Nicholas Sarkozy: Back To The Bad Old Days Of French Politics

Nicolas Sarkozy`s shift to the right first round of the French Presidential Election shows that French Conservatives are still willing to cling to the themes that have animated the right since the dawn of the Third Republic.

On the First of May 1934 two rallies marched through central Paris, as they had marched annually for the preceding half a century. At the front of one marched Leon Blum, leader of the Section Française de l`Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO - the French Socialist Party). At the head of the other marched a collection of right wing leaders, including Colonel de la Rocque, leader of the paramilitary Croix De Feu, a hardline Catholic group whose members (all ex servicemen) marched in uniform, and Jacques Doriot, a former Communist who later became the far right mayor of Saint Denis (where Sarkozy chose to kick off his rightward lurch de la droit). While Blum would later be elected as the leader of the Front Populaire on a platform focusing primarily on social and economic justice, de la Rocque and Doriot both obsessed over France`s fall from greatness, idolised Louis XIV and were ardent Catholics. While Blum`s rally marched in commemoration of the Paris Commune of 1871 it`s counterpart assembled to pay homage at the statue of Joan of Arc - considered the embodiment of French identity.

On the First of May 2012 there were more than two competing rallies, the left still commemorated the Commune and the right still circled the statue of la demoiselle, but they were joined by a third as Nicholas Sarkozy stood before cheering supporters and proclaimed the importance of French national identity, vowed to halve immigration and protect police officers who shot and killed suspects. While Sarkozy chose the Eiffel Tower rather than the statue of Joan of Arc as his backdrop, his words would likely have met with approval from Doriot and de la Rocque.

In the presidential debate on the 3rd May Sarkozy claimed that his Socialist rival, Frencois Hollande, was stuck in the past. Hollande might have been forgiven for mentioning the words godet et bouilloire (pot and kettle). While Hollande continued to focus his campaign on banks and deficits, Sarkozy has drifted into the, seemingly ageless, territory of French national identity. One must remember that, in it`s commonly understood form, representative democracy is younger in France than it is in Britain and America, with the first lasting parliamentary system only established under the Third Republic in 1870. This aside, national identity has been an obsession of both the left and right as long as there have been political parties to obsess over it, although it has become the particular cause of the far right in recent years. During the Third Republic the idea of France as a colonial power came to provide a nexus for french identity and, as such, the debate took on an increasingly raw edge in the latter part of the 20th century.

Identity is conceived very differently in France to how it is in Britain or America. One cannot simply live according to French societal norms: full immersion is demanded - one must become French and religion has often played a big part in this. When the British established colonies overseas they were referred to as some variation on "our empire". When France did the same thing they referred to their colonies as "France outre mer", literally "France overseas".

This extreme conception of identity is a thread that has run through French politics for the last century and a half. The historian J. McMillan describes the search for an internal enemy as a defining feature of the French right. Historically this internal enemy must have two key characteristics: they must be demonstrably un-French, either by custom or even physicality and they must have a perceived capacity to undermine the state from within.

In the first half of the 20th Century the "enemy within" was undoubtedly jewish. But, in the shadow of collaboration and the Vichy regime this ceased to be acceptable. After the Algerian war of 1954 to 1962 Muslims became the new bogeyman. It`s easy to understand the short term causes for this fear. Algerian groups waged a campaign of terror on the French mainland during the war and, as such the fear conceivably ha a very real basis.

But in the long term it was symptomatic of something deeper. Despite coming from the former France outre mer, muslim immigrants were not "French". They formed their own cultural groups, stood apart from France`s Roman Catholic norms and brought with them an entirely different culture In many cases this has been a culture that has changed and developed, not as a result of the French government`s attempts at assimilation, but in response to events in the global Islamic community.

The loss of Algeria also gave birth to far right movements like Marine Le Pen`s Front National, founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former paratrooper who volunteered for a second tour of Algeria.

While more overt expressions of the "enemy within" narrative became largely the preserve of the far right during the presidencies of De Gaulle, Mitterand and Chirac, a thread of "identity war" was still laced throughout mainstream policymaking. The steady ghettoisation of the arabic immigrant population on the banlieue high rise estates and, most recently, laws banning the wearing of the burkha in public, were just some expressions of this.

Left wing critics of Sarkozy likened him to Marshall Petain last week, drawing an angry response from the incumbent president. Sarkozy is right, Petain would be an inaccurate comparison. Perhaps Sarkozy would be closer to Eduard Daladier, a leader of the Radical party in the 1930s who abandoned the reforming Front Populaire and, in order to maintain his grip on political power, became the first prime minister of a conservative government which shortly, willingly, ceded power to the Marshall. In the West extremist regimes don`t take power, it is given to them by moderates who believe they can use them to bolster their own position. With legislative elections approaching in June, Mr Sarkozy`s centre right UMP party must be more cautious in their posturing. This is not the first time a moderate faction`s lust for power has embraced elements of European politics best consigned to the 1930s.