Auvergnat
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2016
- Messages
- 773
- Reaction score
- 344
- Location
- France
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Independent
In a recent TV interview, François Hollande stated that "there are too many arrivals, too much immigration that should not be there". He then professed his belief that Muslims will eventually assimilate, that tomorrow's veiled women would end up abandoning her veil and become tomorrow's Mariannes.
While not everyone agrees with him within its party, it says something important about the left: most of French leftists are NOT multicultural. They (we) supported Muslims as long as we thought they would assimilate. For most of us the project was never to build a multicultural society or make room for Islam. Our generosity had always been conditioned to the idea of assimilation. And by assimilation it implies that Islam would become less important or even vanish, to fit in the non-religious French society.
Now that less and less of us believe that assimilation is happening or will eventually happen, now that our patience is exhausted, the left appears strongly divided on Islam, between the radicals (multicultural, borderless, liberals or libertarians) and the others (progressive, republican, social-democrat).
It will not translate into political propositions, though. The socialists depend on Muslims to win many Parliament's seats (they lose if they support Muslims, they lose if they do not), and they disagree on those questions. Actually the left may marginalize, coined as a pro-Muslim or ideologue party, with a political shift of electors from the left to the right, and as a result from the right to the far-right. We could see this as soon as 2017, with a duel between Juppé (old consensual conservative: your kind granddad who will not change anything) and Le Pen (National Front, far-right). Unless Sarkozy manages to beat Juppé (unlikely), in which case many configurations are possible.
Right versus far-right, is it the new norm for France or even Europe?
While not everyone agrees with him within its party, it says something important about the left: most of French leftists are NOT multicultural. They (we) supported Muslims as long as we thought they would assimilate. For most of us the project was never to build a multicultural society or make room for Islam. Our generosity had always been conditioned to the idea of assimilation. And by assimilation it implies that Islam would become less important or even vanish, to fit in the non-religious French society.
Now that less and less of us believe that assimilation is happening or will eventually happen, now that our patience is exhausted, the left appears strongly divided on Islam, between the radicals (multicultural, borderless, liberals or libertarians) and the others (progressive, republican, social-democrat).
It will not translate into political propositions, though. The socialists depend on Muslims to win many Parliament's seats (they lose if they support Muslims, they lose if they do not), and they disagree on those questions. Actually the left may marginalize, coined as a pro-Muslim or ideologue party, with a political shift of electors from the left to the right, and as a result from the right to the far-right. We could see this as soon as 2017, with a duel between Juppé (old consensual conservative: your kind granddad who will not change anything) and Le Pen (National Front, far-right). Unless Sarkozy manages to beat Juppé (unlikely), in which case many configurations are possible.
Right versus far-right, is it the new norm for France or even Europe?
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