But then behind the bar the postcard-sized flyers come into view. All for candidates from the Front National, France’s extreme-right, anti-immigrant political party.
France 2012 election: President Nicolas Sarkozy trails socialist Francois Hollande, says poll
Near the back, a larger FN poster adorns the wall. And upstairs, in the private room, two giant autographed portraits of the notorious Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader, and his daughter Marine, the current chief.
The Front’s unmarked headquarters is just down the road, and Chez Tonton has become its unofficial downtime haunt. Marine Le Pen said that if she wins the April 22 election, she’ll celebrate there, as opposed to some haughty endroit in the centre of Paris.
“All my clients are with her,” said Manuel Domingues, Tonton’s 50-year-old owner. “We love her. We need her. France needs her.”
All this might not seem so surreal were it not for the fact that Domingues is himself an immigrant, from Portugal, as are most of customers.
Evidently, the FN’s harsh words, unabashedly linking terrorism and delinquency to immigration, for instance, are no longer reserved for a choice few on the fringes of the French political sphere.
“France,” Domingues declared, “is being betrayed by so many thugs and criminals.”
The FN’s vision now enjoys wide support in the population and has been co-opted by other parties, and most particularly President Nicolas Sarkozy, who leads a party of the centre-right, the UMP.
The FN will not win the presidency. But in France, it has changed the game. It’s arguably responsible for the expansion and hardening of an arch-conservative and anti-immigrant discourse across the country.
A poll, released April 9, even showed the youngest voters, between 18 and 24, supporting the FN more than any of the other parties, a fact that stuns many observers since this age group tends to be more progressive than older ones.
“Many of the themes of the extreme right from the 1990s have become the ideas of the right of today,” said Eléonore Lépinard, a Université de Montréal professor and expert in French identity politics.
“The difference between Sarkozy and Le Pen,” added Lépinard, who hails from France, “is virtually nil.”
Even if jobs are the people’s No. 1 issue, immigrants and Muslims create the most tension and headlines.
One group gaining popularity is the xenophobic Bloc Identitaire, which sought to “wake up” the people of the town of Montluçon to the perils of a planned mosque. Last fall, members drove around at 4 a.m. loudly broadcasting a muezzin’s prayer calls. They also changed some street signs to read “Sharia Street,” and “Infidel Street.”
Martial Foucault, a University of Montreal political scientist, who recently published a book on French elections, says the right unquestionably frames immigration and integration issues.
Sarkozy has successfully used immigration in both his first mandate and in this election to suggest it’s a threat to French identity and security.
Even before the affair of Mohamed Merah, the Toulouse terrorist who in March killed seven people before being shot by police, Sarkozy said there were “too many foreigners” in the country. He promised to cut immigration in half.
He provoked apoplexy in talking about Muslims “of appearance.” (That would mean those of a darker hue.)
Sarkozy’s interior minister, Claude Gueant, went further. He spoke of “delinquency by foreigners.” He said, “Not all civilizations are equal,” referring to Muslims.
Le Pen is not as unpalatable as her father, who once dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail” of history. But she’s still tough on immigration.
She went so far as to say Merah shouldn’t have been French, even though he was born in France. She promises to cut immigration to 10,000 per year from about 180,000.
“Radical Islamism is the direct consequence of mass immigration,” she announced. “How many Mohamed Merahs are in the boats, the planes, that arrive in France each day filled with immigrants? How many Mohamed Merahs are among the children of these non-assimiliated immigrants?”
Meanwhile, in the wake of harsh words by politicians and strict policies on the Muslim head scarf and niqab, France has seen a rise in aggression toward Muslim women, said Lépinard.
The “ambient political discourse,” and the “multiplication of small racist phrases” by politicians, she added, can serve to legitimize such talk in the population and “lower the level of tolerance for religious difference.”
Mehdi Begaderne, a deputy mayor of the immigrant-heavy Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-bois, site of the notorious 2005 riots, put it this way: “France,” he said frankly, “is delirious with Islamophobia.”
The left is also not immune, either. It was the left-controlled Senate that banned head scarves for child-care workers earlier this year. That prompted several scholars to demand the left “de-LePenize” its politics toward secularism.
A new study by the socialist Jean Jaures Foundation also found that many leftist voters have positive views on immigrants — but, at the same time, want to cut their numbers.
Inside Tonton’s, Rose-Marie Quatrevaux says she wants immigrants to live as well as anyone.
But, referring to the Toulouse terrorist: “Most time horrible things happen like that it’s done by foreigners, by Arabs. Do you see a French person arm themselves like that to kill schoolchildren?”
Domingues rails against immigrants who feed off the generosity of the state. He lets slip a racist comment.
“We’re being completely invaded by coloured people,” he said. “I’m not racist. But I would like only people who do good things on (French) soil.”
Outside, 72-year-old Claude Sajet, who hangs out at Tonton’s, confides that he doesn’t share his friends’ views. “I’m convinced the party is racist,” he said.
And, he adds with a smile, that he knows of several Portuguese acquaintances who have themselves received aid from the French state.
The problem, Sajet concluded, “is that many people, not even in their party, say these kinds of things now. It’s dangerous.”
France 2012 election:
President Nicolas Sarkozy trails socialist Francois Hollande, says poll
Toulouse shootings upend French election
Toulouse killings throw wrench into French presidential elections
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Andrew Chung
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