Front National

In an on ne peut plus Orwellian development, a French court has ordered the leader of the Rassemblement National Party (name change from Le Front National), Mme Marine Le Pen, to undergo a psychiatric examination. Le Pen was taunted as having terrorist policies by radio-jock, Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2015 and she responded by posting a photo of some Daesh terrorism, as an example of real terrorism, to show that the Front was not terrorist. Amazingly, the state ignored the rationale of the response and, despite the political nature of such a move, managed to have her European parliamentary immunity removed and has persevered in having her tried. Although the psychiatric evaluation is actually routine in such cases, the case itself is not routine.

Details of the case

As president of the French National Front, on 16 December 2015, M. Le Pen posted photos of bloody hostage executions by jihadists from ISIS, on her twitter account. She had found these published unrestrained on internet media. Via these twitter messages she was addressing Radio Monte Carlo (RMC) and announcer Jean-Jacques Bourdin. She accused Bourdin of having drawn a ridiculous parallel between her political party and ISIS, which had recently carried out attacks on France. Her point was to show how different the Daesh photos were from her own party's material. In what seems like a shockingly corrupt and cynical political tactic, The French Government got the European Parliament to remove Le Pen's parliamentary immunity, so that they could prosecute her for this relatively trivial reaction. Now, as reported in late September 2018, Le Pen is being required to submit to a psychiatric examination. Whilst such an examination might seem like the ultimate attack on a rival politician by the French Government, these examinations are actually mandatory and routine in all French prosecutions for terrorism. What is not routine is to remove parliamentary privilege from a politician in order to prosecute him or her for an action designed to respond to a hyperbolic media taunt. Even Le Pen's rival and critic, Jean-Luc Melanchon, has criticised this requirement in the circumstances.

Ms Le Pen is actually a qualified criminal lawyer herself.

In the context of anti-globalist parties winning elections in Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia and Poland, French President Macron is losing approval daily and Le Pen's approval is growing again. Potentially Le Pen could go to prison for up to five years. Macron has committed France to illegal US-NATO wars and is intent on destroying aspects of France's Civil Code provisions for labor [1]; presumably throwing a rival into prison would not be beyond him, any more than it was for Tony Abbott [2] in Australia.

Soviet tactic condemned by other politicians

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, previously of French Communist and Socialist parties, currently leader of La France insoumise, tweeted that he was "in total disagreement with the psychiatrisation of political decisions." He said that "Madame Le Pen is politically responsible for her political acts." These statements were followed up by David Rachline, Rassemblement National Mayor of Frejus, who said, "Psychiatrisation of adversaries was a soviet specialty of totalitarian regimes. Now we have the right to it in France under Macron..." (French Source: https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/melenchon-en-desaccord-avec-lexamen-psychiatrique-de-le-pen-99135.

Order to commission an expert for expert psychiatric purposes

[Translation of the french document, by Sheila Newman]
Le Pen, Marion born 5 August 1968 [...]
Placed in examination
- for diffusion of messages violent, pornographic, or contrary to the accessible dignity of a minor, committed between 16 December 2015 at St Cloud on the Internet - twitter
... involving art.227-24 Penal Code
and Article 227-24, Article 227-29, Article 227-31 Penal Code
Taking into account articles B1, 156 and those following from the Code for penal procedure:
Taking into account the supplementary requirement of the Procurer of the Republic, on the date of 4 September 2018, towards medical expertise:
Taking into account Articles 227-24 of the Penal Code and 786-47 11* and 706-47-1 ..? 3 of the Code for penal procedure:
WE COMMISSION
Madame GArdel Berenice-Francoise-Marie, of Foch Hospital, 40 Rue Worth 92151, Suresnes, Cedex France, an expert who will adhere to article 160 fo the Code of penal procedure, who has been chosen for her competence, in her quality of expert inscribed on the list of Versailles Court of Appeal experts until 2016, and for her experience as a hospital practitioner, taking into consideration the necessity to proceed as quickly as possible to psychiatric expertise in order to satisfy a part of Article 6-1 of the CESDH and the right to be judged within a reasonable period of time (article 157 ?2 of Penal procedure code) so that the actions below can begin:
MISSION
Please proceed to the following actions after having familiarised yourself with the procedure:
1. Carry out the psychiatric examination of Marine Le Pen [...] and say whether she has the capacity to understand the situation and to respond to questions
2. Say whether the examination of [this person] reveals any mental or psychiatric abnormalities, and if so, describe and precise their effect
3. Say whether the infraction of which the subject is accused has a relationship with factual or biographical elements

and 5 other points of similar implication.

NOTES

[1] http://www.filoche.net/2014/11/30/peut-on-le-croire-lordonnance-macron-supprime-le-droit-specifique-du-travail/. Looks like the same workplace bargaining that Australia was bullied into, which then meant that employers could profit from mass worker immigration with impunity.
[2] /node/4919

Rumours are flying round that the mainstream press and polls underestimated Marine Le Pen's popularity in the French election the way they did Trump's popularity. That Le Pen would have won were it not for the tearing of 15 million voting ballots in advance so that French law would declare them invalid and fail to count them. The National Front has complained that in several places voters received voting ballots for both candidates sent to their homes, but all the forms for Le Pen were torn. This happened in Ardèche, Allier, Savoie, Loire, Yvelines, Eure-et-Loir, and Hérault. The National Front addressed its complaints to the National Commission on Election Supervision (la Commission nationale de contrôle des élections), which replied that it would ask the Minister for the Interior to take every step to see that these facts, if they were proven, would not alter the validity of the vote count. In particular by asking voters to use the voting papers provided in the voting booths [rather than those sent to their homes]. Source: Reuters "Le FN se plaint de bulletins de Marine Le Pen déchirés," 6 May 2015.

