French Fancy?

Centrism and right-wing populism are con tricks to sell exactly the same economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. Fascism is inherent in both of them, and it never arises except by their joint enterprise.

While pre-existing conservative phenomena have been known to ally with Fascism, usually to their own ruin, it is the liberal bourgeoisie that keeps Fascism in reserve for when it might ever face any serious demand to share its economic or social power with anyone who did not have it before the rise of the bourgeois liberal order, or to share its cultural or political power with anyone at all.

And now, Michel Barnier, who is arguably better-known in Britain and certainly in Brussels, has been made Prime Minister of France by Emmanuel Macron because that is who Marine Le Pen wants, or can at least work with, to keep out the New Popular Front that came first at the only relatively recent legislative elections. Barnier himself comes from a kind of Old Centrist legacy party that came fourth.

But a Fascist movement never gets anywhere unless it has been at least cultivated and often directly created by that sort and by Macron's, they will always back it against the Left because that is why they have it, and no Fascist has ever come to power except by some form of that arrangement, nor ever will. It is downright stereotypical for the final stage before official Fascism to be placeholding by one last aged centrist authoritarian from the old elite. Cheered on by Keir Starmer and by his Westminster Village fan club, here we are. Think on.