May 3, 2002	atimes.com

Front THE ROVING EYE Rock against racism By Pepe Escobar PARIS - On the French barricades in May 1968, the dream was to be a realist - and demand the impossible. In the streets and in shock in May 2002, startled realists are just settling for the reallistically possible: to crush racist, fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in the second round of the French presidential elections on Sunday. The May Day parade in Paris happened at a historical crossroads. In the morning, Le Pen's supporters rallied around the statue of Joan of Arc. In the afternoon, creative France, high-tech France, the France of the joie de vivre and the melting pot rallied from Republique to Bastille - symbols of liberte, egalite et fraternite and the French Revolution. Fears of violent clashes in the streets - a replay of May '68 - never materialized, but on Sunday the stakes become even higher. Puzzled US media keep asking why France is different. Well, because it is. Of all the great European civilizations, France is the only one that managed to preserve its myths and symbols. In France, the present was always glowing through the reflected glory of the past, and memories were never tarnished by even the shadow of a doubt. France - on a different level, of course, as compared with China or Japan - is a labyrinth of symbols. So it's no wonder that in the land of equality, the Revolution and an extremely developed moral sense, a racist and fascist standing in the second round of a presidential election is seen as nothing less than an earthquake. Only when France woke up after the grotesque result of the first round of polling did people start thinking about whether they deserved this humiliation - which they brought on themselves: a "choice" between a cynical and corrupt, egocentric incumbent (Jacques Chirac, 69 years old), and a violent, racist thug capable of any kind of mass manipulation (Le Pen, 73 years old). There are strong reasons why young, open, creative, deeply European France - which incorporated the euro without a hitch, and holds the highest economic growth rate in the European Union - fell into this abyss. Chirac's one and only campaign theme was "insecurity" - a Le Pen special (no wonder Le Pen said "the French always prefer an original to a copy"). Le Pen always blamed insecurity on immigration. But France is not a huge Karachi. EU numbers are unequivocal: the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, for instance, are more violent. It may be an aberration that a France internationally loved for its multiracial World Champion soccer team could be, deep inside, so racist. But the strong reasons for this performance of extreme-right populism concern not only France but the whole of Europe. The centrality of the working class - a crucial concept in classic European Marxism - is over. Workers are now a minority in European society. They face fewer problems at their workplace nowadays than at home. They usually live in absolutely dreadful suburbs lacking any decent public services. And they just don't understand what the left is all about these days. People in the services industry now vote for the left - and their culture, compared with the working class, is more democratic, more permissive. The leaders of the left - such as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany - belong to the upper middle classes. And in the case of France, they belong to the elite ENA School, such as eight ministers of the defunct Lionel Jospin government. So obviously, under these circumstances, there are no bonds anymore between workers and the traditional left. That's why they "migrate" and vote for populists such as Jorg Haider in Austria. They vote for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands. They vote for Judge Schill in Hamburg. They vote for the Vlaams Blok in Antwerp. They vote for the Lega del Nord in Lombardy. And they vote for Le Pen in France. These disgruntled working-class voters still don't understand - and still fear - Brussels. They regard Brussels - the headquarters of the European Union - as a Washington filled with intrigue. It certainly is - and on top of it without political power and constitutional legitimation. Voters are more resigned than convinced by this Europe that went through hell and high water to arrive at the euro. They sense that national elections only regard the minor authority of the declining nation-state. They sense that most of their daily life does not depend on it anymore: it is being regulated "somewhere" by bureaucrats in Brussels. This overreaction - materialized by a protest vote - is even stronger among the poorest and more desperate layers of the population: they always expect a lot from the state. The specter of immigration is the piece de resistance of all neo-populist and neo-fascist movements in Europe. The Northern League fears immigration from the south of Italy. Jorg Haider's Austria fears immigration from Eastern Europe. Germany and Scandinavia fear immigation from Turkey. France - and Spain and the Benelux - fear immigation from North Africa. The UK fears immigration from India and Pakistan. It won't stop: the 21st century will be one of immigation en masse. Each European country faces its own crisis of identity. And the situation is bound to become even worse because of the profound crisis in the Muslim world. Right in the middle of this explosive context, the Prophet, the roving gambler, brings his rolling circus to town - to the eye of the volcano. At 60, he is the supreme alchemist of a total synthesis of hillbilly, gospel, folk, blues and rock 'n' roll. He is a black monolith of American culture - more isolated and mysterious than ever, singing about an America in a state of total chaos. Bob Dylan played Paris this Monday and Tuesday. He might have thought these would be momentous times: after all, Love and Theft, the latest, splendid album, came out on September 11. "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" - and indeed it did, over the twin towers in Manhattan, over the Florida ballot in the US presidential elections, and now over the French elections. As he was deconstructing his anthems like a wobbly Picasso dressed as a glamorous hobo, the France the world loves - young, creative, multiracial, witty, sophisticated - was almost in tears. "Now you don't talk so loud, now you don't seem so proud." Dylan's immortal songwriting was echoing the rallying cry of daily demonstrations all over France - "First, second, third generation, we are all children of immigrants." As if this Asian, African, Arab France was saying: it doesn't matter if we don't know who we are anymore, we'll always have a Bob Dylan song for an answer. (©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. 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