RUTHFULLY YOURS

The outcome of yesterday’s French presidential election is easily explained. In the qualifying round two weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron defeated all the other non–Front National candidates in the competition to be least like Marine Le Pen. And because he was obviously much less like Marine Le Pen than Marine Le Pen herself in yesterday’s final round, he defeated her by roughly two to one.

Indeed, it is looking as if Le Pen underperformed even the low expectations of those who thought she would lose, getting only 34 percent when some observers expected her to break the 40 percent barrier. Michael Barone points out that she lost la France profonde as well as Paris to Macron, winning just two regions outright, and doing relatively well only in areas hit by recession or by high Muslim migration.

Though its size is remarkable, however, Le Pen’s defeat is the opposite of a surprise. It’s long been clear that most French voters would not support Le Pen or the National Front at any price. Earlier polls had shown that every other presidential candidate would defeat her in a run-off. The entire French establishment and all the other parties called for her to be crushed. And she suffered from the standard bias of the media and political elites that the most extravagant charges can be leveled against “right-wing” politicians with no need for evidence or penalty for error.

That said, there were surprises buried — and not far down — in the statistics. No fewer than 12 million voters cast “spoiled” ballots when confronted with these two candidates (some writing rude remarks on the ballot paper, I regret to tell you). If you count those abstentions as votes, they mean that though Macron won two-thirds of the Macron–Le Pen total, he won less than 50 percent of all who went to the polls either to vote or to protest. Other Macron supporters told pollsters they had voted against Le Pen rather than for Macron. And since turnout itself was slightly lower than usual in presidential elections, everything suggests a very high level of disaffection among French voters.

It contrasts oddly with the unqualified expressions of euphoria among European and national leaders welcoming a historic victory for France and Europe with “Ode to Joy” as their anthem. All that seems a little unreal. Indeed, before a single vote had been cast, observers such as Charlie Cooke and Christopher Caldwell pointed to the curious likelihood that a country moving right was about to elect a leftist president and that a nation angry with both the governing Socialists and the establishment was about to choose an énarque graduate of an establishment training ground who was in the Socialist government until yesterday to govern it.

Now it’s happened. So it inevitably seems less odd. But common sense suggests that some serious clashes are about to erupt between Macron’s ideas and political realities and between some of the different ideas wrestling inside for mastery of his mind. He is, for instance, a passionate Europhile who wants to relaunch the European Union. His commitment to the euro goes to the extent of wanting a fiscal government with a single finance minister for the eurozone that would then become a transfer union with “mutualization” of debts. Germany will like almost all of this because it promises to impose fiscal discipline upon otherwise unruly eurozone countries. But the Germans are determined to avert the threat of a transfer union with debt mutualization, which, as they see it, would amount to giving Greece and Italy the keys to the German treasury at the very moment that the U.K. will have opted out of subsidizing Europe in any way. Expect communiqués written in vanishing ink.

Macron is also talking up his intention to reform the over-regulated French economy and dash for prosperity. We’ve heard these plans before — in particular from Jacques Chirac (in his first presidency) and Nicolas Sarkozy. But they were very soon abandoned. They inevitably bump into obstacles such as the labor unions, the entrenched belief in the “French social model,” and not least the chains of an overvalued exchange rate, today’s euro, that makes French industry uncompetitive (and German industry highly competitive).

A restructuring of the euro (probably into a northern and southern one) would seem to be the practical solution to France’s and Europe’s problems here. But Macron is viscerally opposed to that particular reform, and so is Germany. Worse, if the euro were divided, France would probably be compelled by its sense of prestige to remain in the northern euro when its economic interests plainly indicate that it seek the relief and greater competitiveness of a southern euro. All in all, the prospects for Macron’s “pro-market” reforms — which explain why some conservatives and classical liberals support him — look distinctly gloomy. But it was Europhiliac French bureaucrats who designed the euro to be a house with no exits.

