French Left and Right

Democratiya has two excellent articles about the French elections, which show the transformations, which both the French Right and the French Left are undergoing. In the first article, André Glucksmann explains why in spite of the fact that he has always been a leftist philosopher he will vote for Nicolas Sarkozy. He denounces the left's moral superiority and its lack of substance. Sugary excerpt:

The official left believes itself to be morally infallible and mentally untouchable. It embodies both the revolution and the republic as a whole. That was relatively true up to 1945. The left had dared to put everything in question and lead the struggles from whence our secularist social democracy was born. But since 1945, after Vichy ad buried the thoughtfulness of the right, the professional left sat on its laurels. It misunderstood the discussions in Germany regarding Bad Godesberg) and in England about New Labour), it knew nothing of the spiritual explosion of dissidence in Eastern Europe, it didn't give a damn about the Velvet Revolutions, from Pragueto Kiev and Tbilisi. 

Wallowing in its narcissism, the left found itself badly wanting when Nicolas Sarkozy broke with every tradition of the right and claimed to stand for the rebels and the oppressed, as well as the young communist agitator Guy Môquet, martyred Muslim women, Simone Veil (who eradicated the suffering caused by clandestine abortions), Brother Christian à Tibhirine, and the Spanish Republicans. Instead of bemoaning the way he has appropriated the socialist legacy, allow me to rejoice. When I recognise Victor Hugo, Jean Jaurès, Georges Mandel, Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Albert Camus in this candidate's speeches, I feel somewhat at home.

In the second article, Philip Spencer responds to André Glucksmann by correctly pointing out that the French Right is not pure and is in fact culpable of colluding with regimes which Glucksmann find intolerable. Sugary excerpt:

But the French left is not the prime culprit here. It is the French right which has been in government for several years and has colluded with such regimes. One can argue that Sarkozy has made some effort to distance himself from Chirac's opposition to the Americans over Iraq, an opposition he called 'arrogant' rather than what it actually was - grossly hypocritical and grounded in past collusion with Saddam's regime. This French government has been complicit, or worse, with several murderous regimes around the world, from Rwanda in the 1990s to the Sudan today. There is mounting evidence that the French knew about and abetted the plans of the Hutu Power genocidaires. Most recently it was the French government which welcomed Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir with full pomp and ceremony at the very moment a global campaign was calling for his regime to be indicted for genocide.

Sarkozy is a powerful figure in this government. He may have differences with Chirac but he is not a candidate running against the machine or the right itself. He is the unchallenged leader of the right and a prominent figure in its government - Minister of the Interior no less. In that position, from which he has repeatedly said he has no intention of resigning (despite credible claims that he has abused it in the presidential campaign itself) he has openly flirted with racism against minorities, calling for the banlieues to be 'hosed clean'. This was widely perceived as a semi-naked appeal to Le Pen's voters on the racist right.

Glucksmann's allegiance to Sarkozy saddened me but it didn't surprise me for there has been an evolution within Glucksmann’s and other former leftist intellectuals which leads them to believe that confusion, ambivalence, moral ambiguity is the worst sin of all. Because the French left is torn between modernization and regression, it has become cause of all ills for Glucksmann and others. However, what is disconcerting about Glucksmann’s point of view is that he implies that the French has les mains propres clean hands even though as Spencer argues it does not. What is in my opinion the most intellectually dishonest about Glucksmann who remains my favorite French philosophy is his willingness to forgive Sarkozy and the Right the sins which he finds unforgivable on the left that is moral ambiguity and lack of principles. Sarkozy, more than Rightist presidential candidate in the past, has flirted with the far right by tying for example immigration with French national identity and the main problem of immigrants and their French descendants is that they don’t love France enough and that their culture is a obstacle to their integration, which is why they should leave it behind in order to assimilate. Glucksmann has remained silent despite the fact that he does not have a ethnic vision of France because for him, Sarkozy will shake the status quo in France and on the international scene by refusing to tolerate compromises and by to stirring up the hornets' nest like Bush did in Iraq in order to create a new and fairer world order.