France’s Melenchon to serve as Le Pen’s Minister of Finance

That is what’s known in the news business as an “untrue headline”.

If you are greatly upset at my ruse, just send me a stamped, self-addressed envelope and I’ll send you a refund for whatever you paid to read this.

However, I do have a serious point: Why aren’t real leftists like Melenchon cutting deals to join the Le Pen government, if she is elected?

Le Pen just did that with the 6th-place candidate in the 1st round vote – he’ll be her prime minister (more on him later).

It’s a great move, not because Nicolas Dupont-Aignan brings 5% of the 1st round vote, but because he helps show that a National Front cabinet will not be filled with only bozos, racists and fascists.

The 4th-place candidate, leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, and the 2 far-left presidential candidates have thus far only said they will not oppose Le Pen. This lack of support for Emmanuel Macron is a damning indictment of his policies and person.

These candidates are being raked over the coals by the mainstream media for failing to stop the Brownshirts from coming to power. If you are reading this, you already realize the mainstream media are great stenographers but useless when it comes to intelligent political analysis.

My question is: Why is the Left stopping there? For the first time in decades the Left has some power and political influence, and they are not using it!

Leftists appear to be the swing vote in this election: will they vote Macron, Le Pen or stay at home (aiding Le Pen)?

There are no circumstances where Leftists can work with Le Pen?

I don’t know if Le Pen would make the offer for a top post in her government, or if Melenchon would accept it, but let’s explore the idea:

Interior Minister – the nation’s “top cop” – and Defense Minister seem reserved for the National Front. The best way to keep them occupied is giving them the chance to dress up and march around.

That leaves Foreign Minister and Finance Minister as the top portfolios. Melenchon would have a tremendous amount of domestic influence if Le Pen traded him the Finance Minister post in return for his support.

Melenchon doesn’t have the training for Finance Minister, you say? Oh, did Macron? He got his degree in public affairs.

So why did Macron get a job chez Rothschild? Because he had the right ideology, that’s why. The ideology of: I want money and will ruin anybody else in order to get it.

Economy is not a hard science – it is not even a science. If it was, we’d have found the answers by now. The “technocratic” lie should be totally debunked following years of Eurozone stagnation.

Ideology is everything in economics – “how should tax money be spent” is a question filled with moral implications.

Le Pen and Melenchon’s biggest difference is on the economy: Le Pen rejects Melenchon’s call for 100 billion euros in (much-needed) investment to be financed by a return to progressive taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Wouldn’t – shouldn’t – Melenchon work with Le Pen for the good of France if she is willing to make this political horse trade in return for his support?

All of Europe needs a new Varoufakis: Imagine Melenchon, the best orator in France, going to EU and G20 meetings of finance ministers and reading them the riot act against austerity and capitalist cannibalization?

Before I get into the moral and intellectual defense of working with Le Pen, let’s prolong our enjoyment of this idea just a little longer before cold reality comes crashing down. Let me relate a personal story about France’s future prime minister (hopefully).

Trump-like, Le Pen’s future PM means increased chances for global peace

Here’s an interview I did with Dupont-Aignan where he proved to be an uncommon politician, and an admirable one.

It really shows why everyone outside of France should be praying for a Le Pen victory in the same sense that everyone outside of the USA should have been praying for a Clinton loss.

In my work as Press TV’s Paris correspondent I have to follow all of France’s foreign interventions, and there are many. The least-known one is France’s war in their former colony of the Central African Republic, the country subjected to more French military interventions than any other nation.

It’s a complicated story, but to be brief: C.A.R. leader/French puppet François Bozizé moved closer to China, and in punishment France stopped intervening militarily to save him. Instead, they allowed a group of opposition “rebels” known as Seleka to take power.

It was surprising for multiple reasons: France had bombed Seleka for years; Seleka had no coherent political program as they were fairly described as bandits; they were Muslims in an overwhlemingly majority-Christian nation.