Macron must be considered an apprentice Man of Destiny—one facing difficulties as harsh and complex as those facing more experienced such figures as de Gaulle and Napoleon.

That brings us to perhaps the most fateful of Macron’s instincts on policy: his passionate multiculturalism, his post-nationalism, his hostility to “Islamophobia,” and his belief in a liberal migration policy or, in the jargon, “an open society.” He seems to believe in the limitless capacity of France to absorb more migrants and more cultures in a common multiculturalism even to the extreme of saying, “There is no such thing as French culture.” Yet France is at present divided bitterly between the native-born and migrants, facing another surge of lawless migration from the Mediterranean, and disturbed by near-constant acts of murder and terrorism. It is not yet in a state of civil war, but scores of automobiles are burned every night in the major cities, the spread of “no-go areas” continues steadily, and the imposition of Muslim rules on both Muslims and others living in these areas becomes increasingly oppressive. It is hard to see how all this can go right, especially if Macron’s economic reforms don’t produce the prosperity on which any social easement will depend.

“Nothing is creepier than Islam. Challenge Islamic racism, misogyny genocide, and so on.” I thought it would be just desserts to begin by paraphrasing Linda Sarsour and just turn back on her her statement that “Nothing is creepier than Zionism,” which has made the rounds on Twitter and national news. This groomed, but bag-headed, glib, taqiyya-fluent, BDS-champion, and stealth jihadist, has a loud mouth and is a publicity hound and resolutely anti-Trump. She was one of the organizers of the Women’s March in Washington. She has pulled lots of wool over the eyes of the liberal clueless.

But one prominent blogger and spokesman for the West, Bruce Bower, scratched his head and asked, following the dismally concluded French election of May 7th, in his PJMedia article, “What Happened in France?”:

How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?

Why, after the Brits chose Brexit, and Americans chose Trump, did the Dutch fail Wilders, and the French fail Le Pen?

How could a country that has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in recent years, and that has undergone a more profound social transformation owing to Islamic immigration, vote for business as usual?

… But if you’ve witnessed the reality of Islamization in cities like Rotterdam and Paris and Stockholm, you may well wonder: what, in heaven’s name, will it take for these people to save their own societies, their own freedoms, for their own children and grandchildren?

Bawer reviews the common rationale is that Europeans are still feeling guilty:

One way of trying to answer it is to look at countries one by one. For example, the Brits and French feel guilty about their imperial histories, and hence find it difficult to rein in the descendants of subject peoples. The Germans feel guilty about their Nazi past – and the Swedes feel guilty about cozying up to Nazis – and thus feel compelled to lay out the welcome mat for, well, just about anybody. The Dutch, similarly, are intensely aware that during the Nazi occupation they helped ship off a larger percentage of their Jews to the death camps than any other Western European country, and feel a deep need to atone.

Is it a matter of self-flagellation in the spirit of atonement? “Bible (Exodus 20:5-6; 34:6-7; Numbers 14:18) portray God as “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children.” Still another part of the Bible (Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2; Job 21:19) rejects this and teach that “sons [shall not] be put to death for their fathers.” The Bible is rich in such bipolar maxims.

I do not subscribe to the moral philosophy of inherited guilt or generational responsibility. Most imperial history should not be apologized for, especially where and when it concerns “the descendants of subject peoples” not to mention the descendants of people who also weren’t even alive during imperial depredations. Some of that history if awful, particularly the Belgian experience in the Congo.

However, were it not for imperial colonial policies, much of the known world would still be in the very Dark Ages, “brutish, nasty, and short.” In fact, where the West retreated and left indigenous populations at the mercy of their murderous tribalist leaders and masters, those people have largely reverted to that condition. (Look at Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia.)The West introduced technology, medicine, literacy, law, longer longevity, higher standards of living, and even the concept of freedom. Much of that is now disappearing. Pick any country on the African continent and it’s the same story, with remaining Westerners under attack, their property confiscated, and explicitly threatened with mass murder and genocidal extinction.

