To the Editor:

Roger Kaplan’s thoughtful analysis of the extent of anti-Semitism in today’s France, “Incident at Carpentras” [August], misses one key point. The anti-Semitism of Jean-Marie Le Pen, his followers and fellow thinkers, is the scum that floats on the surface of a frothing brew of racism. The North African Arab or black from French-speaking Africa has replaced the Jew as the enemy. It may well be that French anti-Semitism does not make life more difficult or fearful (in the sense of physical danger, social harassment, or employment difficulties) for Jews, but French racism poisons and renders miserable the life of blacks and Arabs in France.

Coming from England, I am used to the coded anti-Jewishness of my fellow countrymen, but after ten years of living in France I am shocked at the openly anti-Semitic remarks that are made by the French. Jean-Marie Le Pen is crudely anti-Semitic in his public discourse, yet French television treats him with dignity and respect. Raymond Barre, the former Prime Minister and a well-established political figure, remarked in 1980 after a bombing outside a Jewish restaurant in Paris in which four were killed that it was all the worse because “One of them was French.” The other three were Jews, you see. At a humdrum level, I am surprised at how French people, including teenagers, identify someone as Jewish—“C’est un juif”—in banal conversation and to an extent which certainly would not be normal in England, America, or Germany.

Roger Kaplan is right to stress that anti-Semitism is not on the point of breaking through to become a major political force in France. Le Pen is not Hitler, much as he may dream he is, and most French people believe that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, even if there is a lot of interest in the relativism of quantitatively contrasting Hitler’s victims with Stalin’s in the former’s favor.

François Mitterrand’s gesture of marching in the anti-Carpentras protest that filled Paris was magnificent; there is simply no other Western leader who would have mingled with people in such a spontaneous street demonstration, conveying a much more direct image than a presidential statement or visit. He has also spoken out more clearly on the danger of racism than any other European leader, a position that swelled his popularity with the young. What is morally right is also good politics.

But while shock and revulsion are expressed at recent manifestations of French anti-Semitism, the daily practice of French racism is wearily lived with. The two, of course, are linked and if ever Le Pen gains real power, or, as is more likely, if some of his policies are taken over by the mainstream conservatives and implemented after electoral success, then while it will be Arabs and Africans who are first in the firing line, do not be surprised if anti-Jewishness is also stepped up.

Denis MacShane
Divonne, France

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Roger Kaplan writes:

I thank Dennis MacShane for his amplifications and I would not want to quarrel with them. I would add, though, that for analytical purposes we should distinguish between racism and anti-Semitism. Mr. MacShane is right to draw attention to the fact that in practical terms a man motivated by an irrational hatred of Arabs is not much different from a man driven by Jew-hatred, but I am not really convinced that there is a significant rise in racism in Europe.

What has happened instead over the past few years is that certain hatreds have come out more openly—for all sorts of reasons having to do with the failure of the political establishment to deal with issues that really concern people. If one looks at the voluminous report of the European Parliament on racism, one discovers that beneath the alarming rhetoric (“return of the fascist peril,” etc.) are to be found the same fringe parties that have been around for years and the same numbers of protest voters who will give these parties their votes in inconsequential elections (such as, precisely, elections to the Euro-parliament).

Nor is there so much a rise in anti-Semitism as, again, a less inhibited atmosphere about allowing it to come out. This is quite striking in Central and Eastern Europe. The Communists, since they controlled everything, kept the lid on anti-Semitism, using it for their own purposes when it suited them (notably in the USSR in the early 50’s and in Poland, and of course for purposes of foreign policy). Now that they cannot keep the lid on any longer, the old anti-Semitism has come bubbling out. This is not too surprising. Since the Communists could not even solve the problem of sickness or the problem of malnutrition in their societies, who would have expected them to solve the problem of anti-Semitism?

What we are witnessing is both a new era (the post-post whatever one wants to call it) and, as always happens with so-called new eras, the return of old habits. The “normal” European tendencies toward racism and anti-Semitism (and other hatreds besides) is back, and who expected otherwise?

However, I remain less alarmed about these tendencies in Europe than Mr. MacShane and the Euro-parliamentarians. All things must be viewed against the standard of what is possible. After all, instead of living in Europe we—I mean Mr. MacShane and I—could be living in Africa or the bloody Middle East where (outside of Israel) there are real racists, not to mention anti-Semites, real in the sense that they reflect ordinary people’s views of what politics is for—namely, for killing whoever is not in your clan.