Marine Le Pen Shopping for Allies at the EU Parliament in Brussels Part 3 Nidra Poller
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/54235/cat_id/326
American banking authorities are threatening to slap a 10 billion dollar fine on France’s top bank, BNP Paribas, accused of handling transactions in dollars from 2002-9 for customers from Iran, Cuba, and Sudan, in violation of an American embargo. What does this have to do with the Front National? Would an anti-Islamization party be shocked by the Iranian ties of our flagship bank? Or perhaps the Front National, sworn enemy of Big Finance, will be pleased to see a money-grubbing bank get its fingers slapped and its stockholders deprived of one year’s dividends?
Probably not. Marine Le Pen accuses the United States of imposing sanctions to prevent French companies from trading with Iran the better to allow American companies to prepare a bright commercial future there. At the same time she accuses France of joining the US in a veritable war on Iran.
Aymeric Chauprade has been Marine Le Pen’s foreign policy advisor since she became party president in 2011. Elected this month EU deputy from the district that includes Paris, he is expected to pilot the Group that Le Pen is striving to put together. Chauprade is eminently presentable, handsomely academic, poised and soft-spoken. He calls himself a “dissident,” replacing the Soviet Union with oppressive Western democracies. His carefully constructed discourse has all the marks of the accomplished geostrategist with a solid academic background and broad international experience. Except that it veers off into riffs about the machinations of the “Atlantico-Zionist conspiracy” alternating with lyrical passages in praise of Vladimir Putin. As he spins his fascinating tale about the real forces at work in our world, the balance of power, the sources of conflict, the causes of violence, the historical realities—e.g. Islamic jihad and its scriptural foundations—are metamorphosed into marionettes manipulated by imperialist America.
Keeping in mind that Marine Le Pen needs 2 more allies to form a 7-nation Group at the European Parliament, we may justifiably extend our inquiry into the words and deeds of her foreign policy advisor, Aymeric Chauprade. To what extent are his policies acceptable to the leaders of the four parties already allied with the Front National—Geert Wilders, Harald Wilinsky, Gerald Annemans, and Matteo Salvini?
Revelations about the Front National are often but not always found in media that could be labeled “leftwing” or “anti-fascist.” The anti-jihad discourse adopted by Marine Le Pen at the beginning of her presidential campaign led to uncritical acceptance of the Front National by thinkers and activists concerned with the dangers of 21st century Islamic conquest. Many, if not the great majority of these people were awakened to this issue by the 9/11 jihad attack against the United States. They do not appreciate being rejected as right wing racist xenophobic Islamophobes. Is the triumph of the Front National good news for them?
Anton Shekhovtsov alleges that Aymeric Chauprade acted as an observer for the recent Crimean referendum at the invitation of the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections (EODE) headed by a Belgian “neo-Nazi” Luc Michel. Chauprade subsequently denied his participation, potentially harmful to the reputation of the Front National. Articles by Luc Michel can be consulted on the Palestine Solidarité site.
The Right Wing Watch blog quotes from a speech made by Chauprade to fellow activists and the Russian Parliament: “In this new battle…those who do not want the U.S. anti-missile shield, the dominance of NATO, or the war against Syria and Iran are in the same camp as those who refuse the loss of sovereignty, population replacement on a grand scale, FEMEN, gender theory, homosexual marriage, as well as the further commodification of the human body.”
According to an article on the France 24 / English website, Chauprade kept his long standing affiliation with the Front National quiet–for fear it would hamper his academic career–until Marine Le Pen became president. The article cites Chauprade’s theory about Wikileaks: it is most likely a “secret programme….a fake opposition” set up by the US to “boost its… credibility.” Why, he asks, hasn’t Wikileaks published any documents about 9/11?
Le Libre Belgique reports that Chauprade burnished his professional résumé, in some cases upgrading his status at several academic institutions from teaching assistant to “Chair,” etc.
I have tried to limit this brief overview to verifiable and verified information. All of the above sources can be consulted, investigated, and cross-checked. But the best source is Aymeric Chauprade himself. Posted on Alai Soral’s Egalité et Reconciliation site, this long, leisurely interview produced by ReOpen911.info is a treasure trove of insight. Chauprade was dismissed from his teaching post at the War College in 2009 after including a brief mention of alternative 9/11 theories. The “dissident” was indignant, claiming he had simply mentioned the “inside job” theory, among others, without judging its validity.
However, in the video interview with an invisible ReOpen911 comrade, Aymeric Chauprade valiantly defends his geostrategic vision: Hidden behind the “outer” United States is a dark “inner” United States controlled by an oligarchy, a small number of families that have held power for generations. American presidents are their puppets. Terrorism is a tool of American policy that requires an enemy to excuse incursions here, there, and wherever it has resources to exploit, governments to bring down or set up. Communism was the enemy, now it’s Islam. Yes, of course, Islamists exist. But they too are puppets. The CIA infiltrates jihad cells, or creates them out of available raw material, and when it suits American interests, sends them out to blow themselves up, poor fools.
“We”—he refers to his ReOpen911 comrade—are not peddling a simplistic conspiracy theory… “there were no planes in the towers”… nonsense like that. No, it is far more complex and you have to study it in context, in a long term view. Chauprade has great respect for Peter Dale Scott. And Thierry Meyssan, too, who was a forerunner, though he didn’t have all the elements at hand at the time. Of one thing “we” can be absolutely certain: the official explanation is the least credible. It’s not at all credible.
Concluding a well-developed, long range, elaborate theory on the way the Americans create, manipulate, and exploit terrorism, Chauprade concludes: “Al Qaeda is the Arab Legion of the CIA.”
Anna Cabana (Le Point May 29, 2014) reports an alleged conversation with Marine Le Pen’s cabinet chief Philippe Martel, who boasted that his services are collecting information about the private and professional lives of French journalists, in a strategy designed to destabilize them when necessary, punish them when justified. Martel later denied making any such statements while admitting he may have made one or some but not all. Unless the phone conversation was recorded, there’s no way of verifying it.
Steve Briois, Secretary General of the Front National and newly elected mayor of Henin-Beaumont is demanding the dismissal of Guy Lagarche, producer of the documentary mentioned in Part 2 that included a long-winded sequence filmed with a hidden camera by a journalist disguised as a volunteer at the campaign headquarters of Hughes Sion [sic], candidate for mayor in neighboring Lens. Sion looks like a rank amateur stumbling awkwardly through a hopeless campaign. The second, meatier sequence, which touched albeit lightly on personalities such as Frédéric Chatillon, cannot be attacked on the same grounds—invasion of privacy, falsification of identity, etc.—but if Lagache were ousted it would discourage other investigative journalists.
Since I started writing about the Front National I have been looking for the appropriate image to describe the relation between Marine Le Pen and her close advisors with the “others” she keeps at a distance– Alain Soral, Dieudonné, Thierry Meyssan, Serge Ayoub, etc. It’s a wireless connection. Her advisors underplay—with the help of the media– the worldview that unites them with the unsavory characters that are kept behind a cordon sanitaire where they won’t tarnish the image of the Front National as a modern respectable party that deserves to govern domestically, and a courageous Eurexit party worthy of the trust of decent allies. But the wireless connection is operative and will be translated, sooner or later, into acts. That is the nature of politics.
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