This month saw the elections and installation of a new French president, winning by a relatively small magian of a few percent Hollande beat Sarkozy on his way to becoming a new socialist president of the French republic. The celebrations on the night of the vote revealed one of the prominent dangers that the French society faces, and which is one of the main points of conservatives as well as Front National voters (right and far rights voters), who have contributed greatly to the election of Mr. Hollande by not casting their votes, as the Front National leader suggested she will do.
Nationalists in France were horrified to see a sea of flags waved at them from the old Place de la Bastille, that old symbol of the popular national revolution that shaped modern France and inspired the whole world to move forward towards dropping monarchs and aristocracy and adopt a republican way of political life. Hollande supporters seem to agree on one thing, much of the votes in his favor came from citizens who prime concern lies not with the republic but with other nations around the world, mainly in the Arab world and the African continent, many of these voters did not hesitate to show their “true colors” in the night of Hollande’s victory.
And so photographers find themselves hard pressed to find a French person waving a French flag on the night, the place was full of flags but those were Syrian, Palestinian, Algerian and Moroccan, Italian and even Greek flags, but not many French flags.
What does this mean? well, for a start it could mean that this is the socialist dream come true, abolishment of rank and status, even to the degree of nationality, in a warm embrace of equality, however this is far from the case when talking about France. The socialist “system” in France is much more about finance then anything else, it is not the old proletarian union philosophy, but rather a huge inflated governmental workspace that turns the country into the main business, and its citizens become its employees.
But those who were frantically waving foreign flags in the place de la bastille are not (only) about the free lunch system, they are out for much more than that, for them France had become a hub state, maybe more like a patch state, which collects other nations citizens and owes them gratitude and favors – a dangerous state of mind for any citizen to be in.
It seems that the new French president has a lot of work, not only will he need to call the shots in a time of great danger to the economy, he will also need to make sure that the French state does not disintegrate into pieces, as the south turns mostly nationalistic and the north becomes so drenched in immigration it speaks in too many tongues to understand, and waves too many flags to carry one cause.
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