Despite the onslaught by academics and politicians to make us believe that the traditional family is no more, traditional values are actually making a comeback. For a long period, France has been in economic crisis and because of her social and cultural policies has lost pride of place in Europe. Today, the French are appreciating more politicians similar to Trump or François Fillon, who want to speak about their plight, even if, in terms of economic policies, the latter will follow Schumpeter’s economic doctrines to the letter.
The interest in François Fillon should not be strictly linked to the fact that he is Catholic. Once he becomes president, there will be a shift of interest. The traditional family will receive its deserved support while abortion, divorce and gays etc will remain part of the French legislation. But, undoubtedly there will be a move towards more freedom in France. At the moment, the ruling French Socialists are stifling freedom of expression in the name of gender politics. At the beginning of this month, the Lower House approved a law whereby any pro-life propaganda on the internet will be considered a crime in France. The issue here is not about pro-life propaganda or abortion. The actual problem is that the French Socialists are actually smothering freedom of expression.
What we are now witnessing in France is the culmination of a complicated political scenario. In the collective memory of the French people, Fillon represents the most honest politician of the right. For the electorate, he is seen as more honest than the two other contenders he has defeated – Sarkozy and Juppé. The political career of the latter two has been riddled with stories of corruption and court cases. Fillon’s conservative values appear as a model of political righteousness and honesty.
Manuel Valls has now joined the fray declaring that the French are not prepared to embrace Fillon’s ideals, adding that he intends fighting outdated ideas of 1980s. We will have to wait and see. But his candidature has divided rather than united the French left. He is being depicted as having betrayed Hollande. Valls convinced Hollande not to contest the next French presidential election. When Hollande made his views known, Valls announced his intention to be the candidate of the left for the next French presidential election.
Instead of asking why the French people so vociferously want the return of past values, Valls is on one side presenting himself as the defender of laicité in France while labelling the values of his opponents as medieval. But the political game in France would be played around the economy and how this is affecting normal French families.
In terms of economy, Fillon is more extreme than Marine Le Pen’s extreme right. For example, he has no problem to speak up about the need to reduce the number of French civil servants. One needs to remember that the French system is highly Jacobean in content. Its concept of secularism is where the State reigns supreme. The State is the paterfamilias of all French citizens. Fillon wants to rock this system, which means the end of the Enlightenment.
In his defence of traditional family, Fillon intends defending these values not only for the sake of sexual mores but more importantly because in his economic model, the traditional family comes first. In the true spirit of the French Republic, he is seeing the family as the sole unit of stability and human propagation. Here, he stood his ground. He forcefully resisted the onslaught of the French left that used twisted facts about French secularism and laicité to attack Fillon, demanding an apology from him for being against same sex marriage. Fillon refused. This refusal did not bring about his downfall as the political left expected. Most probably, this would have happened some years back. It would have gone against what the French left considers as the basic principles of French laicité. As Fillon rightly argues; the values of diversity and multiculturalism are not part and parcel of the French system of laicité.
The logical question would be why has Fillon succeeded in surviving such an onslaught, where others failed in the past? They were all dubbed extreme-right wingers. What Europe is experiencing now is a new form of politics that goes beyond the individual. It goes beyond what Zygmunt Bauman has coined the liquid society. Even this concept of Bauman goes against the constituent elements of any republican spirit, particularly since it was construed in France after the 1870s.
Fillon has the correct definition of what are the constituent elements of the French Republic. For him, multiculturalism in particular goes against the basic principle of what the French love to define as Republican values. The French Republicans like to speak in terms of “la patrie”. This term has the same meaning as the Latin “patria”, which our conservative party thinks has become old fashioned and obsolete. In itself, this proves that this terminology is not obsolete, and unlike what the PN gurus want us to believe, this represents the politics of the future.
For the French ‘la patrieestune et indivisible’ –‘the fatherland is one and indivisible’. Fillon considers policies of multiculturalismas going against article 25 of the “DECLARATION DES DROITS DE L'HOMME ET DU CITOYEN”. Multiculturalism is divisiveand far from unifying France as one Republican State.
For those who are not into French politics and its Constitutional history, Fillon may appear to be on the wrong side. On the contrary, he is the one who is sticking his neck out for the values of the French Republic.These values had been betrayed by those supporting concepts of diversity and multiculturalism. This is why his position is becoming bolder and bolder. The left associated Fillon’s resistance to same sex marriage to his Catholicism. This was aviewpoint adopted deliberately to discredit a politician in a highly secular country. However, what happened in the American Presidential electionis now happening in France. Rather than destroying a politician, such an approach has brought him to the fore andFillon has ended up defeating both Sarkozy and Juppé. These two politicians were more in line with the Socialist concept of French laicité than Fillon. They were far more predisposed to adapt to gender politics and ensurethat the gender agenda would continue. After 1968,a tradition of sexual revolution was fabricated in France.For various reasons, this tradition became one with a constituent element of the Frenchlaicité.
The French leftmade the mistake of ignoring the aspirations of the conservative voter. It ignored the ambitions of normal families who are now realizing that gender politics may appear nice on paper but there is no room or benefit for the traditional family.
On the contrary, now France, like the United States, has entered into a phase where families cannot ensure that their offspring will have the same standard of living enjoyed by their fathers and mothers. Both Obama and the Europe Union have been far more interested with gender politics and multiculturalism than in tackling the real problems that were destroying many normal families. Indeed, despite all the bragging of multiculturalism and gender politics,a large number of its citizens are being marginalized by the same economic principles being promoted and endorsed by Europe and the United States in the name of liberal diversity and multiculturalism.
Instead of addressing the real problems of the bourgeoisie whose economic power is slowly eroding in Europe, politicianschose to pick up the gauntlet of gender politics at any cost. But these are only the basic aspirations of the well to do. The lower social classes are not particularly interested in such politics. They have other priorities. Maltese Labour supporters in the 1930s used to tease EnricoMizzi about his discourse on culture by reminding him that “l-ewwel il-pappa u mbagħad l-umpaqqa Nerik” – “first food then music Nerik”. In modern parlance, music stands for everything from culture to gender politics.European politicians did not want to listen to the pain of the lower classes. Only the politicians of the extreme right showed interest. The political discourse was that they were not sufficient in number to give a party an electoral victory. Fillon has come in to fill this void.