One anonymous source estimates the number of damaged voting ballot forms therefore invalid votes submitted to be 15 million. But this source seems to assume that all torn voting forms delivered to homes were then used in the voting booths. How many were used? This 2017 Presidential election had the highest ever number - 12 per cent - of blank and void votes, i.e. votes that were handed in blank and votes that were disregarded as illegal for one reason or another. With or without formal election fraud, it is obvious that, if the mainstream press and the European Union and the government and all the major political parties had not tried to influence the French not to vote for Le Pen, she would probably have won outright and Macron would never have built up much steam. As it was, ALL the major French political parties disappeared overnight because they received so few votes. It seemed, indeed, as if many of their leaders had crossed over to Macron's party, which is more of a phenomenon than a real political party.

Here's what some people are saying in France about the election:

The numbers:

33 million votes cast (and counted). 16 million votes cast (and nullified due to damaged ballots, and claimed "forfeited protest votes".)
Votes cast to Macron: 22 million. Votes invalidated by damaged ballots (100 percent of these were LePen:) 15 million. Votes for LePen that were not invalidated by damaged ballots: 11 million. Probable actual protest votes, no more than 1 million LePen: 11 million plus 15 million is 26 million.

Possible final vote tally:

LePen: 26 million.
Macron: 22 million.
Protest: 1 million.

Developments in the current French elections, with Left and Right exchanging preferences in order to defeat the National Front have become a case of life imitating art, specifically Houellebecq’s art in his latest novel, Soumission, which has just been translated into English.

Book Review of Soumission by Michel Houellebecq
Published by Flammarion, January 2015, English version October 20, 2015, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Michel Houllebecq's most recent novel, Soumission (Submission in English), a satire about France under a Muslim president, came out on the eve of the Charlie Hebdo massacres.

Publicity for the book ceased almost immediately for fear of setting off more violence. I decided not to go forward with a review for the same reason.

Months later, developments in the current French elections, with Left and Right exchanging preferences in order to defeat the National Front have become such a case of life imitating art, specifically Houellebecq’s art, however, that even a late review has relevance.

In Houellebecq's tale, Submission, which takes place in 2022, the traditional center left and center right parties are becoming irrelevant whilst the National Front is gaining relevance and its leader, Marine Le Pen is likely to win the presidency. What makes this particularly probable is the expected exchange of preferences between the Muslim Brotherhood Party and the National Front. Although the National Front is anti-high immigration, they share with the Muslim Brotherhood Party a nationalistic dislike of the European Union and big business.

Horrified at the prospect of being made completely irrelevant, the center right and center left make a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood Party and Marine Le Pen (National Front) is left out in the cold.

The French wake up the next day to an Islamic President. Women stop wearing skirts and instead wear trousers and long tops and cover their faces. The unemployment rate drops precipitously because women stay home. Very generous family benefits make it much easier for them to do this.

The protagonist of the novel, François, a literature professor, is even more misogynist than previous Houellebecq protagonists. He has the same antecedents though: estranged from unloving parents, unable to keep a girl, devoured by self-loathing. He is a serial recipient of ‘dear john’ letters, and only comfortable with prostitutes. Although he has no religion himself, he specialises in the conversion to Catholicism of an obscure 19th century writer, Huysmans. Huysmans was troubled by his sexuality and wrote that Catholicism helped him deal with it.

François is out of Paris as the new government takes over, traveling in a kind of existential fugue laced with mid-life crisis.

When he returns, he finds that his branch of the Sorbonne has been privatised and sold to a Saudi Prince. He suddenly realises at an academic meeting that there are no longer any female academics. The politically astute but academically bland new dean takes an interest in François, possibly because of Huysmans. François is intrigued to see that the dean has taken a very young wife in addition to his first. The dean urges Francois to do the same.

The advent of a French Islamic state has normalised arranged marriages and the novel closes as the professor contemplates polygamous marriage as a possible solution to his personal loss of direction.

Michel Houellebecq had previously been taken to court for racial vilification but had won because the French constitution permits criticism of religion as an essential political freedom and Houellebecq had criticised Islam, not Muslims.

In La Carte et le Territoire, published after that case, one of the characters, a novelist with a strong ressemblence to Houellebecq himself, is brutally murdered. We do not know why or who murdered him, only that he expected something like that to happen.

At the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacres, when asked how he felt about Islam these days, Houelbecq said he had completely changed his mind, having since read the Koran. He said that he now thought that Islam was a religion of peace and that he would not be particularly fussed if France were to become Islamic.

In Australia we have seen the similar collusion between political ‘enemies’ against nationalist parties as is transpiring now in France. Neither Left nor Right alone can defeat the National Front. The Left's performance is pitiful, but, if they pull out of the second rounds, it is hoped that the Right will get enough of their votes to win. Marine Le Pen has called this undemocratic, a sign that the political Left and Right have become the same thing: servants to other masters than the public, offended at the idea that citizens might choose candidates who they think will represent them.

Soumission has hovered at the top of sales lists in three European countries since it came out.
Soumission was published in English as Submission on the 20th of October 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.