2012 won’t only be an important political year in the U.S, but in France as well, since a new presidential election will take place. And, because the system of primaries has been adopted by the main parties, the French political elite is starting to sharpen its knives.
For the right, things will be relatively simple, since Nicolas Sarkozy will run for president again[1] and shouldn’t face any opposition within the ranks of his party, the UMP.
But for the left, things are much more complicated; as usual, the Socialist caciques are fighting each other and their primaries will probably turn out to be pretty bloody. Unless they stop quibbling for a moment and start listening to the current polls that give a good advantage to a still undeclared candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, current boss of the IMF.
Strauss-Kahn is a veteran Socialist, a Professor of Economics and a lawyer, a former minister, a former deputy mayor of Sarcelles and a former candidate to the Socialist primaries for the 2007 presidential election[2]. Since he took the IMF presidency in 2007, he has stayed away from the French political spotlight, even though he has kept well informed of its internal game. He is not a charismatic figure neither a very popular one in the way Chirac is, for instance; you don’t picture DSK well at ease at the Salon of Agriculture, shaking hands with French peasants, patting the croup of the cows or happily toasting with Creole dancers. Last year, his image was even tarnished by some accusations of sexual harassment against IMF employees. For months, he was the dreamed target of many stand-up comedians who kept joking about his unquenchable sexual thirst… And yet, he is currently the most preferred political figure from the Left, and so far, according to some recent polls, the only candidate who could beat Nicolas Sarkozy. His IMF mandate will expire at the end of the year, and his wife, a famous French political journalist[3], has recently hinted that he wouldn’t run for a second mandate but rather go back home and maybe get one more shot at the Socialist primaries…
So the Right has taken notice and this week-end, Christian Jacob, head of the UMP deputies at the National Assembly[4], during a radio interview, was the first one to open fire when he declared that to him, [Dominique Strauss-Kahn]
“is not the image of France, the image of the rural France, the image of the France of terroirs[5] and territories, the one we love, the one to which I’m attached to.[6]”
His words were backed up a few hours later by the current Prime minister, Francois Fillon.Listening to Christian Jacob, you would think that France still has an important rural population, and that agriculture still makes up for a large portion of the GDP. The truth is, only 25% of the French still live in the country and agriculture only represents 1.8% of the GDP.
So, why all this fuss about DSK not picturing well a small and dwindling part of the French population?
Here’s the thing, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a Jew and, as a Jew, sociologically speaking, he doesn’t represent the rural France[7]. Does it mean that a French living in the country wouldn’t vote for him or feel that DSK wouldn’t be able to pay attention to his problems?!
That’s not Christian Jacob’s point, anyway. His point is very clear. In 2011, there are still people in France for whom the possibility of having a president who would happen to be Jewish is so upsetting that they can’t keep their mouth shut. That they spontaneously-and in itself, it is extremely depressing- use the same rhetoric as the one abundantly used under the Vichy regime and before. Here is Xavier Vallat’s declaration after Leon Blum’s election in 1936 as President du Conseil[8]:
“For the first time, this ancient Gallo-Roman country will be governed by a Jew (…) To govern this nation of peasants that France is, it is better to have someone whose origins, even very modest, root themselves in the bowels of our soil rather than having a subtle Talmudist.”[9]
Who was Xavier Vallat? Xavier Vallat was an extreme right politician who became the first Head of the General Commissary of the Jewish Affairs, created in March 1941. He actively participated in the development of the anti-Semitic laws of the Vichy regime.
So, here we are, more than 60 years after Vichy, after the Vel d’Hiv, after Drancy, after the 77.320 French Jews murdered by the Nazis, 4 years after Ilan Halimi[1] and yet we can still smell it. That putrid, sickening, nauseating odor.
So, here we are, more than 60 years after Vichy, after the Vel d’Hiv, after Drancy, after the 77.320 French Jews murdered by the Nazis, 4 years after Ilan Halimi[1] and yet we can still smell it. That putrid, sickening, nauseating odor.
And don’t tell me you can’t smell it.
[1] A 23 year old vendor abducted,tortured during three weeks in Paris' suburbs and finally killed because he was Jewish.
[1] He will have to make with two rivals from the right, Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister under Chirac’s rule who has created last winter his own party and is openly at war with Sarkozy, his longtime rival; Francois Bayrou, president of the Modem, a centrist party is also at war with Sarkozy.
[2] Segolene Royale won the primaries and was then defeated by Sarkozy.
[3] Anne Sinclair. She hosted for years a well-established political TV show, 7/7.
[4] The French John Brenner, then..
[5] Terroir: a vey loaded word, meaning the countryside, the conservative, Catholic France, traditionally referred to in opposition to a modern, multicultural image of France.
[6] I translated ; here it is in French: DSK “n’est pas l’image de la France, l’image de la France rurale, l’image de la France des terroirs et des territoires, celle que l’on aime bien, celle à laquelle je suis attaché”.
[7] Rural France as in : Catholic, conservative, the “true and only France” for the extreme –right, the France of the Crusades, of Jeanne d’Arc and of the Monarchy…
[8] The equivalent of the prime minister position under the third republic.
[9] Laurent Joly (2007), « Antisémites et antisémitisme à la Chambre des députés sous la IIIe République », Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 3/2007 (n° 54-3), p. 63-90. Here it is in French : « Pour la premiere fois, ce vieux pays gallo-romain sera gouverne par un juif (…) Pour gouverner cette nation paysanne qu’est la France, il vaut mieux avoir quelqu’un dont les origines, si modestes soient-elles, se perdent dans les entrailles de notre sol, qu’un talmudiste subtil »
