From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Fri Apr 26 2002 - 22:22:49 MDT
On Friday, April 26, 2002 10:42 PM E. Shaun Russell e_shaun@extropy.org
wrote:
>>>See http://news.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=153419
>>
>>This part of the world (France, Italy) is in a tizzy about the
>>election results.
>
> Even where I am, in Western Canada, there has been a lot of news about
> this...and rightfully so. I find it more than a little ironic that
France,
> of all nations, should choose a near-fascist minority leader, given
the all
> too recent history of '40's Nazi invasion.
I don't find it as shocking. We must remember the Vichy French
government and also that fascism's intellectual roots are in France.
(See Zeev Sternhell's _The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural
Rebellion to Political Revolution_.) I bring up the former because it
shaped to a great deal postwar politics. Yes, the Vichy are long out of
power, but a lot of their institutions, such as the controls on French
cinema, still exist.
Also, I believe many more French were collaborators during the Vichy Era
than let on -- in fact, probably a huge minority or even a majority.
Not every last French man and woman was sobataging the Germans or the
Vichy regime. If so, the Germans wouldn't have been able to not only
hold on to France, but to keep it relatively quiet during most of the
war. I'm not saying this as an attack on anyone.
Finally, over and above fascist movements, one reason the Left has so
long had Europe locked up in places like Italy and France is that the US
government [financially] supported of non-Communist Left-wing movements.
This was an attempt to block, blunt, or dilute Communism, but it had the
effect of shutting the Right out of politics. Now that the US
government is no longer funding such causes, a new equilibrium, one
further to the Right, is asserting itself. However, absent US
interference, this might have happened decades ago. (Granted, perhaps
not during the late 1940s, but maybe during the 1970s or 1980s.)
I'm not saying I'm for either Left or Right here. I'm just pointing out
what I believe is going on in Europe from my armchair.:)
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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