Extreme right demonstration in France

This video from Yale University in the USA says about itself:

The Dark Years: Vichy France

France Since 1871 (HIST 276)

For decades after the end of World War II the question of French collaboration with the Nazis was obscured. One of the reasons for this was the desire of de Gaulle and others to downplay the central role of communists in resisting the occupation. In fact, many French civilians were involved to greater or lesser degrees in informing upon their fellows or otherwise furthering the interests of the German invaders. Under the Vichy regime, right-wing politics in France developed an ideological program founded upon an appeal to nationalism, the soil, and the rejection of perceived decadence.

By Antoine Lerougetel in France:

Far-right demonstration in Paris calls for resignation of President Hollande

30 January 2014

The French far-right organised a “Day of Anger” last Sunday calling for the resignation of French Socialist Party (PS) president François Hollande. Police estimated that 17,000 marched through Paris.

The Médiapart news site reports that the collective “had announced a movement of ‘convergence of struggles’, organised under eight different banners: taxation, education and youth, family, national identity, respect for religious convictions, free enterprise, respect for fundamental liberties.”

Many far-right groups attended the rally, including the Nationalist Revolutionary Groups; the Nationalist Front; Land and People; and Yvan Benedetti, ex-National Front and leader of Oeuvre Française, dissolved last July after the neo-fascist murder of a student, Clément Méric. There were also supporters of far-right Islamist comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala,

Dieudonné M’bala M’bala is not an Islamist and not a Muslim. Rather, he belongs to the far Right wing in the Roman Catholic Church. Wikipedia reports:

In July 2008, Jean-Marie Le Pen became godfather to Dieudonné’s third child. Philippe Laguérie, a traditionalist Catholic priest, officiated at the baptism, which was held in the Saint-Éloi congregation in Bordeaux.

The Antoine Lerougetel article continues:

who publicly associates with Holocaust deniers such as Robert Faurisson.

Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic slogans chanted at the rally included “Israel out of Europe,” “France for the French,” and “Enough of Hollande, Work, Family, Fatherland”—the last three words of this chant being the motto of the fascist Pétain regime that collaborated with the Nazi Occupation during World War II.

The rally received various signals of sympathy from right-wing French politicians. The Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) did not call for support for the Day of Anger but its former education minister, Luc Chatel, vice-president of the party, stated: “I don’t support it but I understand it.”

Christine Boutin, a former right-wing housing minister and leader of the small Christian Democrat Party, said that she agreed with “that combination of angry people,” though she declined to attend for fear of violence.

The National Front (FN)—led by Marine Le Pen, whose father Jean-Marie infamously dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail of history”—hesitated over calling for support of the day of action. Her niece, FN deputy Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, changed her mind after her local branch had participated in the organisation of the Day of Anger demonstrations because of “the environment, the support of the pro-Dieudonné people, [and] the conflictual nature of exchanges on the Internet.”

The staging of the rally, in which the most depraved and reactionary elements posture as the only opposition to Hollande, reflects the total absence of political leadership in the working class in France. There is deep opposition in the working class, from the left, to the austerity policies and neo-colonial wars of Hollande. He has become France’s most unpopular president since 1958, when the office was created after World War II.

Under conditions in which pro-PS middle class groups like the pseudo-left New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) are widely seen as the “left” of the political spectrum, however, this opposition finds no expression. What comes to dominate are the most degraded elements of far-right politics.

In recent local by-elections, the neo-fascist FN has been outscoring the PS. Forecasts for the European elections in May give the FN the highest scores, in front of the main parliamentary parties, the PS and the conservative UMP of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Day of Anger is an instance of a Europe-wide development of fascistic tendencies using chauvinism, homophobia, and Islamophobia to mask their police-state, pro-capitalist agendas in order to divide and disarm the working class. Last year, they organised mass rallies in France against gay marriage and, on January 19, a demonstration of thousands against abortion.