Soral Leaves the Front National

Here's an interesting article from Riposte Laïque on the "spectacular" break, as they call it, between Marxist philosopher and social critic Alain Soral, and Marine Le Pen who had supported his controversial entry into the Front National two years ago. It is, in a way, a sequel to my recent post entitled "Defections from the FN". I have had to abridge parts of it:

A few weeks ago, Carl Lang announced his departure from the Front National, and his desire to create a new party, based on the defense of Christian roots, threatened by the Islamization of France and of Europe.

This morning (February 2) at his blog, Alain Soral announced that he too will be leaving the Front National, two years after joining it. His words are a violent condemnation, through which we can perceive a huge disappointment with regard to Marine Le Pen.

Alain Soral has always declared himself to be of Marxist culture, and he is a former member of the Communist Party. (...) He is also close to Dieudonné. On an international level, he believes that the world is riddled with Zionist influences, an obsession with him, and so he does not hesitate to show indulgence for Hezbollah and Hamas. (...)

A polemicist, when he is on television he enjoys being provocative, sometimes with skill, but often in a way that's debatable, as when he reproached the young Muslim girls of the ghettoes for going out with bourgeois boys from the city, rather than with Muslim boys from the ghettoes, and when he defended the wearing of the veil at school, seeing in the issue a Zionist influence in the battle for laïcité.

Note: The above is too complicated to sort out. If Soral sees a "Zionist" influence in the NON-wearing of the veil, he is crazy. Not to wear the veil is completely in keeping with French "laïcité" and has nothing to do with Jews, whatever their point of view happens to be.

Taking as a basic principle that the Front National was the only real opposition party, he decided to join, before the presidential elections, and to introduce into the party a point of view oriented towards labor and those excluded from the system. Marine Le Pen seemed to be his main supporter on this new thinking, something that could not help but clash with the old guard, nurtured on anti-Communism and anti-republicanism.

The speech at Valmy, delivered by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and written by Alain Soral, to launch the presidential campaign, was an ideological rupture with the historical FN (...)

Note: The speech in question, dates from September 2006. In it Le Pen insisted he adhered to the values of the Republic, but also to the monarchical system of centralization which he saw as the source of republican jacobinism. He claimed that he encompassed everything, from the Capetian monarchy to Napoleon, to the Resistance. A good deal of the speech sounds like a rallying cry of Socialism to the "common man" to rebel against a "foreign" "Atlantist" influence.

A quick overview of the speech is online at Le Figaro.

The entire speech in French is available at the Front National website.

Thinking that the excluded classes (i.e., immigrants) and the working classes, disgusted by the two Establishment parties, would turn to the Front National, as they had in 2002; thinking too that the FN was certain to run in the second round of voting, Alain Soral and Marine Le Pen ran a campaign that turned off a number of party members, such as the visit to Argenteuil.

Note: This short visit of Jean-Marie Le Pen to the ghettoes became notorious. He told his young immigrant listeners that they were as French as anybody else. In other words, he became pro-assimilation, a position diametrically opposed to what the party traditionalists expected from its leader.

The catastrophic results of the presidential election weakened the bond between Soral and Marine Le Pen, although she still seemed poised to succeed her father, and Soral still sought to exert an influence over her.

They were often seen together on television defending more and more a republican line of thinking, and banking on the abandonment of such principles by both Left and Right. Their denunciation of "communautarisme" was relevant and they outdid each other speaking of the egalitarian values of the Republic.

Note: The above is a bit vague. I have not seen them together. It sounds like they defended the homogeneity and egalitarianism represented by the Republic against the rise of separate ethnic communities, i.e., what the French call "communautarisme". If they did, then they went against the wishes of the traditionalists in the party, who responded by defecting. These "trads" are, as far as I can tell, usually staunchly Catholic, possibly interested in maintaining the old regional identities of France, and definitely opposed to assimilating the newer ethnic communities of blacks and Maghrebins, which would require both affirmative action and "métissage".

Did Soral's pro-Hamas stance, plus certain orders issued by his movement, during the recent demonstrations in Paris ("Zionist, get out, France is not yours", for example), anger part of Jean-Marie Le Pen's colleagues, especially those he calls the "Atlanto-Zionists"? And does this departure of Soral signal the end of the new orientation of the FN, instigated by Soral, the former Communist?

The article concludes that we don't know yet. But while Soral lashed out against Marine, she in turn merely said that Alain Soral was an immigrant "who refused to be integrated..."

French readers who are interested will find an incredibly long web page of commentary at Le Salon Beige on the departure of Alain Soral from the Front National. I regret I have not had time to read it carefully. However, the fact that Soral was passed over as the FN candidate from Ile-de-France in the upcoming EU elections is realistically posited by some as the reason. Someone else says he never should have been there in the first place. That's certainly true. Many feel the FN will fold completely.

And for French readers interested in Soral's own justification of his departure, click here. Again, with regret, I did not have time to read it all, but I see that he accuses her of not letting him do anything for two years, of being unsure of herself, of surrounding herself with "courtisans and imbeciles".