Sarkozy killed Le Pen… but France is dead too

I just red a post on a French Blog called Big Bang Blog. It was talking about how Sarkozy copied the victorious walk of Chirac in 1995…

I totally agree with that. But what kind of surprised me was that they were saying that Sarkozy “killed Le Pen” (“[...] Il a tué Le Pen, c’est vrai [...]“) because before the election Le Pen was screaming around that Sarkozy was going to be the Jospin of 2007, meaning that he wasn’t even going to pass the first round. Finally Le Pen got 4th with a bit more then 10% of the votes. Sarkozy is first with more then 31% of the votes.

Not a big surprise to me. All surveys were forecasting this result. In 2002 surveys forecasted the wrong result (Chirac against Jospin in the second round) but there was only a 4% difference between the poll and the final result. Le Pen wasn’t suddenly going to gain 15% more votes than expected.

What I find weird in all this is that saying that saying that Sarkozy “killed Le Pen” sounds like something great… but it obviously isn’t. Sarkozy only “killed” the old man thanks to the ideas of that same old man! Like a user comment says on the Big Bang Blog you shouldn’t mistake chasing the Nazis with stealing there ideas (“Faut pas confondre chasser les nazis et courrir après leurs idées“)!

I’m happy that Le Pen didn’t go through, no doubt. But I’m extremely scared about what is happening in the country that gave me half of my blood. I don’t understand how so many people get so many strange ideas. From 12 candidates, 3 were not only right, but a bit more then that! And it’s not just any candidates, not the 3 last ones; they came first (Nicolas Sarkozy: 31,11%), fourth (Jean-Mari Le Pen: 10,51%) and sixth (P. De Villiers: 2,24%)! If we add that up we have nearly 44% of the French voters that are dreaming of an authoritarian system…

(If anyone finds that I’m going to far saying that Sarkozy is extreme, I found this article pretty interesting. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s an interesting view on things; what would people say if Turkey, or why not Germany, decided to create a “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity”? I ask you: Would that scare us or would we find it legitimate?)

I have a French colleague who voted for Sarkozy. He says he’s the only one that can “save France”. And he was talking about security the favorite subject of these people. I know this might seem a bit extreme, but I can’t stop making the comparison to my other half (my German side) and I think people alos though that Hitler was the only one that was able to save German. And also, Hitler did huge changes! Many people got work when he came to power. Probably just like we’ll all feel so much safer when Sorkazy will be president. And he promises to lower the unemployment under the 5% rate within five years.

Isn’t the question to know whether we really agree with the way he’s going to achieve these things? Whether we agree with the kind of society this might make out of us?!?

As a conclusion I’d just like to add a sentence that I read in an interview of the British-Indian writer/philosopher Salman Rushdie in Der Spiegel:

“If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.“