Warning of neo-fascist victory in France, Hollande promotes EU militarism
By
Alex Lantier
7 March 2017
Before yesterday’s summit of German, Italian, Spanish, and French officials in Versailles, François Hollande gave an extensive interview to Le Monde and other papers of the Europa consortium—Süddeutsche Zeitung, La Stampa, the Guardian, La Vanguardia, and Gazeta Wyborcza. The French president outlined the deeply pessimistic perspectives predominating in the layers of the European bourgeoisie closest to Berlin and the European Union (EU).
Hollande unambiguously indicated that the EU is on the brink of collapse, in particular because a National Front (FN) victory in the April-May French presidential elections would install in Paris a neo-fascist government that could blow up the EU. However, having pointed to the bankruptcy of the French and European capitalist regimes, the only perspective he could offer was to develop the EU as a massive military and police-state machine.
Asked about an FN electoral victory, Hollande said: “The threat exists. The far right has never been as high in the polls for more than 30 years.” He added, “if somehow the National Front candidate were to win, she would immediately launch a process of exit from the eurozone, and even from the European Union. This is the objective of all the populists, wherever they are: to leave Europe, to close themselves to the world, and to imagine a world surrounded by barriers of all kinds and borders defended by watchtowers.”
Hollande posed as a defender of the EU and democracy against the danger of the far right. “My last duty is to do everything to keep France from being convinced by such arguments, or to take such drastic action,” Hollande declared, adding: “But France will not give…