Yet France did a 180 and starting supported Seleka, who overthrew Bozizé in March 2013. Later that year, France completely wrote a UN resolution getting that body’s support for Seleka to govern. Everyone was surprised yet again.

And then two months later France shocked everyone yet again by summarily pulling their support of Seleka, and also sending in 1,000 troops. This coup de grace totally destabilized an already unstable situation…which was, of course, the neo-colonialist/capitalist point from the very beginning. (So it should all be clear to you now.)

Things went – as everyone predicted – terribly: Seleka was totally unable to govern and spurred the outbreak of religious violence. Thousands have died, there are 500,000 refugees internationally, 400,000 internally displaced refugees, and 99% of the nation’s Muslims fled the country.

Yet another horrific crisis started by France to serve its own interests…it’s now called “The CAR Civil War”. The centuries-old peaceful cohabitation between Muslims and Christians is now a memory – a loss of historic societal proportions for the CAR.

That’s the story, and it’s not at all my fault if nobody has brought up Hollande’s humanitarian disaster in the CAR even once during the election campaign.

For a report on the situation in 2014 I went to French Parliament’s weekly (or twice-weekly) media day to get someone to admit France’s obvious guilt. I saw Dupont-Aignan, and he listened to my facts and gave an honest answer:

“We were very wrong at the time, and that’s very obvious today,” said Dupont-Aignan.

I normally wouldn’t use a short quote like that, but he said exactly what was necessary. (He also didn’t know anything about the CAR, but that only makes him the same as every French parliamentarian).

But I would only expect such honesty from a far-left politician. Believing your country is always right is not patriotism, but jingoism; it is akin to religious extremism.

I tried to find another honest politician but could not. I settled for a mainstream conservative, and you can see me arguing with him in that link, trying to get him to admit France’s errors in the CAR. Instead I got cut off and got vive la France:

“This is pure rubbish! We have been accused of the same thing in Rwanda and we were the only one to avoid genocide. So this is the Anglo-Saxon (sic) or many others who try to criticize France, but this is pure rubbish! Our aim is to stabilize the country. We are not against the Muslims, we are not against the Catholics – what we want is that this country be stabilized and live in peace,” said Jacques Myard, of the conservative UMP Party (now Républicain Party).

Quite sorry Mr. Myard, but your quote is total rubbish – about the CAR, about Rwanda and about what France truly wants for Africa.

Who is the danger to the CAR – Le Pen’s future prime minister or the mainstream parties?

Who is the extremist jingoist, and who represents a much-needed change which could encourage global peace?

Can I add that Le Pen wants to abolish the CFA Franc – another little known crisis-inducing piece of capitalism in 14 African countries?

If Dupont-Aignan had been a fellow communist I would be holding my nose in the air right now over our moral superiority; but because he isn’t, does that make him less moral or correct on this key question of foreign policy?

It is this type of blind party loyalty which is going to put Macron in power, despite an ongoing crisis.

Supporting mainstream politicians has put & kept France in a protracted crisis

Record-high unemployment, rampant corruption, complete 180-degree reversals on campaign platforms which are the antithesis of democracy, the grim prospect of achieving a lost decade due to the imposition of right-wing austerity which lacks any democratic majority consent of the people, youth unemployment which will set back the lives of our future generations, etc.

This crisis is made and sustained for obvious reasons: To repay bankers who made poor business decisions, and to lower the price of labor costs in order to increase profits.

When Francois Hollande couldn’t get what he wanted democratically, he simply bypassed Parliament in order to please the corporate class. What could be more fascistic than that?

Getting rid of the mainstream parties is not worth making a deal with the devil, but the National Front is not the devil, and they are certainly less devilish economically than the Socialists or conservatives.

If the Left joins Le Pen they may be able to implement many long-held leftist goals, help destroy the current mainstream political establishment, give the National Front’s non-fascist economic plans like Frexit legitimacy, create a workable coalition in Parliament and rein in the fascist elements of the National Front as best they can instead of giving them all the power to run amok.

