Anti Fascism

The Daily Mail: Then and Now

In 1934, Lord Rothermere published a self-penned article entitled “Hurrah for the Blackshirts“.

Last week, the Daily Mail published an article by Richard Waghorne, entitled “French downgrade shows that Marine Le Pen’s role in French public life is not just legitimate but increasingly necessary“.

The elegant and increasingly incisive leader of the French National [Front] appears to be free of many of her father’s drawbacks. She is additionally the only significant voice in France to diagnose the Euro-federalist threat to her country’s future accurately. Before yesterday’s sovereign downgrade, the prospect of her displacing either Nicholas Sarkozy or his Socialist challenger to make it through to the two-horse second round of the French presidential election was gaining in likelihood.

This has traditionally been viewed as a threat and is still spoken of with alarm in Parisian political salons. As France continues to decline on account of the European empire-building decreed by its established political class, however, it is becoming steadily more obvious that Marine Le Pen’s role in French public life is not merely legitimate but increasingly necessary.

Plus ca change.