European Racism is Larger Than Le Pen

In the aftermath of the second place finish of the ultra-conservative leader of the French National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, many of have attempted to find some explanation for his surprising electoral showing, an unprecedented “victory” that allowed him to participate in this weekend’s two-man runoff election with incumbent President Jacques Chirac. In the process, it is easy to write off this development as the result of impotent mainstream politicians, the fragmentation of the Left’s vote, or the political apathy of the “silent” majority, while conveniently sidestepping the true root cause of Le Pen’s “victory’: Racism.

More specifically, it is European xenophobia and racist intolerance that have catapulted Le Pen and his ilk in Austria, Britain, Italy, Norway, Belgium and Germany into the rosy spotlight of political legitimacy. Scapegoating “immigrants” (nonwhites) as the cause of shrinking employment opportunities, these politicians have preyed upon the fears and biases of populations stung by economic instability. Tough immigration policies are touted as a cure-all for rising crime rates. Non-whites are accused of defiling the homogenous, cultural purity of Western European countries.

Is it not logical that those who voted a hatemonger like Le Pen—16.8 percent in the initial election and 17.94 percent in the runoff—did so not simply because he is an advocate of law and order, but because they themselves agree with, or at least quietly tolerate, his racist message. A 1998 opinion poll conducted by the French National Commission on Human rights found that 38 percent of all those surveyed admitted to being openly racist; 27 percent stated that there are too many blacks in France and 56 percent said that are too many Arabs. A March 2000 Harris poll revealed that only 29 percent of those surveyed described themselves as “not racist.” Over 6 in 10 of those polled felt that there were too many people of “foreign origin” in France: 38 percent said that there are too many blacks while 63 percent of those surveyed said that there were too many Arabs. Perhaps France’s motto should be expanded to liberty, equality, fraternity—and racism.

France’s immigrant population has helped to contribute to a rise in crime, not because of an innate criminal tendency but as a result of deplorable conditions in which many black and brown immigrants and citizens are forced to live. Arriving primarily from France’s former colonies and often channeled into low-skilled, low-paying industrial or domestic jobs, these people of African and Arab descent face substandard housing, high unemployment rates, poor schools, inadequate public facilities, police brutality, hate crimes and a host of other obstacles. They are clustered in banlieues, poor working class suburbs that ring the country’s major cities. Constantly faced with anti-immigrant bias and unemployment rates well over 50 percent, many young Africans and Arabs of the younger generation often feel alienated from the larger society and the country of their parent’s origin. Consequently, the problems of France’s ghettos have come to resemble those of America’s inner cities: drugs, violence, gang culture, crime and family disintegration.

Interestingly, this xenophobic bias is not isolated to Le Pen and his horde, as even Chirac has derisively complained about Paris’ African and Arab immigrants. As the Mayor of Paris, he reportedly grumbled about “the overdose of immigrants,” especially their “noise and smell.” During his tenure as mayor, Chirac continued the unspoken practice of relegating poor whites and immigrants to the suburbs that border the city. Thus, Chirac’s recent landslide victory over Le Pen comes as little hope for ameliorating the very factors that brought a racist a stone’s throw away from the threshold of power: the hate and intolerance that festers like a cancer throughout Europe and the pressing social and economic problems that plague France’s African and Arab population.