Every time I read some Third World complaint about Western colonialism, I can’t help but hark back to that gem of a Monty Python scene in The Life of Brian, and think, “What has the West given the complainers?”

“While the NCCM’s open letter does not directly call for Sharia law or the criminalization of criticism of Islam, it does advance the notion that the famously tolerant nation of Canada must set up anti-racism directorates in each province to track instances of Islamophobia, institute a mandatory course on systemic racism for Canadian high school students, and train its police officers to use bias-neutral policing.” — Josh Lieblein, The Daily Caller.

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning… so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies,” wrote Samer Majzoub, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate of the Canadian Muslim Forum — presumably meaning that the next steps are to make it binding.

“The objective of Jihad… warrants that one must struggle against Kufr (disbelief) and Shirk (polytheism) and the worship of falsehood in all its forms. Jihad has to continue until this objective is achieved.” — ICNA Canada website.

Growing concern in Canada over liberal policies benefitting Muslim extremists sheds light on why an “anti-Islamophobia” bill — proposed in the wake of the deadly January 17 Quebec City mosque attack and approved by parliament on March 23 — spurred such heated controversy there.

Motion 103, tabled by Liberal Party MP Iqra Khalid, a Muslim representing Mississauga-Erin Mills, calls on the Canadian government to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.” Because the bill makes no mention of any other religious group targeted by bigots, it was opposed by most Conservative Party politicians and a majority of the public.

Ahead of what would turn out to be a 201-91 vote in favor of the motion, a petition was circulated asking MPs not to support it. According to the petition, Motion 103 would “lay the groundwork for imposing what is essentially a Sharia anti-blasphemy law on all of Canada.”

The petition further stated:

“…criticism of Islam would constitute a speech crime in Canada.

“This motion uses the term ‘islamophobia’ without defining it, and without substantiating that there is in fact any such widespread problem in Canada.

“This will lead to ideologically-driven overreach and enforcement against alternative points of view—including mature, reasoned criticisms of Islam.

“Criticism of the treatment of women in Islamic-majority Middle Eastern countries could be criminalized;
“It could be a punishable offense to speak out against the Mustlim Brotherhood, or to denounce radical Imams who want to enact Sharia law in Canada;
“Criticism or depiction of Muhammad could be punishable by law;
“Schools that teach the history of Islam’s violent conquests could be fined—or worse.

“That kind of content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory censorship is unacceptable in a Western liberal democracy.”

While Yazidis are still suffering from these atrocities, Turkey, evidently still no friend of non-Muslims, has attacked them yet again.

Turkish officials say they consider these groups “terrorists.” The general staff of the Turkish armed forces issued a statement concerning the airstrikes, saying that “operations will continue until the terrorists have completely been eliminated.”

“Denying the genocide is not only saying ‘we didn’t do it.’ It’s much, much worse…. It is declaring murderers as heroes. It is honoring the genocide’s perpetrators… [and] saying to the grandchildren of genocide victims, ‘Murderers of your grandfathers and grandmothers are our heroes; they did it well, God bless them. If necessary, we would do it again.'” — Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association, Commemoration of the 102nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, April 24, 2017.

Just a few hours after the commemoration of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2017, Turkish warplanes dropped bombs on the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar (Shingal) on April 25, at around 2 AM local time, according to reports from the region.

The strikes reportedly killed at least 70 people in the area, with one bomb hitting a Kurdish peshmerga post in Sinjar, killing at least five and severely wounding several more.

Yazidis say they have been subjected to 72 genocidal massacres. The latest genocide, committed by ISIS, is the 73rd and is still going on. Tens of thousands of Yazidis have been displaced and are refugees in several countries. Hundreds of Yazidi girls and women are still bought, sold and raped by ISIS terrorists — the same men who murdered their husbands and fathers.

