Autocratic Demagogues Have Common Roots

What do Hugo Chavez and Jean-Marie Le Pen have in common, other than a pseudo-fascistic political philosophy and a frightening talent for riding regional waves of popular contempt for foreign “others”? Both were paratroopers. It takes a bold person to jump out of a plane while getting shot at and, in the aftermath of World War II, a bold politician to rant to boorish crowds about conspiracies to oppress the volk. Chavez has been more successful. But Christopher Hitchens hints that even in the heart of Europe, the times are increasingly ripe for a bier hall putsch:

[T]he most salient fact about the French elections is the degree to which they show a France that is moving steadily to the right. "Sixty-five per cent to the right, in fact," as I am told by Louis Dreyfus of the Nouvel Observateur…. M. Le Pen smirks broadly and says that everyone is moving his way in one form or another. And he isn't completely bluffing.

Le Pen had a grand old time during the last presidential election, trouncing the Socialist nominee and making it to the runoff. In the shadow of the Paris riots and Segolene Royal’s W.-esque proclivity for amateurish gaffes, Nicolas Sarkozy is drifting to victory on an iron-fist platform; indeed, it seems the entire political climate of France moving toward iron-fist chauvinism:

Add to this the rather peculiar fact that a huge tranche of voters—most recently as large as 40 percent—simply refuse to tell the opinion polls (who last time got everything calamitously wrong) how they intend to cast their ballots. Again, the best intuitive explanation of this reticence is that many people are embarrassed to declare a Le Pen allegiance in advance. If I am wrong about this, then why are the other candidates so obviously seeking to appeal to his first-round supporters?

The great powers of Europe have an annoying habit of making it illegal to question whether the Third Reich’s xenophobia, tyranny, and murder were really so bad after all. Hell of a lot of good it’s done them.