevented any further elaboration but there was enough in what he had said, and in his slightly conspiratorial body language, for me to conclude that, if my friend had a vote, it’d be going to the National Front. It was an embarrassing revelation, made in haste, that hang around, an indigestible lump in my stomach, for the next two weeks at least. But it also formed a kind of warning.
His prediction proved prescient. I thought of him as the results of the first round of the French presidential election were announced. As anticipated, Hollande led the way but the real story of the poll was the resurgence of the National Front under Marine Le Pen. In the last presidential election, the National Front could secure only 10% of the vote. Marine Le Pen came close to doubling that, attracting 17.9% support, representing a chilling 6.3 million voters.
It is a very substantial platform on which the far right anti-immigration party will hope to build in the upcoming general election, which is scheduled for June. Most observers agree that there is, in this dramatic shift to the right, an element of protest, with a larger number of French people than ever before prepared to do the unthinkable and put their X beside a candidate from a party that carries an unpleasant whiff of menace.
It is an example of the embittered little people striking back – perhaps in an inchoate way, and without any sense of the poison that a further rise in popularity for the NF might inject into the political system. But then, for people who have seen their jobs disappearing, their livelihoods being stolen from them and a mountain of debt heaped onto the shoulders of the lumpen citizenry while the political and financial fat cats continue to rule the roost and pay themselves obscene wages, the appeal of bootboy politics may not be that hard to understand.
It is a scenario that the Irish Labour Party must have observed with deep foreboding. Coming into coalition with Fine Gael at the worst possible moment in the economic history of the republic of Ireland, they find themselves in the unenviable position now of carrying out some of the worst cuts that are being demanded of us by the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
Objectively, there is ample reason to feel that they have been left with very little room to manoeuvre by the blanket nature of the bank guarantee provided by Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan’s government, and by the actions carried through in the wake of that guarantee which transferred the debt irreversibly onto Irish shoulders. But that is beside the point. They are doing the dirty work. And, as has so often been the case in the past with the smaller coalition party, they will become the mudguard, with much of the odium attracted by the Government attaching to them.
As a result, the threat of annihilation in the next General Election is a very real one for Labour. The drift to populist nationalism, which is evident in France in the surge in support for the National Front, is likely to benefit Sinn Féin if, as seems almost certain, it is repeated in Ireland. This is not to tar the latter with sins not of their own committing: on the issues of racism and discrimination, they are certainly not fellow-travellers with the National Front. On the contrary, Sinn Féin has demonstrated a commitment to working hard to improve things within communities at grass roots level. And in many respects their policies are coloured first and foremost by a genuine desire to spread the wealth of the nation more equally.
But there is another strand within Sinn Féin. They have in common with fascist groups a historic hostility to the appointed guardians of civic order and a willingness to take the law into their own hands, with their ‘irregular’ wing meting out summary justice in a way which is thoroughly barbaric and wholly unjustifiable – and reminiscent certainly of fascist thuggery. It happened with grim frequency north of the border. But it happened in Dublin too. Kangaroo courts and lower level intimidation alike were at their zenith in the tangled era of guerilla warfare, when appalling atrocities were perpetrated by people ostensibly fighting for a united Ireland – but who were also building their own power-base unscrupulously in beleaguered communities.
What is deeply troubling – and should attract the immediate direct intervention of the Sinn Féin leadership – is that this era has not yet been consigned entirely to the past, as is confirmed elsewhere in this issue, in Eamonn McCann’s story about the death threats issued to Ray Coyle by Republican Action Against Drugs in Derry.
Allied to this murderous strain is a strand of narrow, and frequently xenophobic nationalism which has always been a part of the victim culture cultivated by elements within Irish republicanism. In practice, Sinn Féin is engaged in such a balancing act, trying to keep potential dissidents onside, that stuff like this is left to fester – and ready to boil to the surface at any time.
Well, there is enough bitterness and confusion out there for xenophobia to flourish on this small island, in precisely the way it is rising in France. The forces in play are toxic in the extreme, all the more so because the anger of ordinary people is entirely justified, and their powerlessness is an exploitable commodity.
All of which suggests that the upcoming referendum on the European Stability Treaty may prove to be a watershed moment, with the balance of power tilting away from the centre-right – not towards a viable socialist alternative but in the direction of a different species of negative and dangerous populism.
In that light, the French presidential election may turn out to be even more important than people currently realise. The front-runner with less than a week to go to the final run-off, Francois Hollande, is himself promising to renegotiate the treaty, with a less market-driven, more balanced outcome in mind.
If he prevails, perhaps the Irish government would be best to postpone the referendum, until that shakedown has worked its way through the system. But if the current incumbent President Sarkozy attracts the Le Pen vote and, with that poison as fuel, galvanises his own faltering support sufficiently to win, then all bets are off on the European project.