Conference taveng::bagels

    There is no queston but that le Pen represents the always-present
    fascist shadow of France.  The temperament of the country at any
    time can be gauged by the clarity that this shadow casts.  With
    almost 15% of the vote in the first cycle of the elections, the
    shadow appears quite distinct.  Interestingly enough, it was the
    communists who made it so ---- voting for le Pen in support of his
    stand relative to immigrant workers who are taking jobs from the
    French working class.  In good times, people vote their ideals;
    in bad times, they vote their prejudices.

    He chose to be candidate in Marseille to run for his deputy seat.
    
    FYI.
    
    Chris

    Re: .4
    
    Trouble is that these "freaks of nature" tend to appear every 30
    years or so.
    
    David

Hanving a lot of "Ashkenazy" (occidental) jewish french friend, I was
    absolutely shocked to find out that, a lot of the original european
    jews did vote for Le Pen. Their argument is, Gee aren't people naiv(?)
    that Le Pen is a "FRIEND!!!" of the jews. Although I live in Geneva,
    I felt ashamed, considering what my parents went through during
    the holocoust.
    Suzy
    

    Suzy, could you tell us the source of your information? If your
    statement turns out to be correct, then it would be no surprise to me.

    As mentioned before, LePen repeatedly stated that he wants to protect
    "all French citizens" from the foreign immigration wave, including "nos
    concitoyens juifs" (our Jewish co-citizens). I mean, deep down in their
    subconscience, some French Jews, right BECAUSE of what they and their
    relatives have suffered, might actually complacently watch how another
    ethnic group is the main target of racism and xenophobia. Who am
    I to blame them? 
    
    On the other hand, I have been watching on TV quite a nice fight btw.
    some leather dressed young LePen followers and a group of young Jewish
    students, on May 1st (right after the first electoral round). The score
    was Jewish students 1, LePen fans 0, when the police arrived. Sorry for
    my sarcasm, but I couldn't help it. So, it seems that at least the
    young people could save their clear view. 
    
    Chris

    Chris,
    i don't blame you for sarcasm, I feel the same... my sources are
    coming from some, should I say older/elderly ashkenazi jews, which
    settled down after the holocoust in France. I hate to say it, because
    being a jew myself - having been brought up in Vienna by hungarian
    parents - that you'll find unfortunately and especially in France
    the Jews coming from eastern european countries disliking the jews
    from the Arab countries, and therefore voted for Le Pen. For Example
    I was in Paris at my mother's counsins house in 1986, during the
    legislative election week-end, and guess what: On satuday night
    there was a community get together and the "guest speaker" was
    one of the personal advisors of Le Pen.... Let me explain you a
    little bit the "WHY", although VERY STRONGLY REJECT THIS IDEA,
    however it has a lot to do with the holocoust. The jews which suffered
    during the holocoust, survived and remained "strong feeling" jews,
    created wereever they settled down "jewish ghettos", for example
    in Vienna: 1,2,3. Bezirk, Paris: around Rue Rossier,etc....
    and would not mis with non-jews, would scream shame and scandal
    for mixed marriages, but at the same time you had in France and
    in Geneva and in South of France also a lot of jews imigrating from
    the arab countries, and integrating better(?), quicker(?) etc...
    which created this hate. 
    
    I hope I made myself clear... and by the way, I also know fro the
    same sources, that after Le Pen considered the gaschambers as something
    not significant, a lot of jews did not go and vote, because they
    did not know what to do......one hand agree with "get rid of the
    "Non-french"...(whatever that means) and on the other hand not 
    "respecting" the past..
    I saw the fight too in TV, and that gives me hope, because that
    means that our youngsters have more BRAINS!!!!
    
    BTW what's your opinion regarding yesterday's results??
    Look forward to hear/read it
    Suzy
    
    co

    I listened to a report on yesterday's legislative elections while
    driving to work today.  It seems that the gains the conservatives
    had made had taken away advances by both the extreme right and the
    Communists.  Of course in France's electoral system a runoff will
    be held next Sunday which will finalise the results.                                  
                                                        
    Could all of this mean that French politics will be purely "middle-of
    the-road" for the next 4-6 years?
    
