Parts
of the French left have no problems participating in anti-Semitic
demonstrations demanding that Jews be kicked out of France. The
Socialist government is less than pleased.
PARIS. What happened in the streets of Paris on the 26th
of January? On the eve of Shoah Remembrance Day, a significant
contingent of demonstrators marching in the Jour de Colère [Day of Rage]
howled “Jews, get out of France” and other vicious anti-Semitic
slogans.
the
best coverage of the march I have seen begins with a display of Islamic
Jew hatred on the Champs Elysées in October 2012. Then, scenes of wild
Dieudonné fans mocking the Shoah alternate with choice excerpts from the
Day of Rage, illustrating converging branches of Jew hatred packed into
a cocktail of contemptuous destructive rage.
One week later, on February 2nd,
a far larger crowd marched peacefully for five hours with absolutely no
violence, anti-Semitism, or disrespect for the République. The Manif’
pour tous [Everyone’s protest march] is a movement created last year in
an attempt to block the passage of the mariage pour tous
[marriage for everyone] Bill. Though the Hollande government tried
desperately to link the two movements, the difference is visible to the
naked eye and confirmed by closer examination of the people, the
discourse, and the outcome.
The Left, which is never
more than a heartbeat away from the barricades, adores street protests…
when it is in the Opposition. Today, an embattled government with
nothing to show for its first 18 months in office but a tawdry
politico-sexual scandal at the summit is tut-tutting about “baseless”
demonstrations. The JDC [Jour de Colère] is, apparently, the brainchild
of Béatrice Bourges, a dissident of the MPT [Manif’ pour Tous].
Exasperated with the failure to prevent passage of the same-sex marriage
law, Bourges created an aggressive Printemps Français [French Spring]
faction that engaged in battles with the police, easily used by the
government to discredit the squeaky clean MPT movement that had
mobilized at least half a million. Having failed to take over leadership
of the MPT, Bourges sought new allies and new forms of action.
Ten
days before the Day of Rage, in a debate with Pierre Cassen of the
anti-Islamization site Riposte Laïque, Béatrice Bourges presented her
analysis of same-sex marriage and parenthood, by adoption and eventually
artificial insemination and womb rental, as part of a global project of
“transhumanism.” The plan is to create a New Man hors sol [without national identity] and hors sexe
[without sexual identity], a slave of an oligarchy determined to rule
the world by turning people into featureless units of production and
consumption. Her choice of villains and vocabulary ring with the
familiar string of adjectives often associated, in times of trouble,
with Jews: “stateless cosmopolitan unscrupulous money-grubbing demons of
finance …”
Cassen announced he would not
participate in the Day of Rage after Dieudonné encouraged his followers
to join the troops. Bourges countered, helter skelter, that Dieudonné
himself wouldn’t attend, the best way to discourage his acolytes was to
ignore them, but it doesn’t matter if they do come because this is the
Day for all the rhymes and reasons of Rage, no one should be excluded.
Expressed rage, she said, is less prone to violence than repressed rage.
These and other predictions about attendance—“it will be a tsunami”–
and results—“the government has feet of clay, a few good blows and it
will topple”– turned out to be equally inaccurate. I have not found on
the Jour de Colère or Printemps Français any statement sites of
disapproval of the anti-Semitic slogans, chants, and signs.
Though Béatrice Bourges
is believed to be a central figure in the JDC organization, the
movement adopted the anonymous Facebook-twitter image ascribed to the
“Arab Spring.” Another “Arab Spring” prop, the “Hollande dégage”
[Hollande, bug off] slogan, picked up from one of the participating
groups, goes back to Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” and subsequent
uprisings in Libya, Egypt, etc. “Day of rage” is associated with a
Palestinian practice of periodic organized violence against Israel.
Aside from the strange Middle East echoes, these borrowings perpetuate
the idea that we are living under a dictatorship that must be
overthrown. (Similar echoes were found in the Occupy Wall Street
movement.)
This
justified accusations that the protest movement is aimed at destroying
the République. But nothing can hide the Left’s paternity of a movement
that coalesces dark forces from all extremes of the political spectrum.
It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give an idea
of the pot pourri of participating groups listed on the Jour de Colère
site. Splinters, split-offs, offshoots of multiple
varieties–anti-Islamization, Muslims against gender theory,
anti-globalization, anti-population replacement, Catholic
fundamentalists, old fashioned neo-Nazis, small businessmen,
freelancers, nationalists, royalists, farmers… An undercurrent of the
Jew hatred that emerged on the Day of Rage can be discerned here and
there: the campaign to keep children home from school to protest gender
theory indoctrination in kindergartens was organized by Farida Belghoul,
one of the pioneers of the “beur” [second generation Maghrebi] movement
spawned on the Left. She is now allied with arch anti-Semite Alain
Soral. Media Press, a JDC-friendly site links to articles such as “Is
Manuel Valls the Interior Minister of France or Israel?”
Will the coalition of united rage,
fired by the weakness of the French government, find Jew hatred as its
common denominator? The danger is real. Socialist deputy Julien Dray
declared that an important faction of the Day of Rage demonstration
intended to march into the rue des Rosiers in the heart of the Jewish
Marais. Sammy Ghozlan, president of the BNVCA [Bureau national de
vigilance contre l’antisémitisme] warns that when the law catches up
with Dieudonné and puts him in handcuffs, it could trigger a “Crystal
Day.”
Is
there room for the hope that many French people, disgusted with overt
Jew hatred, will withdraw from the hastily concocted coalition? It only
took fourteen years for the guttural shouts of “Kill the Jews” that have
been ringing out in pro-Palestinian, anti-war, pro-Hamas and go-jihad
marches to reach the ears of French media. And for the government to
recognize that anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism is a danger to the République.
Epilogue
The
Manif’ pour Tous is another story and the government didn’t know what
to do about it. Spokespersons and friendly media pumped out the talking
points as tens of thousands marched in bright winter sunshine: This
protest is based on wild rumors. Reproductive boosters—PMA [artificial
insemination] for lesbian couples and GPA [womb rental] for males—do not
figure in the Family Affairs Bill slated for March. The “ABC of
Equality,” experimented in hundreds of kindergartens, is not “gender
theory,” it’s just about abolishing stereotypes. Mariage pour tous is the law of the land; it is undemocratic to demonstrate against it.
It didn’t work.
Monday
morning the Interior Minister, followed quickly by the Prime Minister,
promised they would not allow deputies from the majority to attach PMA
and GPA amendments to the Bill.
By late afternoon the government announced that the controversial Bill is postponed … indefinitely.
Nidra Poller
No comments:
Post a Comment