The BBC flooded the airwaves and its web pages with ‘warnings from history’ about the rise of the Far Right in Europe.
It seems to have gone a bit quiet as Marine Le Pen’s Front National gains credible support in the polls in France…..much of it coming from ‘the Left’.
Before the French by-elections the BBC was willing to talk about the ‘fringe’ parties…what it dismissed as the ‘anti-establishment’ vote…but since a sweeping triumph by the Front National in a Socialist bastion all seems to have gone very quiet.
The BBC make a grudging mention of that success but only as a small add-on to another report:
Mr Montebourg attacked Mr Barroso after the far-right National Front made gains in a by-election on Sunday in the southern town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
Blink and you’d miss it.
Why such reticence? Possibly the BBC don’t want to ‘encourager les autres’. They see UKIP gaining ground in the UK and think that highlighting further successes of ‘the Right’ would add to the momentum leading to more voters looking on these parties as serious contenders.
But just how far ‘right’ is Le Pen?
The BBC may also be embarrassed by this description of the Front National from the Telegraph which paints it as a socialist party with echoes of 1930’s national socialism and Occupy today…
Only a minority of voters still thinks the Front is a “threat to democracy”. Mrs Le Pen is winning over white working class women in droves. The feminized Front is no longer the party of the angry white male. The softer image is why finance minister Pierre Moscovici describes her as “more dangerous than her father”.
It is her defence of the French welfare model and her critique of capitalism that gives her a Leftist hue — some call it 1930s national socialism — so far in outlook from Britain’s UKIP. She sounds like Occupy activists in her attacks on high finance and the way corporations profit from labour arbitrage, playing off wages in the West against cheap labour in Asia. “It is the law of the jungle,” she said.
It is curious how in light of that by-election success the BBC can’t find the time or space to analyse what is going on in France….it’s not as if France is just some insignificant country on the fringe of Europe, it is right at the heart of the European project.
What Marine Le Pen is saying must be terrifying for the good Europeans of the BBC as she gathers more and more support:
France’s triumphant ‘Joan of Arc’ vows to bring back franc and destroy euro
Marine Le Pen is spoiling for a fight. The leader of France’s Front National vows to smash the existing order of Europe and force the break-up of monetary union, if she wins the next election.
No one should get too carried away of course….success can come and go…but it looks like the BBC are burying their heads in the sand and are hoping it will all go away…soon….and they will be doing their best not to give anyone any ideas about jumping on this particular bandwagon.
An irony that the EU Empire’s policy of ‘EU Über Alles’ has led to a growth in the very nationalism that it was supposed to prevent.
the far right does not exist in reality,it is a myth,what does exist in europe is the rise of the far left/islamist alliance,that should worry the hell out of all of us.
Proper perspective Stuart. well said
the far right does not exist in reality,it is a myth,what does exist in europe is the rise of the far left/islamist alliance,that should worry the hell out of all of us.
The term ‘far right’ is often used to describe what actually is the nationalistic left as with the Front National. Thus it is not surprising that the support is coming from the left.
Similarly, the BNP is all about job protection, some very socialist messages. I am always amazed how they get tagged far right (same as the National Socialists / NAZI party)
It’s the rise of the little guy that the Big Brother Corporation is really worried about, whether this movement is painted red, white or blue.
I think we should all ‘watch this space’ and see how much coverage the BBC give when FN slip up in an election…a lot methinks.
Ironically she is saying what would get a ‘real’ UK Labour party’s supporters voting in droves if it happened in the UK.
Very well said. I noticed this too, it should be given a much better prominence as a news story. The BBC wants to depict these parties as extremist and far right. As has been questioned here before I wonder what share of the popular vote a party needs to be regarded as mainstream? Their treatment of UKIP is bias in the extreme I just checked their UK Politics main page and not a single mention of UKIP who if current opinion polls are to be believed would get about 15-20% of the vote. So a party that already has over 100 councilors and for whom at least 7,000,000 of the electorate plan to vote for at the next election gets very limited coverage unless its negative for them and then the BBC are all over it like a cheap suit.
I’ve yet to see a BBC programme showing me the horrors that unfold when leftist governments get into power
USSR – Stalin
East Bloc states
They also tend to be rather quiet about the fact the the Nazis were national SOCIALISTS – but I suppose that was just a name.
