Le Pen vote a wake-up call for democrats

In April 1915, with the European left drowning in the tide of nationalism and militarism unleashed by the first World War, the German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg, quoting Friedrich Engels, wrote: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." On Sunday, in the first round of the French presidential election, the electorate chose barbarism over socialism. The stunning victory of the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen over the socialist Lionel Josp

The barbarians are no longer at the gates of western European politics. They have occupied key parts of the citadel itself. In the last European Parliament elections about 10 million people across the EU voted for the extreme right. In Italy the post-fascist National Alliance and the vicious Northern League are both in power with Silvio Berlusconi. Jörg Haider's Freedom Party has about a quarter of the vote in Austria and currently holds six cabinet seats .

In Norway, Carl Hagen's Progress Party has about 15 per cent of the vote, and the right-wing government which took power last October depends on its support. The Danish People's Party has about 18 per cent and props up the centre-right government.

The Vlaams Blok in Belgium controls two of the country's biggest cities. In the Netherlands an anti-immigrant party recently became the biggest force in Rotterdam and is forecast to win up to 20 per cent of the vote in next month's general election. In Portugal a right-wing coalition which includes the fiercely anti-immigration Popular Party won power last month.

ALL of this has immediate implications for the political entity of which we are a part, the EU. Who, for example, is the Italian representative at the constitutional convention currently considering the EU's future? Gianfranco Fini, head of the National Alliance, which in its earlier incarnation as the Italian Social Movement was openly fascist. Fini no longer greets his supporters with the stiff-armed fascist salute and has even rowed back on his 1994 description of Benito Mussolini as "the greatest statesman of the century". This means simply that he is sophisticated enough to understand that the trappings of the far right are less important than the substance. While the presentation may become smoother, more emollient, the substance remains the same: a profound rejection of the universal values that are at the core the European project.

It is not accidental that all of this has been happening at a time when the European left has moved ever further from its socialist roots. Tony Blair's strategy of chasing middle-class votes and abandoning the old Labour base has been followed by most of the socialist and social democratic parties in Europe. The basic assumption of the strategy is that the old working class has nowhere else to go, since it can't vote for the mainstream conservative parties, and that it will be kept loyal by the odd sop to its concerns.

What is forgotten is that the disenfranchised denizens of the tower blocks and housing estates do have a choice: between socialism and barbarism. If the socialists have lost interest in them, the barbarians are waiting to rush in with ready-made scapegoats (immigrants) and easy answers. When a Jospin runs for office on a platform that is almost indistinguishable from that of his centre-right opponent, Jacques Chirac, there will always be a Le Pen to fill the vacuum.

The political conditions in France are not all that different from those in Ireland. There is the public disillusionment with a political mainstream polluted by corruption. There is the replacement of serious ideological argument with a managerial, bureaucratic consensus. There is the deep smugness of an establishment that has been in power for decades. There is the self-satisfied apathy of a young electorate which thinks that because it has nothing to do with politics, politics has nothing to do with it. There is the availability of a convenient target in a new immigrant population. And there is, above all, the widening gap between rich and poor.

Instead of clear moral leadership, moreover, we have a mixture of cynicism and naivety. In recent months, for example, the Le Pen-style rhetoric of the Fianna Fáil TD Noel O'Flynn drew a mild rebuke from the Taoiseach that was immediately undercut by the decision of Charlie McCreevy to attend a fund-raising dinner for O'Flynn. This suggests, at best, an appalling complacency, at worst a belief that the race card might sometimes be part of a winning electorate hand.

What we have, then, are the conditions in which the far right thrives without, as yet, a serious far-right political organisation to take advantage of them. We are fortunate enough to have a little time and space to think about the consequences of a political system that has lost the trust of the population.

The decay of democracy can be speeded up by an election conducted by the media and the parties as a large-scale product-marketing campaign. Or it can be halted by a campaign in which politics is reanimated by genuine debate about the direction of Irish society.

Le Pen has done us the timely favour of reminding us that the alternative to passionate commitment in politics is not bland consensus but barbarism.