While Yazidis are still suffering from these atrocities, Turkey, evidently still no friend of non-Muslims, has attacked them yet again.

On August 3, 2014, Islamic State terrorists invaded Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidis in Iraq, and started slaughtering the Yazidis; many survivors fled up Mount Sinjar.

In his speech to the U.S. Congress, Mirza Ismail, founder and chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, described the genocide in Sinjar and pled for help:

“The entire Yezidi population was displaced in less than one day on August 3, 2014! The Yezidis and Chaldo-Assyrian Christians face this genocide together. Why? Because we are not Muslims, and because our path is the path of peace. For this, we are being burned alive. For living as men and women of peace.”

In December, the Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing in a church inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral compound that killed 29 (all but one were women and girls). On Palm Sunday, two separate Islamic State suicide bombings killed nearly 50 worshippers.

Over the weekend, the group threatened more attacks on Christians:

That renewed threat prompted interesting commentary from former Obama Homeland Security Advisory Council member Mohamed Elibiary. He claims that the Coptic Christians in Egypt — the largest Christian population in the Middle East — have it coming:

This stunning claim follows a long history of anti-Christian comments by Elibiary going back years, as I’ve reported here at PJ Media:

What has Elibiary upset? Many in the Coptic Christian community backed the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in 2013. In his tweet, he references “MB Egyptians” — Muslim Brotherhood Egyptians.

He is drawing an analogy between being anti-Muslim Brotherhood, and mass murder.

His past anti-Christian statements have been denounced by Coptic church leaders:

And yet he has repeatedly denounced “collective guilt” when it comes to the Muslim community:

This is quite the role reversal from 2014, when Elibiary’s tweets warning of an inevitable caliphate were used by terror recruiters to push Islamic State propaganda: CONTINUE AT SITE

In a strained bit of humorous idiocy, a flak at the Washington Post spins Emmanuel Macron’s win and Marine Le Pen’s thumping as an “embarrassment” for President Trump.

Aaron Blake, writing for “The Fix,” betrays the MSM’s obsession with pinning anything and everything negative or failed on Trump. Crows Blake:

I argued on this blog that Trump’s comments about Le Pen amounted to an endorsement. He had said that she was the best candidate when it came to the most important issue: the security of her country. And he clearly suggested that her popularity was rising after the terrorist attack, a claim that in retrospect looks haphazard, at best, and foolhardy, at worst.

Sorry, Aaron, but this merits a “Dope Alert.” Most Americans couldn’t give a hoot that the president said nice things about La Pen or even suggested her election as good. Most Americans care about their kids, jobs, and safe streets. Trump’s utterances on the subject matter only to inbreds who breathe the rarified air in DC, New York, and Boston. Or guys like you who get paychecks pulling this inanity from their rears.

Nowhere in Blake’s brilliant analysis did he mention Barack Obama’s profound embarrassment for endorsing Hillary Clinton, whose loss wasn’t predicted by the MSM or all those very smart guys and gals in coastal blue redoubts. After all, Le Pen, trailing badly in the polls, was expected to be hosed. Hillary was practically measuring the drapes in the Oval Office. Who has more egg on his face, Aaron?

Actually, it’s the French who have the most soufflé on their faces. In Le Pen’s concession speech, she acknowledged that the French voted for “continuity.” That they did, but not in any good way. Macron, who served in Hollande’s government, was repackaged and rebranded as an “independent” with a fresh take on France’s growing troubles. He’s actually just old shoes in a new box.

The 39-year-old Macron is a quick, clever invention of France’s globalist, EU-devoted elite. No? Well, he strode to the podium on Election Eve to proclaim his victory to the EU’s anthem, “Ode to Joy.” How’s that for an “In-your-face” gesture? And get this: the guy who composed the “Ode,” Ludwig Van Beethoven, is a German, no less. We all know about the evidence-rich Trump-Putin conspiracy in our own elections. Might Macron taking the stage to a German ditty reveal Angela Merkel’s conspiracy with him in the French contest?