    David 

    The Front National has won only ONE seat in the new Assembly. And this
    one is NOT for Lepen. The guy was given a decent lesson in Marseille
    that even in a more xenophobe than average environment his extremist
    views scare people off. 
    
    His speaches on TV were showing a hurt, whining, finger pointing (to
    the press, the other media) person, complaining on how unjust the whole
    world is. I had fun, believe you me.
    
    Chris

    Re: .12
    
    That's great news Chris.  But it looks like Mitterrand is going
    to have to make some deals in order to have a working majority in
    the national ass'y.  Sounds more and more like the Knesset (:-).
    
    David
    

	Already embroiled in contoversy for his 1987 remark in which
	he characterized Hitler's gas chambers as a "minor detail" of
	the war, Jean-Marie Le Pen has further enraged France's  political
	community by making a pun on the word "crematorium" in referring to
	a political opponent, Civil Service Minister Michel Durafour
	as "Monsieur Durafour-crematiore," (`four creamtoire' is the 
	common French term for death camp crematorium).  In presidential
	elections held last April, Le Pen polled 4,367,926 votes, or
	nearly 15% of the French electorate.

/don feinberg

    re: .14
    
    Is Le Pen the real face of the french electorate or an aberration?
    
    David

    The French General Assembly has adopted a law proposal stating that
    every person expressing racistic, antisemitic, or "revisionist" views
    has to appear in court which will determine, if guilty, for how long
    this person will loose all civic rights (this includes the right for
    passive eligibility).
    
    In clear, what this means, is that LePen will have to shut up,
    otherwise he'll loose all his public functions. The proposal got
    adopted by the votes of the socialist and communist factions. Before it
    comes into effect, there will be some ping=pong between the senate and
    the assembly, but it should be effective by September.
    
    Reportingly yours,
    
    Chris
    
    PS: "Revisionists", here, are so called "historians" and other persons
    supporting the thesis that Concentration Camps, Gas Chambers, etc...,
    never existed.

    No freedom of speech or thought in France, eh?
    
    			-John Bishop

    Freedom of speech doesn't mean one can say what one wants. Enforcing
    anti-racistic and anti-anti-semitic legislation is not restricting
    anybody's liberty. On the contrary, it is ensuring freedom.
    
    For my own curiosity: doesn't a strong set of anti-racistic laws exist
    in the US, as well?
    
    Clarifyingly yours,
    
    Chris

.17>    No freedom of speech or thought in France, eh?


I don't believe that the new French law limits freedom of thought.  And
there still is freedom of speech; however, a restriction is placed upon
it.

Similarly, in the United States there is no law against thinking that people
should roam the streets in mobs, looting shops and assaulting passers-by.
Saying out loud that they should do this, however, is considered incitement
to riot and generally is illegal.

    The U.S. Supreme court has ruled that a political advertisement may
    say anything.  No holds bared.
    
    WS

.20>    The U.S. Supreme court has ruled that a political advertisement may
.20>    say anything.

I'd be very interested in seeing the wording of that decision.  How did
they define "political"?  I suspect that incitement to riot would not become
legal simply by adding "Vote for Smith" at the end.

    UNBELIEVABLE!
    
    "Gaz the Jews, enslave the Blacks, vote for KKK".
    
    Such a poster would be allowed? If so, then the US government has a
    couple of issues with the declaration of Human Rights.
    
    I'm no US citizen, but were I one, then this ruling is one thing I
    would strongly fight against.
    
    Increduly yours,
    
    Chris

    re .18, Anti-racism laws in U.S.?
    
    No, the courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech--especially
    "political" speech (as opposed to "commercial" speech such as in
    advertising) is essentially absolute.  The only restriction is when
    a "clear and present danger" is created, which is what .19 is refering
    to.
    
