What to make of this?

RIGHT, LEFT -- THEY'VE BUSTED EVERYTHING
Give Le Pen A Chance To Bust Something!

FRONT NATIONAL COURTS BLACK VOTE WITH POSTER CAMPAIGN

PARIS December 11, 2006 (AFP) - In a major break with its past, the French far-right National Front (FN) party of presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen on Monday unveiled an election poster that specifically targets black and Arab voters.

... It was the first time that the anti-immigrant party has shown the image of a non-white person in its literature, and reflected the growing influence of Le Pen's daughter Marine, who is acting as his campaign director ahead of the April presidential election.

... "A certain number of French people of immigrant origin are aware of the failures and want answers, and many of them are turning to Jean-Marie Le Pen," she said.

And here we are thinking this an FN appeal to that large multicultural multiracial constituency, the worst dressed voters of France.

Five more campaign posters show people from other walks of life making the same gesture of contempt for the political establishment, and the last has the 78-year-old FN leader walking with the six individuals — including the black woman — beneath the slogan, "Together, Let's Lift France Back Up."

Last month M. Le Pen had a sit-down with LBS,* wherein he bared his politically correct heart to Ahmed Moualek:

"I am demonised, just as the 'banlieue' is demonised."

Well, it doesn't get any more politically schmoozy than that. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. But anti-Semitism makes for the very strangest.

ONLY IN FRANCE: THE BLACK, ANTI-SEMITIC COMEDIAN
AT A RALLY OF LE PEN'S FAR RIGHT

PARIS November 19, 2006 (Independent) - Mouths gaped last week when Jean-Marie Le Pen, veteran xenophobe and leader of the powerful French far right, chatted amiably in public with Dieudonné M'bala, a black comedian, one-time anti-racist campaigner, now the champion of a conspiracy-obsessed and anti-Semitic segment of the far left.

Unreconstructed racists within the party jeered and insulted Dieudonné when he turned up at the NF festival, forcing him to leave early.

... What was going on? Dieudonné, 40, who has his own political comedy theatre in eastern Paris, has broken with many former friends on the left by insisting that all the ills of the world, and especially the problems of black people, can be traced to Israeli and Jewish influence. He was convicted earlier this year of making anti-Semitic statements.

Mr Le Pen, 78, was once a scarcely disguised anti-Semite and racist himself. Even last summer he was complaining that there were too many black faces in the France football squad at the World Cup. ... In the past couple of days, meanwhile, Dieudonné has said that [M. Le Pen] is "not the monster" people claim and that he has "every chance" of becoming the man who brings "political revolution" to France.

Mr Le Pen's own daughter, Marine, main architect of his recent lurch towards the middle ground, was also furious when she saw Dieudonné at the Le Bourget meeting. She had invited a militant Jewish protection group to come along to prove that the "nouveau" NF was not anti-Semitic.

Best check that appointment calendar. Don't want to mix the bigots and militants.

The septuagenarian M. Le Pen feeling the weight of his mortality (next go around he would be an even harder-to-elect octogenarian) cynically shops for votes among the disaffected. But what of the banlieusards? They cynically seek revenge on the mainstream parties that have lied giving them hope by supporting a party that lies with no pretense to hope.

En les taquinant avec Le Pen, certains, sans fioriture me dirent qu’ils veulent le voir à la Présidence, pas par idéologie, mais plus pour qu’il se saborde tout seul car, ceux qui gouvernent depuis des décennies n’ont jamais rien fait pour eux. En suivant leur réflexion, ils voulaient simplement dire que le leader frontiste a annoncé la couleur et par conséquent, ils n’attendent rien de lui. C’est mieux ainsi, ils prendront leur vengeance sur les autres qui se sont « moqués de leur gueule » depuis des lustres.

* La Banlieue S'exprime, The Suburb Expresses Itself -- more to the point, The Ghetto Speaks. LBS is a news and commentary site of the banlieusards.

PFFT (What is this?): Prostrate France 4 | Rayonnement français 0