{"id":230294,"date":"2021-03-27T07:18:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T07:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230294"},"modified":"2021-03-28T12:05:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T12:05:34","slug":"marine-le-pens-modest-proposal-on-immigration-why-not-let-the-people-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230294","title":{"rendered":"Marine Le Pen\u2019s Modest Proposal on Immigration: Why Not Let the People Vote?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guillame Durocher \u2013 The Unz Review March 26, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Time and again, we are somberly warned of the grave threat to democracy posed by Marine Le Pen as the leader of a quasi-fascistic party, the National Rally (Rassemblement National<\/em> or RN). Yet, what the French politico-media class seems to fear most is a bit of genuine democracy, unmediated by slippery politicians and smarmy journalists.<\/p>\n

Le Pen recently announced that her first measure if elected Pr\u00e9sidente<\/em> \u2013 an increasingly-plausible scenario<\/a> \u2013 would be the holding of a \u201cgreat referendum\u201d on immigration. She told France Inter radio<\/a>:<\/p>\n

My first decision will be the organization of a referendum on immigration. Because it\u2019s now been decades that the various governments have been taking decisions on immigration without the French people ever being heard or questioned on this topic. According to opinion polls the French people has disagreed for decades with the policy that is being conducted on immigration.<\/p>\n

Le Pen was somewhat vague on the content of the referendum, mentioning \u201cseveral questions\u201d that would be posed, including presumably one on the FN\/RN\u2019s years-old signature promise: a reduction of net immigration to a quasi-negligible 10,000 per year.<\/p>\n

She also presented two other main planks. One is the partial suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which ensures check-free circulation between EU countries, to longer apply to non-EU nationals. Somehow French borders would have to be tightly monitored for non-EU nationals while letting European citizens through. How this would be done is unclear, but in any case it\u2019s very common for national governments to temporarily\/semi-permanently reinstitute border checks despite their Schengen commitments.<\/p>\n

The last plank would be a tax break for the \u201cmiddle classes.\u201d Le Pen\u2019s economic policy, once defined by a protectionist and anti-EU social nationalism, now seems decidedly fluctuous.<\/p>\n

In other news, the liberal-globalist establishment paper Le Monde<\/em> is really fretting about a potential Le Pen win.<\/p>\n

According to several polls, around half of left-wing voters (defined as those voting for the hard-left Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, the center-left Anne Hidalgo, or the Green Yannick Jadot) would abstain from voting<\/a> in the event of a Le Pen-Macron second round presidential election. The paper claims that voters are less likely to see in Le Pen a fascist menace and many are tired\/disgusted of voting for Macron, \u201cpresident of the rich,\u201d as a lesser evil.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the French left is extraordinarily divided with currently around a dozen candidates. Le Monde<\/em><\/a> laments<\/a> these \u201ckamikaze\u201d candidates make a Le Pen-Macron runoff more likely and, naturally, urges in an editorial<\/a> for a revival of the \u201crepublican front\u201d to disenfranchise and exclude nationalist voters through a cartel of all the other parties.<\/p>\n

Finally, we are witnessing a racialization of French politics as increasingly colorful and woke youths reject the old generation\u2019s quaint commitment to colorblind secularism as the bedrock of national identity.<\/p>\n

Controversy is now focused on France\u2019s main student union, the National Union of Students of France (UNEF), has been openly organizing coloreds-only meetings so participants can talk about their feelings without the oppressive glare of white people. There is talk of defunding or even abolishing the union, but it is being backed by various left-wing leaders<\/a> like M\u00e9lenchon and the Socialist Beno\u00eet Hamon, who are increasingly giving up on the principles of the secular colorblind left.<\/p>\n

Ethnic and religious polarization provides fertile ground for Le Pen. If she wins, appeal to direct democracy seems like a worthy gambit. Referenda are a regular feature of democratic life in neighboring Switzerland and have ensured that the Swiss people actually have some say over their national destiny. The British referendum on leaving the European Union \u2013 whatever one thinks of that \u2013 has ultimately been acted upon despite the kicking and screaming tantrums of vast swathes of the establishment and traditionally-dominant \u201ceducated\u201d strata of the population.<\/p>\n

While there are natural risks of misfire, the referendum is a powerful means for Le Pen to appeal to yellow-vest voters and sanctify policies with the blessing of the Popular Will. There is no surer way of blowing through the inevitable and systemic attempts at sabotage by the legacy politico-media class. En avant !<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is why we think that the odds will be deliberately stacked against Le Pen in an election. Although she may be popular her proposal would likely result in a broad rejection of mass immigration, and that can\u2019t be allowed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,104,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-france","category-european-migrant-crisis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230328,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230294\/revisions\/230328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}