France and Texas go way back. In 1839, as the handsome wood mansion in Austin that housed the French Legation still reminds us, France was one of the few nations to recognise Texas during its short life as a republic. (Although, relations weren’t always cordial, and during the famous “Pig War” of 1841 the French charge d’affaires had his valet shoot a number of porcine marauders that had invaded his residence.) A few decades later, a motley crew of Provencal poets, enamoured of “le wild west,” dressed up as cowboys and Indians, transforming the Camargue, a stretch of swampy land in southern France, into a Mediterranean Texas, replete with bulls and ranches. A few years after that, in 1984, French audiences and the Cannes jury hailed Wim Wenders stunning film Paris, Texas — an equally romanticised, though somewhat grimmer, French riff on the Lone Star state.
Is it possible that France is now importing the brand of conservative politics peculiar to Texas? Following March local elections, in which the far right made historic gains, the French seem intent on doing so. What French voters have expressed echoes what Texas conservatives, in particular the Tea Party stalwarts, have been saying for some time: Less federal government (whether D.C. or Brussels), more traditional values, and please, no more immigrants trying to change things around here.
To be sure, many voters spoke by refusing to speak at all: Never before has the abstention rate been so high in a French election. As with the Texas Democrats — scarcely half a million turned out to vote on March 23 — voter abstention is the ruling Socialist Party’s greatest fear. And the problem has only gotten worse as the approval ratings of national leaders have plummeted. Francois Hollande continues to go in public esteem where no French president has ever gone before: Just before the March 23 elections, a poll taken by the newspaper Le Figaro placed his approval rating at 17 per cent. (For a little perspective, Obama’s approval ratings in Texas are hovering at just above 30 per cent.)
The real significance of the neo-Gaullist UMP’s relative success was that it required the party to move substantially to the right. Like mainstream Texas Republicans, French conservatives have succeeded by latching onto the worldview espoused by their extreme right flank.
Even from the modest height of the ersatz Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, the twinned radicalisation of Lone Star and French conservatives unfolds in neat parallel. On a number of issues, the discourses of the Tea Party in Texas and the FN in France have pushed the traditional conservative establishments to the right. While “compassionate conservatives” have long argued for a more humane and generous immigration policy, the Tea Party has pushed mightily in the opposite direction. This seismic shift has led to the growing isolation of establishment figures like former president George W. Bush, and the growing prominence of radicals like Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who himself becomes a beacon of moderation when compared to Tea Party militants like Senate candidate Chris Mapp, who told the Dallas Morning News that ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight illegal immigrants — in his words, “wetbacks” — crossing the border.
The French right has responded in a similar manner to the FN’s harsh immigration policies. While no one has suggested shooting illegal immigrants from Romania or North Africa, the FN long ago called for the expulsion of three million “illegals” from France. More recently, FN leader Marine Le Pen has spoken about an “Arab occupation” of many French cities, while Florian Philippot, the FN candidate who is poised to win the mayor’s race in the Alsatian city of Forbach, insists on the term “invasion.”
In response, the mainstream French right has adopted the same language, sometimes with even greater ferocity. In 2005, Sarkozy famously dismissed the rioting youths in suburban Paris, many of whose parents were from North Africa, as “la racaille,” or scum of society. A few years later, he proposed that naturalised citizens — i.e., North African immigrants — who break the law be stripped of their citizenship. Since becoming the leader of the UMP, Jean-Franois Cop has upped the ideological ante, asserting that the children of illegal immigrants born on French soil should not automatically become French citizens. The so-called droitisation, or pushing to the right, of the UMP’s discourse, is clearing the ground for tacit alliances with the FN.
The Front National and the Tea Party share more than just a deep fear of being overrun by foreigners with brown skin. Libertarians apart, many members of the Tea Party have a distinctive view of Christianity and the religious foundations of the US. This is also the case in France, where the FN has attracted a growing proportion of young Catholic voters and even allied with militant Catholic organisations during the recent anti-gay marriage demonstrations. These Catholic voters are, admittedly, less than enthusiastic over Le Pen’s desire to resurrect the death penalty in France, outlawed in 1981. (They would have been thoroughly nonplussed when an American audience cheered the announcement that 234 executions have taken place under Governor Rick Perry’s watch.) But they are attracted to Le Pen’s opposition to state-reimbursed abortion and applauded the recent claim by her second in command (and companion), Louis Alliot, that the French state “does everything to encourage abortion and nothing to preserve life.”
While the UMP and other conservative and centrist parties have not embraced all of these positions, the FN has nevertheless tilted the playing field in that direction. Like the Tea Party, they continue to ram the centre of political discourse ever farther right. After Steeve Briois, the FN candidate in the city of Hnin-Beaumont, won the first round outright on March 23, one of his supporters shouted gleefully: “The world will now know who we are.” As we like to say in these parts, “Texas is bigger than France” — a claim that, unless it plans to annex Luxembourg, France can never challenge. But it may soon be able to make a different boast: “France is redder than Texas.”
—Washington Post
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of History at the University of Houston. His most recent books include Albert Camus: Elements of a Life.
