Tzadik

By David Greason

Since the last election, and the subsequent rise of Hansonism in Australia, a number of political commentators and others have sought to draw parallels between Pauline Hanson and other racist-populist politicians internationally, including Pat Buchanan and David Duke of the US, Preston Manning of Canada's Reform Party, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of France's Front National.

For any number of reasons all of these parallels are faulty; all of these men, for example, came to prominence with thought-out (however faulty) ideological positions after a background in politics - Buchanan as a former Nixon speechwriter, Duke as a charismatic leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Manning as the son and heir of a long time Albertan Social Credit premier, and Le Pen as a long-time activist on the French far-right dating back to the 1950s. Hanson, on the other hand, appeared pretty much from out of nowhere, and lacks an ideological framework for her national-populism. Le Pen may be a fascist, but Hanson's just a whinger.

Nevertheless, some parallels are more helpful than others. In The National Front and French Politics, British journalist and political commentator Jonathan Marcus outlines the rise of Le Pen and his apparently insignificant outfit to the mainstream of French politics. The book is subtitled "The resistible rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen", for Marcus believes that much of the Front's success was due to political indecisiveness and opportunism on the part of key individuals in the mainstream parties, particularly those of the conservative right.

This helped the tiny and otherwise insignificant Front to redefine the French political agenda, just as Hanson and her fellow travellers have in Australia. As Marcus points out, the unwillingness of the major parties (and sections of the media) to explicitly and definitively repudiate the FN's scaremongering meant that its effect went far beyond mere electoral support for the Front.

"Even though immigration was not prominent in the 1993 National Assembly election campaign - immigration controls, identity checks, and a reform of the rules governing the acquisition of French nationality nonetheless became a prominent and early element in the victorious Balludur Government's legislative programme," writes Marcus. "The creation of this continuing debate on immigration is Le Pen's greatest and most abiding achievement."

This should be kept in mind by those who take heart in the opinion poll results indicating a fall in support for Hanson's One Nation party. Hanson has already chalked up a number of wins, as evidenced by the Government's own immigration restrictions, its deplorable response to the Stolen Children Inquiry, and its budget cuts to anti-racist funding.

Marcus's account of the way France's mainstream right accommodated to neo-fascism is eerily reminiscent of the ongoing debate within our own conservative parties over whether One Nation candidates should be placed last on how-to-vote cards.

The Front's rise to prominence in the early 1980s was significantly boosted when members of the conservative RPR (Rassemblement Pour la Republique - Rally for the Republic) party formed a joint ticket with the FN in the town of Dreux to beat the incumbent Socialist Mayor. At worst the deal was criticised - but not prevented - by conservative leaders; in some cases, it was welcomed.

"Jean-Pierre Soisson, a leading member of the Parti Republicain, urged the people of Dreux to back the new list and insisted that the alliance with the National Front should be interpreted as 'a disavowal of (the Left's) national policies, notably its economic policies'," writes Marcus.

"The mainstream right had failed the first test posed by the National Front's arrival on the political scene. The only thing its leaders could agree on was that there should be no national deal with Le Pen. Beyond this ... there was little clarity in their arguments. The National Front was a bad thing, but then the Socialist Government was a bad thing too.

If Le Pen was exploiting the immigration issue, this was only possible because of the laxity of the left in dealing with the problem. (Conservative leader Jacques) Chirac had refused an alliance in Paris, but he had left the door open to deals elsewhere. The 'unnatural alliance' in Dreux had not been roundly condemned or rejected by the mainstream right's national leadership. On the contrary, they had given it their tacit approval."

Blaming the Socialists for Le Pen's immigrant bogey had its Australian counterpart soon after the elections when the Prime Minister cited Labor's so-called "pall of political correctness" to explain away Hanson's attacks on immigration and Aboriginal rights, rather than addressing and rebutting the points she raised. As the French experience shows, such sophistry only legitimises the far-right.

And the French conservatives came to understand this, but too late. Within a couple of years, conservative voices against the FN were stronger and louder, but by then, the Front had already begun to make inroads in local elections, inroads that were strengthened when French Socialist President Francois Mitterrand introduced proportional representation for the 1986 Legislative elections. The Front then won 35 parliamentary seats, and conservatives argued with good cause that Mitterrand had changed the system to weaken the mainstream right's vote.

During the last elections John Howard hankered after a Quiet Australia Policy, with his calls for a "relaxed and comfortable" society. You certainly don't get a quiet life when you've got an extremist party holding a significant bloc of votes.

In the next elections, Pauline Hanson and those of her ilk may be well-placed to take advantage of the vacuum created by half-hearted politicians with one eye to the polls, just as Jean-Marie Le Pen did. And if that happens, John Howard can kiss goodbye to his quiet days besides the radio, listening to the Third Test. The cricket ball that comes crashing through his window might very well be one of his own making.