Of course it was – the basis for the National Socialists was a bunch of right wing wowdy webels. Trying to equate 1920’s Socialsim with the 1990’s onwards version is either plain stupid or ignorance – you decide.
Hmm, Stupid or Ignorance eh, those are the only two options here?
BTW I agree that calling Nazis ‘socialists’ is a canard. They were evil genocidal thugs first and foremost and ‘socialists’ well down the list below ‘ecologically minded’ but it is entirely legitimate to point out that if we are to be “warned” by the BBC of “the lessons from history” then perhaps a mention or two illustrating the [very unpleasant] consquences of applying socialism based on the works of Karl Marx wouldn’t go amiss. The BBC via comrade Mason has made aware of the dangers of Greek right wing nutjobs but the BBC hasn’t really soiled its collective pants with regard to the Marxist/Leninist rioters in Athens has it?
Please explain to me how 1920’s socialism (as practiced very entusiastically by the Labour Party at the time) differs ideologically from the position of the hard left today? My point is that the extremists of the left appear to be treated as ‘benign’ loonies as opposed to ‘pure evil’.
Discuss
(1) Gregor Strasser, speech in the Reichstag (May, 1934)
The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work. If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered. The important part of the present development is the anti-capitalist sentiment that is permeating our people.
If you said that at some occupy demo you would get a standing ovation
Throw in some anti-Christian new age nonsense (the more bizarre the better) ,animal rights, cod environmentalism, pseudo-scientific justification for eugenics (abortion and euthanasia) and your almost there
I’ve yet to see a BBC programme showing me the horrors that unfold when leftist governments get into power. Say something about
USSR and its colonies
China under Mao
North Korea
Cambodia Year Zero
Che’s purges etc
100,000,000 plus deaths and the misery of billions
Perhaps the BBC could give us some warnings from history about the dangers of rise in support for the hard left with a season of documantaries starting with those museums filled withe skulls of the Cambodian middle class. Millions of them.
Nope, because the BBC empolys card carring members of The Party doesn’t it, despite the mountains of horrors it has committed. Would they employ a card carrying member of Msr Le {ens party as Paris Correspondent?
Talking of France, INBBC decides not to report this, of course:
“France: Muslims terrorize and drive out butcher for the crime of selling pork”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/06/france-muslims-terrorize-and-drive-out-butcher-for-the-crime-of-selling-pork.html
Bit like Thailand, there may be a slight culture clash between Middle and Far East (the non ‘Asian’ bit of ‘Asia’ at least) if that one looks like doing the global rounds too.
Having lived in most countries with a Chinese diaspora, gunning for anyone dealing in or consuming pork may end badly.
And there are a fair few to piss off.
Also at Glasto, any roadie told the bacon butty’s off the menu may be vexed too.
So any of the 300 walking past big holes in the stage if Aunty swings in favour of this ‘un too… be careful now.
are the BBC supposed to report every supposed terrorist attack that happens anywhere in mainland Europe just so that they can be seen to be somehow balancing things out and appeasing those who demand it? Wouldn’t you prefer that they first attained some sort of non-bias rather than pandering to the whims of every minority?
Surely the French are being sexist if they don`t vote for this pioneer of feminism who has transformed her party from being Holocaust deniers int pro-Israel, state hugging lefties of a kind.
I`d have thought that the BBC would have liked this…and now we`ve lost the brilliant feminist icon Gillard, we surely need another sista breaking through the glass ceiling of male oppression…don`t we Beebies?
Oh, right…the wrong KIND of sister empowering model-like dear Sarah Palin!
So it`ll have to stay as Polly, Yasmin, Shami, Bonnie and Dame Shirley(Bassey/Williams?)…and none of that Le Pen stuff then will it ?
Plus ca change…
Fascinating that the BBC was pushing the story about a left wing guy killed by “Right wing thugs” over the weekend.
all well and good but this came AFTER French media reported that the dead guy was a member of a violent left wing group who planned and committed an organised attack on some right wingers who were just out shopping.
All caught on CCTV and evidence of planned attack/threats found on dead guys computer!
Now, either the BBC operates on some kind of time delay OR, more likely, it is deliberately putting out misleading, lying, propaganda.
A time delay for some things, perhaps, but if it fits the narrative they’re on it straight away.