SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 48

LENGTH: 597 words

HEADLINE: NEW FOLLIES FOR THE FRENCH Rise of a neo-fascist candidate may signal things to come

BYLINE: BY RICHARD CHESNOFF

BODY:
PARIS - No one expects neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen to win today's decisive round of the French presidential elections. But then, no one thought the burly ex-paratrooper would win the first round, either.

A veteran rabble-rouser whose style can make late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini seem suave, the 73-year-old Le Pen won 17% of the national vote, edging out 16 other candidates, including uncharismatic Socialist Premier Lionel Jospin. Le Pen is up against President Jacques Chirac, who won 20%. Part of the problem was a lackluster campaign that resulted in a lower-than-normal turnout. Moreover, France's traditionally fractious left was more splintered than ever, with candidates from a dozen parties vying for votes that could have gone to Jospin.

Le Pen's real success, however, resulted from the frightening fact that his xenophobia, racism and endemic anti-Semitism appealed to French fears about rising crime, unemployment and immigration - not to mention disdain for the current president, whose administration has been marked by one scandal after another (sound familiar?).

Add to that Le Pen's conviction that France's national identity is being hijacked by rabid pan-Europeanism, and you find him attracting not just skinheads and traditional right-wingers, but ordinary Frenchmen of all ages - albeit almost all of them white and Christian.

The shift to the right is not a phenomenon limited to France. In the Netherlands, that bastion of Western European tolerance, Pim Fortuyn, an openly gay high-living professor of sociology, made an impressive showing in March's Rotterdam municipal elections with his Liveable Netherlands Party.

Running on an anti-immigration platform, Fortuyn, whom the British press has dubbed The Dutch Dandy, announced that Holland was "full." He also characterized Islam as "backward."

This Euro-trend is not new. Austria's far-right, anti- immigrant Freedom Party joined the Vienna government two years ago. Similar gains by neo-fascist parties have been made in Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy.

All have run on nationalist, law-and-order, anti-immigrant - and, very often, anti-European Union - platforms. That may be a key factor. Increasing numbers of Europeans fear that efforts by the European Union to do away with borders and revamp traditional political, social and economic relations will not only rob them of their nation states, but will open the flood gates to an increasing influx of refugees and illegal immigrants from the Third World.

Le Pen, says British columnist Barbara Amiel, "sees two dire threats: first, France's large number of unassimilated, undigested Muslim immigrants; and second, the usurping of French sovereignty by the European Union."

Not coincidentally, Le Pen's European counterparts use much the same arguments.

This is not a pleasant time in Europe. Anti-Semitic attacks - always a barometer of danger to democracy - are on the rise in France and elsewhere, including Germany. Le Pen, who once dismissed the Holocaust's gas chambers as "a detail of history," now speaks openly about establishing "transit camps" for illegal immigrants and "special trains" to deport "undesirables." To block Le Pen, the French left is swallowing its gall and has sworn to join conservatives today in voting for Chirac. It will probably prevail.

But unless France and the rest of Europe deal with the social, economic and governmental problems plaguing it, someone else may crawl out from under a rock and slither into the presidential palace.

E-mail: rzc@att.net

LOAD-DATE: May 6, 2002