[lbo-talk] France looks to new Sarkozy era

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 5/8/07, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> The Socialists were burdened with a largely negative campaign of
> scare-mongering ('Sarkozy will lead to riots' - i.e. you middle class voters
> ought to be scared of him provoking the migrants) because it was apparent
> that they accepted the basic argument that France's welfare state was
> holding the economy back.

The Socialists' warning of riots didn't make middling sorts become
scared of Sarkozy.  Rather, it prompted them, and probably also poor
whites, especially elderly women, who are stuck in banlieues, to think
that Blacks, Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants, overlapping objects of
fear in France, are indeed fearsome and that they should be afraid,
very afraid of them, while reminding the socially excluded of their
status as merely an object of socialist politics, not an equal
participant in it.  There is nothing more counter-productive than this
politics of fear for the Socialists, for they can't win without
winning Blacks, Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants and building solidarity
between them and whites of modest to middle incomes.
-- 
Yoshie