A big problem for France is that its economy is practically stagnant. It has been for decades (that’s correct, “decades”). But who would blame big, central, bureaucratized government for an economy’s woes? Or a bevy of entrenched interests that profit handsomely from a government-dominated economy? Not the EU’s Jean-Claude Juncker.

Reported the Guardian on April 30:

There is a familiar rhythm to French politics. President gets elected amid a wave of optimism. President says root and branch reform of the economy will lead to stronger growth and falling unemployment. President fails to deliver the promised transformation. Economy continues to struggle. President gets booted out of office.

In the past 30 years, François Mitterand, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande have won elections for the mainstream parties of the centre left and centre right but France’s economic problems have not been resolved. It says something about how poor performance has been under Hollande that growth of barely more than 1% in 2016 was good by recent standards.

France’s unemployment rate hovers around 10% (higher than its pre-EU rate of 8%). Germany’s stands at about 4%. French youth unemployment — that’s under 25-year-olds — is about 25%. Germany’s is much lower. Idle minds make for the devil’s workshop.

As the Guardian points out, the French have developed an inferiority complex vis-à-vis their German allies, who are outperforming them economically. Without getting too much into the weeds, Macron wants Frau Merkel to “reflate” the German economy and boost consumer spending. He wants monetary reform to prop-up the Euro, too.

Iranian voters head to the polls later this month to elect their next president, without much of a choice. The contest is shaping up as a race between several Islamic hard-liners and one hard-liner whom the Western media prefer to cast as a moderate.

The unelected Guardian Council eliminated more than 1,600 candidates, including 137 women, who are constitutionally prohibited from holding that office. The Council deemed only six candidates morally sound, which in Iran means thoroughly committed to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nuclear program and the destruction of Israel.

Among the challengers, Ebrahim Raisi has garnered the greatest attention. The 56-year-old cleric is a protege of Mr. Khamenei, and our sources say he enjoys the support of elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the security apparatus.

Rumors out of Tehran suggest he could succeed the ailing Mr. Khamenei, and he certainly sounds like he has emerged from central theocratic casting. Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he was appointed a revolutionary prosecutor—at age 19. A decade later he was one of the prosecutors who oversaw the summary execution of thousands of opponents of the regime.

His rhetoric has invited comparisons with former President and Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The ominous triangle of the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime is the most hated phenomenon among peoples the world over,” Mr. Raisi has said. He has also predicted that “one day soon the filthy stain of arrogance will be wiped not only from Jerusalem but also from the Noble Sanctuaries”—the latter a reference to the Saudis, who administer some of the holiest sites in Islam.

Mr. Raisi also believes the Iranian regime’s borders extend across Syria, “which we consider our frontier for defending the Islamic Republic’s security and identity.”

Mr. Raisi and others will try to oust incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, who is often styled as a moderate despite his record in and out of office. Mr. Rouhani spearheaded the bloody crackdown against the 1999 student uprising and helped oversee a campaign of assassinations targeting dissidents abroad in the 1990s.

As for Mr. Rouhani’s presidential record, domestic repression has intensified. The leaders of the pro-democracy Green Movement remain under house arrest despite campaign promises to free them. Religious minorities continue to face systematic harassment and discrimination, and at least half a dozen American and British dual citizens remain under arrest as hostages.

Beyond Iran’s borders, the regime has continued to promote instability, underwriting Bashar Assad’s Syrian slaughter, deepening military cooperation with Vladimir Putin and funding Shiite terror proxies from Yemen to Lebanon. In all these cases, Mr. Rouhani has been powerless or unwilling to change course.

As for relations with the U.S., Messrs. Rouhani and Raisi both support President Obama’s nuclear deal. That accord has granted Tehran a much-needed financial reprieve even as it will leave the regime a threshold nuclear power by the time it sunsets. Hope for averting that outcome will not come through the artifice of Iran’s presidential election.