Le Pen's fall may bring a new danger in Europe

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "N as in Nazi, F as in Fascist, Down with the National Front," chanted 30,000 demonstrators marching past the Bastille in eastern Paris, and the National Front's leader, Jean- Marie Le Pen, is certainly down. On 2 April, a French court gave the hard-right leader a three-month suspended sentence for attacking a rival in last May's National Assembly elections. But Le Pen's fall merely opens the door for Bruno Megret, the most dangerous man in Europe.

"(Megret's) group within the National Front believe Europe has been betrayed by the decadent Judaeo-Christian tradition which has controlled it for 20 centuries," says Lorrain de Saint Affrique, a former National Front official. "(They think) it is time to return to pagan values of the blood and the soil, which will ensure the survival, then the triumph of the white race."

Adolf Hitler used to talk like that, and so did the regime led by Marshal Petain that collaborated with the Nazis in occupied France. But when you hear it in today's Europe, you expect it to come from a sub-literate skinhead, or else from a beefy thug like Le Pen himself, an ex-paratrooper who ran an army torture group during the Algerian war and regularly assaulting his opponents even now.

You do not expect it from a slight, charming, almost effeminate man with a very expensive education like Bruno Megret. But it's precisely Megret's impeccable establishment credentials -- graduate of the elitist Ecole Polytechnique, Master's degree from Berkeley, son of a senior French official on the European Commission -- combined with his excellent grasp of political tactics, that make him so much more dangerous than Le Pen.

For 20 years Le Pen peddled his anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant bile (he once called the Nazi death camps "a detail of history"), and never got farther than a few local council victories in economically depressed southern towns. Even the rest of the French right, heirs to the Gaullist tradition of anti-fascist resistance, shunned the NF as successors to the collaborationist Petain regime.

This division of the French right has enabled the left to dominate both the National Assembly and regional governments much of the time. With admirable self-discipline, the legitimate French right repeatedly allowed left-wing politicians to take power rather than let the fascists in -- but it did require a monster at the head of the National Front to concentrate their minds.

Le Pen was the necessary monster -- but now the smooth, well- mannered Bruno Megret threatens to take his place.

Megret was the loyal strategist behind Le Pen's breakthrough 15 percent vote in the 1988 presidential election, and the author of the party's subsequent high-profile local victories. But he saw clearly that it would never break the 15 percent barrier nationally so long as it was quarantined by the respectable right.

Magret spotted a chance for the NF to break out of its ghetto in last month's elections for France's 22 regional governments. Knowing that the vote would split in ways that left the National Front holding the balance of power in many regions (half of them, as it turned out), he persuaded the NF leadership to adopt a strategy of giving the moderate right its support without any preconditions.

All the National Front would ask, in return for its votes, was a voice in the ear of the resulting center-right governments. The national leadership of the Gaullists and the other big center- right party, the Union for French Democracy (UDF), would never approve, but local political bosses anxious not to lose their chauffeur-driven limos might have less difficulty accepting fascist support.

It was brilliantly successful: two weeks ago, local UDF leaders in five regions broke ranks and accepted National Front support. Political analyst Jerome Lambert commented: "Megret has basically redrawn the map single-handed...The right has exploded."

Three or four more regions were about to produce the same deal -- until the old street-fighter Le Pen demanded that UDF rebels in Provence vote him in as regional president rather than one of their own. That stopped the National Front bandwagon dead.

It made the UDF politicians collaborating with the NF look not just cynical but stupid. There were no more local deals, and by week's end two of the five regional presidents who had made deals with the National Front had resigned. But the precedent has been set for future collaboration on the right -- and Le Pen's arrogant blunder in Provence may have sealed his fate as NF leader.

His age (70 in June) and his recent conviction for assault makes him vulnerable to an internal coup. Besides a suspended prison sentence and a stiff fine, he has been stripped of his civic rights for two years, which deprives him of his right to hold office or even to vote.

The appeal process will let Le Pen avoid jail for up to two years, but his conviction makes him an even greater liability to the National Front. "At the moment I see no other possibility than that Megret will take over, and sooner rather than later," said Michael Darmon, author of a new study of the National Front. And with Megret at the helm, the National Front might at last have a chance of winning national power as part of a right-wing coalition.

What kind of policies would Megret impose if he ever won power nationally? The answers are in Vitrolles, a small town west of Marseilles where his wife stands in for him as mayor. Municipal police wear black paramilitary uniforms as they patrol the streets; left-wing books have been removed from local libraries; funding has been withdrawn from immigrant support groups -- and there is a subsidy on offer for each child born to a Europeans- only couple.

It's still unlikely that Megret will ever come to power. The struggle to unseat Le Pen might even split the NF permanently, for it is mostly held together by his bullying, charismatic personality. But a truly nasty possibility is being born in France.