Birds of a fascist feather flock together.

FROM faute de pire: Muslims for Le Pen?

"Muslims for Le Pen?
In a recent editorial for the Washington Times, Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal warns that demographic trends spell electoral disaster for the European right, where the growing Muslim populations of major cities have recently out-voted the right's homegrown base in a string of electoral defeats in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Turning to consider the French case -- of special interest with presidential voting just days away and the largest Muslim population in all of Europe -- Belien notes the curious but unmistakable overtures recently made towards France's Muslim voters by Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. What does it all mean?" (Read the rest here...)

There have always been affinities between the Eurpoean neo-fascist far right and the Islamists. For one thing, they share ideological roots in fascism and Leninism.

Read ''Milestones'' by Sayyid Qutb, primary philosopher of the Muslim Brotherhood, to see his regard for the fascist Alexis Carrel, whom he cites more than any other authority except the Quran. Carrel, a member of Doriot's Parti populaire français, advocated creation of a racial elite by means of eugenics. Qutb advocated creation of a political/religious elite by conducting jihad within the Muslim nations against those considered to be non-believers by dint of their opposing Islamism. (Prior to Qutb, this sort of summary excommunication from Islam was not a popular idea. His innovation was to use this as a stepping stone to a revolutionary Islamism.)

By the way, Le Pen cites Alexis Carrel as his favorite "environmentalist". Considering that Carrel did not deal with environmental issues per se, this must refer to Le Pen's view of a racial environment to be managed by the government as governments currently manage pollution. To me, this is one of Le Pen's most shockingly Nazi pronouncements.

All this having been said, it is difficult to imagine how on earth these disciples of Alexis Carrel can find agreement on their contradictory of interpretations of his thought. Perhaps Le Pen will consider "right-minded" Arabs to be "honorary Frenchman", just as Hitler considered the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to be an "honorary Aryan" by dint of his eye color and his anti-Semitism.

Yes, this is a very weird area of thought, involving superstition, pseudo-science, and race hatred. Maybe any attempt to find logic in this sea of irrationality is pointless. Where there is a will to power, there's a way.


UPDATE 4/16/2007: Last year, Solomonia had an excellent piece on Le Pen vying for Muslim support here:
Solomonia: The Right Welcomes the Islamists.


UPDATE #2: A reader writes to inform me that Le Pen opposed the French public school ban on girls wearing veils back in 2005, arguing that it would help "foreigners" to "blend in". It seems that Le Pen perceives his constituency to consist of all those who oppose integration, regardless of which side of the divide they're on. Reminds me a bit of Elijah Mohammed of the Nation of Islam inviting the neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell to address his followers on the evils of race mixing.