    Thus, the American Nazi Party, etc. are legal, and they are not committing
    crimes when they say racist things, including their desire to expel the
    races they don't like from the US.  If, however, a member of that
    party were trying to encourage a crowd to kill or hurt, that might
    be a crime--but it might not be.  "If I am elected, I will pass laws
    which direct that all X's should be killed" is not a crime.  "Let's
    go kill an X right now" possibly is.
    
    The Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech even overrides the
    obscenity laws--there was a case of a politician whose TV campaign 
    advertisements contained sexually explicit images which would otherwise
    have been illegal under local law.  The courts held that he was
    protected, because he was engaged in "political" speech.
    
    To me, at least, the French laws seem to be seriously restricting
    freedom of speech to no good purpose, and essentially anti-democratic
    as well.  The reasoning here is that if you restrict political speech
    at all, more restrictions are easier to put in, and the danger is that
    criticism of the current government will be outlawed.  That's the end
    of freedom.
    
    This means also that the courts have held again and again that it is
    legal to advocate restricting freedom of speech--that is, the
    protections of Bill of Rights apply even to the enemies of those
    rights.
    
    			-John Bishop

    Re .22
    
    Yes, my understanding of US laws is that such a poster would
    be legal.  I've seen literature from some extremist groups
    and that's about what some of them say.
    
    There is a journal which re-prints newsletters from various
    extremist groups (of all political flavors).  University
    libraries sometimes have subscriptions to that journal.  It's
    been too many years for me to remember its name, however.
    
    As for whether such posters are infringements of human rights,
    well, that's what we disagree about.  I certainly support your
    right to protest and complain!
    
    				-John Bishop

    I think the general rule is if you limit the rights of a group,
    no matter how abhorrent their philosophy might be, then you set
    a precedent that eventually could lead to the infringement of
    everybody's rights.
    
    As John said, no matter how sick an idea might be, in the US as
    long as no one translates that sick idea into action which can hurt
    people, then a person or persons is/are entitled to think whatever
    sick thoughts they want to under the Constitution. The Constitution
    doesn't pass judgement on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of ideas
    - it only says government can't use it's power to inhibit the
    expression of those ideas unless they endanger others.
    
    Mark who_was_a_political_science_major_many_moons_ago

    The story continues:
    
    The cemetery of the oldest Jewish community in France, in Carpentras,
    near Avignon (125 families in a town of 26.000) has been devastated.
    
    34 graves have been destroyed, the stones sprayed over with
    anti-semitic slogans, one corpse of an 85 year old (dead 15 days ago),
    has been exhumed and paled with a beach umbrella.
    
    This is what "free" speech leads to.
    
    Sadly yours,
    
    Chris
    
    PS: LePen speaks of "manipulation". Some days ago, in a TV show, he
    complained about the newspapers being owned or controlled by Jews.
    Where have I heard that before?
    

    Re .26:
    
    You're 100% correct, Chris....LaPen (and by extension others of
    his ilk) is a sick puppy.
    
    But I don't think we should confuse vandalism/descecration with
    free speech - as I stated earlier, LaPen's right to vandalize
    cemetaries ends at the front gate of the cemetary IMHO.
    
    Mark

    re:.26
    At any given time a majority of Americans is in favor of restricting
    the right of free speech; George Bush got elected by appealing to that
    crowd!  But the principle usually survives in court, because the
    political consensus, beyond the yobbos, is that there's no good way to
    draw the line if it isn't directly inciteful to violence.  And LePen's
    latest, I'm afraid, would be quite legal, and rightly so, here.
    
    We have a saying:  You have freedom to say or write anything in
    America, and the freedom to be ignored by everyone else.  Most
    Americans distrust any "alternative" media, and trust the 11 o'clock TV
    news.  Repressive governments don't realize how little they would be
    hurt by real freedom of speech, since the masses tend to ignore what
    they don't want to hear anyway.
           fred