What good will the Left do to simply sit on the sidelines and criticize, again?

Isn’t it more patriotic, more moral, to support Le Pen (who is no longer the leader of the National Front) and say, “It is I who am taking responsibility for protecting France from her reactionary aspects”.

Isn’t that really the moral thing to do: accept a burden instead of allowing people to suffer? Too bad Western Europeans don’t do “martyrdom”….

Isn’t the Left finished with their delusion that they can work with the mainstream?

Have you seen how far to the right the mainstream has moved economically since the fall of the USSR? In France, how could any Leftist not be equally ashamed to work with the Islamophobic, State of Emergency-imposing, Parliament-bypassing Socialist Party?

Melenchonistes should realize that they will NEVER be accepted into a mainstream cabinet. Heck, Socialist Party presidential candidate Benoit Hamon and others resigned from Hollande’s cabinet over austerity, and these were defections are by people who are pro-EU, anti-Russia, anti-Assad – i.e. not leftists, but centrists. And they were “too left” for the Socialist Party!

Is the Left’s plan to never punish the Socialists for doing wrong? The idea seems typical of fake-leftists: “never spank”, and ultimately give up when you can’t keep the hand from going into the cookie jar.

Or is Melenchon what many have claimed: an egotistical demagogue?

Is the idea to wait 5 more years and then hope Melenchon wins the presidency? Jean-Luc wants it all or nothing at all?

I see no reason why Melenchon can’t join forces with Le Pen, if only to get her elected and end austerity. His “not one or the other and also not telling how I’ll vote” attitude is totally ineffectual – as if the election won’t be held on May 7th without him.

Melenchon can join Le Pen, and then if he can’t rein in her worst impulses he can say so publicly and drop out like Hamon. Hamon’s leftist bonafides were improved by that – what is Melenchon worried about? The failure is not in failing, but in not trying.

Bottom line: Is this what Western democracy is? Don’t accept the results and just look down your nose at the winners, obstructing like hell for the opposition’s entire term? Why the hell should that ever be exported to any Colored nation?

Shouldn’t Western democracy be: compel the politicians to accept the results which the people have decided, working with the good and the flawed?

The other option is that we on the Left can sit back and watch the National Front fail. And when they inevitably do – Seleka-like – the public will finally realize that the right has proven themselves unable to govern, the center has proven themselves unable to be trusted, and therefore voters will finally rush in to the arms of the Left and give us the credit we deserve and a utopian love affair will begin and never end.

It’s a nice story. We Leftists tell it to ourselves often.

Hey, we are closer than ever since 1989 – it only took 30 years of turmoil and a decade of worldwide economic crisis. Maybe Macron will, like Hollande, last only one term?

Five years…the title of a David Bowie song, and one which is the “Thin White Duke” at his most insufferable, overly-arty and totally unfunky. He did that type of stuff a lot….

That ain’t my kinda Left: whiny, self-indulgent, gender-bending, Bowie-esque – fake leftism. When Bowie acted in a play by matchless leftist playwright Bertolt Brecht he chose a work which totally predated Brecht’s leftist enlightenment. “Baal” is poetic but its politics are 100% nihilist: all the Brecht cachet and none of the substance. I know the guy just died, but Bowie’s awesome rocker “Suffragette City” has lyrics which contain nothing about with feminist liberation, even though the musical results disappointed nobody…LOL, clearly I’m getting absurdly sidetracked here and just posting music links now.

France’s final-week campaign song should be Five Long Years by blues emperor Freddie King.

“Have you ever been mistreated? Then you know just what I’m talking about. I worked 5 long years for one woman – and she had the nerve to kick me out.”

Freddie the King was right, and I have no idea what his preferred political label was, other than “the Texas Cannonball”.

No way I vote for Macron and five more years of mistreatment. You?

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.