& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

After the neofascist cataclysm -- lessons from France

Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi
***They must now recognise that neoliberal economics has failed. They must move towards a "Fourth Way", a more anti-capitalist agenda, which alone can secure economic and social rights for the masses. Unless this "Fourth Way" gathers momentum, the Far Right's challenge will remain too stiff for the lily-livered to repulse... France has clarified the choice. Europe's real options are: socialism, rooted in democracy and popular empowerment, or, descent into racist violence, ethnic nationalism, and chaos.***
DEMOCRATS everywhere must heave a sigh of relief, but no more, at the outcome of the French presidential election in which the conservative Jacques Chirac trounced the extreme-Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The choice before the electorate, as the conservative Economist magazine put it, was between "a washed-up… opportunist regularly lampooned on television as 'Superliar', or … a thug whose message is one of hate."
The voter's rejection of a distasteful option must be welcomed--but with grave reservations.
Mr Le Pen's performance in the April 21 first round was stunning. He overtook Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. This was a cataclysm in French politics--and a shame on democracy.
However, the extreme-Right's xenophobic, racist fringes are not about to seize power in Western Europe. The French contest, along with other recent developments in Europe, highlights something else: a crisis of many "mainstream" ideologies and parties, in particular the "New Labour"-style Social Democrats.
Mr Le Pen came first in as many as 35 out of France's 100 departments or districts. He scored especially well in high-immigrant areas. Sadly, he got twice as many working class votes as Mr Jospin.
But Mr Le Pen's tally of 4.8 million votes was only marginally
higher than in the 1995 presidential election.
Mr Le Pen's success can be attributed less to his appeal than to the mainstream candidates' failure, and above all, to the Left's fragmentation. Put simply, "the Left defeated the Left".
Twenty-seven percent of the Left's supporters voted for parties more radical than Mr Jospin's.
These notably included the Trotskyists.
The broad Left coalition which supported Mr Jospin in 1995 had 44 percent of the vote. Mr Jospin was looking for an additional six percent. But his support had eroded.
Mr Jospin's technocratic style of functioning disappointed many, especially recently, when he failed to prevent the closure of factories owned by multinational corporations.
Mr Jospin couldn't decide whether he was running as a Socialist, a Social Democrat, or as a centre-Leftist. This indecisiveness undermined his significant achievements as Prime Minister: reduction in unemployment by almost one million, extension of healthcare to
the poorest, and reduction in working hours from 40 to 35 per week.
Further complicating matters was Mr Le Pen's energetic campaign about "insecurity", meaning high rates of crime, largely blamed upon France's four million Arab immigrants. Mr Le Pen's rivals accommodated to some of his prescriptions: e.g. a clampdown upon crime, violating fundamental
rights.
Therefore, Mr Le Pen charged that Mr Chirac "copied my programme". Many voters preferred "the original to the photocopy"!
In the second (May 5) round, most of the Left backed Mr Chirac--to keep Mr Le Pen out. Many voted for him with the utmost reluctance.
Mr Chirac is mired in controversies over personal corruption and shady political deals. He is widely despised. He lacks decent ideological moorings or political vision. Even The Economist says, he "does not deserve to stay on".
If the coming (June 9-16) parliamentary elections produce a centreLeft victory, France will have yet another phase of "cohabitation".
A much worse possibility would be the near-but-incomplete victory of the mainstream Right, which would have to depend on the Far Right for parliamentary majority. The Far Right could infect the mainstream with xenophobic poison.
Mr Le Pen has succeeded in shifting France's political spectrum to the Right and in giving respectability to neofascism.
This shift is parallelled by similar, if less alarming, developments in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Norway and Denmark. These all have Right-wing parties in government.
Since 2000, even the neofascist Far Right has grown: like Austria's misnamed "Freedom Party", Belgium's Vlaams Blok, Italy's Northern League, and the British National Party.
Some, like Mr Pim Fortuyn's List in the Netherlands, have created enormous strife over immigration-leading to violent reprisal, as in Mr Fortuyn's condemnable assassination.
Western Europe's Rightward shift can be explained by three factors. First, the end of the Cold
War. Mainstream parties and ideologues saw this as the decisive victory of liberal democracy over communism. In reality, only the market economy had triumphed over the command economy.
But the mainstream ended up supporting market fundamentalism. This blurred Left/Right distinctions and promoted the managerialpragmatist approach.
A second factor is the bankruptcy of the neoliberal marketfundamentalist economic model. This has neither produced equity, nor even growth.
Politically, neoliberalism led to the abandonment of European reunification. This has produced a catastrophe in Central and Eastern Europe: bloody wars in the Balkans, economic and social collapse in Russia, and crime, unemployment and destitution elsewhere.
These in turn fuel irrational fears about "Eastern" immigrants "snatching away" Western European jobs.
The third factor is the climate created by the US's overplaying of the "anti-terrorism" card postSeptember 11. This provoked
strong anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe.
This was compounded by Mr Ariel Sharon's atrocities against Palestinian civilians, followed by regrettable anti-Semitic attacks. All these developments helped the Extreme Right.
There is a real danger that the European Far Right will grow unless an alternative emerges from the "New Labour"-type Social Democrats. They still rule in nine of the EU's 15 states. They are distinguished from the old Socialists by their "Third Way" programme--of aligning with globalised capitalism, not transforming it.
However, the Social Democrats are also more committed to transparency, pluralism, multi-ethnic politics, gender equality and ecological security than the old Socialists.
They must now recognise that neoliberal economics has failed. They must move towards a "Fourth Way", a more anti-capitalist agenda, which alone can secure economic and social rights for the masses.
Unless this "Fourth Way" gathers momentum, the Far Right's challenge will remain too stiff for the lily-livered to repulse.
France has clarified the choice. Europe's real options are: socialism, rooted in democracy and popular empowerment, or, descent into racist violence, ethnic nationalism, and chaos.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.