Sarko Agonistes

And if Segolene gets in, maybe she can ingratiate herself with the American right with dogwhistle evocations of her Greenpeace-killing brother. She’s not from a cheese-eating family.

The comparison with Nixon is intriguing but I don’t but it. I cannot find a better comparison though, and it’s not a coincidence. I grew up in France and have lived in the US for the past decade or so. Being Iranian, it is not a picnic in either country but the French have a particularly more vicious brand of racism, in my experience, which Sarkozy embodies. It is a profound nationalist racism, the kind that is not found in the main political discourse of Americans.

It seems to me that in America as long as you are willing to go along with the system – especially the economy – then you can be fine. As a foreigner, you will have a glass ceiling, but you are ok if you don’t rock the boat. In France, there is no way of being “integrated;” there is no “in.” Sarko is from an immigrant family, but a white one. Let’s never forget that. No matter how hard you try, as an Arab, African, or South Asian, you just can’t get in.

I know it sounds like a vast oversimplification but I read the rest of his political profile through this particular lens. His so-called “anti intellectualism” for instance. To begin with, he is not at all an anti-intellectual. You can’t get elected in France if you are. But by adopting an anti-elite discourse, he is appealing to the heartland, the pure French, the same clientele that Le Pen goes after. The elite is now associated with Europe (therefore not France) and he is milking that sentiment. His economic policies – his so called free-market penchant – are not very credible either. He would never open the border, allow for greater trade, etc. He does want a more prosperous economy; he does want faster growth; and he has managed to sell that to many people but again it is because he wins the argument by appealing to the old, long gone glorious days of the Republique. It is France’s pride that is at stake, more than the actual economy. He said that when he walks around NYC, he sees proud Americans; that’s not the case in Paris and he wants that back.

Andre Glucksmann officially threw his support behind Sarko. Some see it as Sarkozy’s great appeal (he is a “uniter” too); it frankly speaks to Glucksmann’s own ignorance, more than to Sarkozy’s abilities. More importantly, in his article in Le Monde, Glucksmann defended Sarkozy’s “humanist” foreign policy. I am yet to see Sarkozy say anything close to humanism. Even once. There is a despotic benevolence to his politics, a kind of white man’s burden, but no more.

Royal is no real opponent. She is banking on an already deflating image. Sarkozy is far more manipulative than people give him credit for – he is also far more dangerous, in my experience. I think that for once Nixon is better off in the comparison.

I am not sure who the “you” of “have you considered” is…but what does it even mean? What “real” possibility? Any stats about French crime rates? Is there any visible lack of law and order? Granted that I did not provide any stats either (because again there is no obvious sign of collapse), I can at least testify first hand what it’s like being perfectly innocent and having to deal with the French establishment.

I don’t care about Sarkozy’s height or religion; I care when he comes on TV and manages to fuel the riots by using words like “racaille”. Riots were dying down and were localized before he said that; there is no way around this.

You need to do better than insulting his critiques if you wish to save him.

Farhang, I was attacking Henry perceiving racism in the Sarko faction when the anti-Sarkos are downright blatantly racist, but you deserve to be called on for the same failing. In case you don’t know, it was an Arab woman in a banlieue who used the word racaille (scum) to describe the thugs who make her world miserable and asking for Sarko’s intervention.
I suppose he should have chided her for trying to make a distinction between the racaille who have made the banlieues into hellholes and the poor slobs who are merely stuck living in them? Clearly the enlightened thing to do is to tar them all in the same brush, and then feign sensitivity by making the suburbs into a new country where French authority holds no sway.

As a french I see that Sarkozy in fact looks more and more like Chirac but younger.
He says everything and the opposite.

The father of Sarkozy was a hungarian aristocrat that owns a farm of 2000 people.
He came in France because of communism.
He is from Neuilly the richest city in France.
But he is not too much elitist.

“Extra credit question: should France consider building parallel grandes ecoles in Lyons, Marseilles, and/or Rennes, so that like in the US, the elite would have no fetishes of authority to wield over the rest of the country?”

Grandes Ecoles are mostly in PAris but not especially. also in Lyons, Strasbourg (ENA now).

Intellectual in fact are rather for Sarkozy.
And Show biz too, they live in the same city as him (Neuilly).

Is it racist to want this kind of thing stamped out?

When you put it this way, my reaction is: yeah, sounds like it may be sorta racist or fascist to want this kind of thing stamped out – as opposed to cured (or rehabilitated or whatever the right word may be). I’ll admit that this is merely a knee-jerk reaction, though.

Insofar as I understand the Clearstream affair (which isn’t very far), he’s more sinned against than sinning.

He did use Renseignements generaux (French police intelligence department) to spy on members of the Royal team and possibly on Royal herself. He did “accidentally” let slip the details of Herve Gaymard’s lodging facilities to a Figaro journalist, thereby terminating the career of his supposed ally and hastening his come-back into the government. He also was a key figure in the attribution of kick-backs in the attribution of housing projects in the 80s and 90s (in fairness to him, most of the french political class had some role in that). And I would dispute your characterisation of the Clearstream affair.

nor did he have a happy upbringing

He might have been unhappy, but he did grow up in a mansion in one of the wealthiest part of Paris and went to elite private schools.

Omri, I live in France and read a fair bit of criticism of Sarkozy. I never saw mentionned the fact that he was Jewish. Which is understandable, for CT readers that might not follow French politics too closely, seeing that Sarkozy is not Jewish, but a practicing roman catholic (and of that incidentally, you will read tons of criticisms, as a sizeable part of the French electorate cares very deeply about laicite).

About the upbringing, and following z : his full name would be Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa : very aristocratic, and rich. This archi-insider can do the “childhood humiliation” dance because the media lets him.

He is an “intellectual” too, like all the others, but his grammar is fascinating – each sentence trying to be a proof of the folksy common widsom of the man : a little more familiar than usual on television (“Mahame Chabot”), yet precise. It plays well in the media, who is in full poujadist mode these days. If only he could conceal his obvious enjoyment of power, he’d be a near perfect demagogue.

About the dirty tricks, he said the advantage of his interior ministry is that you’re on the good side of them.

omri:

“Jefferson opposed the U.S. Constitution” Whaaa!?!?!? Why don’t you consult your old friend google.

All these “law and order” fears in France make me laugh. It’s much ado about almost nothing. The nationwide riots that tore through France in late 2005 resulted in a grand total of one death. If there were riots on a similar scale in the United States the death toll would be way into the hundreds.

About Sarko’s Childhood:
I fathom only one explication for how he was “humiliated”: his mother was a single-mother, left by the father.
That could be a problem, when you live in a place like Neuilly, even with enough money and education on his mother side. It was definitely not the bronx, and very traditionalist. They have social criteria for defining an outsider.
I reckon it can be humiliating, if you have an ego big enough for becoming one day candidate to the presidency. And it can hamper your scolarity at the wrong time, which put yout out of the ENA race. But not every bright ambitious student can get in anyway.

For his outsider side: his upbringing was morphed by his mother’s family and is definitely french bourgeois.
No twenty-something outsider would have ever dated the daughter of Chirac (or close to it, with the french media I will never know what the rumor holds).

And about the jew/hungarian roots and his family history: I learned it the hungary bit 2-3 yearss ago, and the rest of it in 2006 only. Without internet, the blogs and google I would probably never have known the details.

So, let’s resume. So much for his outsider side: he botched slightly his studies, and ended as a lawyer (not so good on that scale in France).
For the rest, he is a plain politic insider (Leader of the Young RPRs).