Few French politicians – in any case few heads of the executive branch with the notable exception of Pierre Mendès-France during the 1950’s – have aroused so much dislike as Nicolas Sarkozy. This is at times so massive and so extreme that you don’t know for sure if you should not just laugh about it. But that would mean forgetting that the nauseating stench of anti-Sarkozy-ism has a ‘1930’s’ side to it, which makes one shudder, because, decidedly, everything is permitted to be used against this man. And it would be to ignore the fact that in the months to come this attempt of organized destruction is going to mount in strength.

We are not making an allusion here to the democratic Opposition – the “Liberals”, the Socialists, the extreme Left – which, instead of managing to recover and to rebuild a coherent program is hiding behind systematic criticism of everything that the President does, wishes, thinks and says. It is legitimate that the Opposition is opposed, even if it can, simply, regret not having done so in a more intelligent manner. We don’t attack; here, the media, even when they make us believe that the vacation spent in an honest beach resort visited by ‘upper middle class’ Americans (according to the sociological terminology used on the other side of the Atlantic) was the ‘vacation of a billionaire.’ It is true that the French madness for taxation has an irritating tendency to wipe out the middle classes rather than to let them prosper. One hope for more discernment on the part of those whose mission it is to inform society, but this is the way celebrities are treated.

No, what we see today is the shapeless jumble bringing together extreme Left, extreme Right, stale Third-World-ers, old fashioned pacifists, anti-Semites of all stripes and eternal opponents of ‘American domination.’

This array disturbs us, since it has roots far in the past. During the 1930’s,  those favouring neutrality around the Prime Minister Daladier tried to make us believe that he could reach an understanding with Hitler by showing he was reasonable and that, whatever the price, one would have, as his accomplice Chamberlain said, ‘peace in our time.’[1] Two years later, in handing over to Pétain, the ‘National’ Assembly meeting in Vichy chose by a large majority the shame of collaboration rather than the continuation of the war alongside England, the historic adversary.[2]

Closer to us, the same people or their children preferred ‘better red than dead’ and were ready to submit to a Soviet diktat rather than pay, by rearming, the price of freedom. One will note that this sentiment of cowardly desertion is not exclusive to one camp, no more than the spirit of resistance : in 1981 and 1982, it was François Mitterrand, a Socialist President who traveled across Europe and repeated tirelessly:  ‘the pacifists are in the West and the  missiles are in the East.’

Today, the same people or their grandchildren are trying to convince us that Iran does not present any danger, that it is useless to defend the independence of Lebanon before Syria and that one should not heed the siren call of war for oil.

Behind these attitudes, there is always the same malaise: no will to exist,  fascination with force, hatred of democracy, the ‘sob of the white man,’ and, more than ever before anti-Americanism, which has long become in our country, a new socialism of the imbeciles

Now, the wish to render to France its rightful place on the international checkerboard and rapprochement with Washington – and not alignment with the United States, because one can be an ally without being a vassal – are two of the cornerstones of the foreign policy and of the defence policy of Nicolas Sarkozy, who has understood very well that only the alliance of the democracies can make it possible to build a security system for the modern world.

This is an unacceptable vision for those who hold to the policy of the carpet and have no better ambition than to offer to various dictators the straw mat on which they can clean their boots.

An internet site that was born before the elections and that we hoped was dead and gone offers a stunning synthesis of this unique new thought, unique in the sense that it mixes the extreme Left and the extreme Right in a new and fascinating alliance of ‘Reds-Browns’ : ‘Anyone but Sarkozy.’  (in French: Tout Sauf Sarko)

From the very home page the tone is clear. While a sound tape of the Song of the Partisans (the hymn of the French Resistance against the Nazi’s) plays, a line appears:  ‘Whom does he represent? The axis of evil!.’ Then comes a picture: Nicolas Sarkozy on a background of American and Israeli flags. On the same site, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard  Kouchner is called the ‘Voice of his Zionist masters,’ Dominique Strauss Kahn is  ‘the Man of Israel,’ Christine Lagarde (Economy minister) is the ‘Woman of the United States’ and Hervé Morin (Defence minister) is the ‘Man of the Americans.’

They are, of course, clearly supported by ‘the big bosses always eager for financial gain and morally degenerate’ who have been able to install in power ‘a vile beast.’ There are the usual ravings about globalization, the invisible hand of the Group of Bilderberg who would make policy based on the  ‘oil companies’  or the ravings of the Voltaire Network of the revisionist Thierry Meyssan who denies the 09/11 attacks. In a word, here is Nicolas Sarkozy enthroned as the ‘USraelian Governor’ (please admire the subtle word game) of an occupied France.

If we have stopped on this site, other than the abjectness of anti-Semitic propaganda that we thought was gone by in France, it is because we think that this propaganda of hate which incites people to civil war will not just continue. It runs a great risk of expanding immeasurably in the months to come.

If Nicolas Sarkozy arouses hatred, it is not only due to his  ‘pro-Americanism’ or his partly and perfectly accepted Jewish origins (it is not without interest from this point of view to underline that Mr. Mendès-France, who, we have recalled, was in his time the victim of the most base calumnies, was Jewish…). It is also and above all because he wants to shake up the customs of an old country, to question the holy of holies, the  ‘established privileges’ and liberate the energy of a nation which has spent the last few years contemplating its navel and lamenting. In a word: to put France on a battle footing in order to confront the challenges of the century.

There are too many interests which are otherwise often opposed to one another but are now converging to oppose this in-depth mutation which is indispensable even if painful. They can only lead to an escalation of this type of propaganda.

The question is to know up to what point a democracy should tolerate this type of message of hate.