Tomás Ó Flatharta

Currently a right wing Irish coalition government has a parliamentary majority because of a pact with a proven corrupt racist politician from Tipperary Michael Lowry (a former Fine Gael government minister). A number of high-profile Irish politicians have corruption black marks against their names besides Mr Lowry : Former Fianna Fáil heads of government (taoisigh) Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern; former deputy leader of the right-wing Progressive Democrats Michael Keating; and so on.

The USA White House is run by a convicted rapist, Donald Trump, who promotes the political ambitions of a convicted Irish rapist, the kick-boxer Conor McGregor.

Readers may have noticed that wealthy powerful criminals like Lowry, Trump, McGregor and Marine Le Pen from France do not give up trying to get convictions overturned :

Here is an extract from a routine Irish Times report, May 8 2023 :

This is the factual position :

“Mr Lowry, a former Fine Gael minister, was previously found by a tribunal to have behaved in a manner that was “profoundly corrupt”. (Irish Examiner, April 2).

Donald Trump is actively trying to get his rapist conviction overturned on very dodgy grounds :

“Trump’s team had requested a new trial in the case, arguing that the $5 million in damages he was ordered to pay Carroll was excessive, because he was only charged with sexual abuse. The jury had not found that Trump “raped” Carroll, a talking point Trump’s team often parroted.

But Judge Lewis Kaplan called Trump’s semantic argument “entirely unpersuasive.” He clarified that the jury found that the former president did indeed “rape” Carroll based on the common definition of the word.”

Marine Le Pen is playing the same game.

The left should not fall for these tricks. Two articles look at the issues in a healthy way.

No. 1 comes from “A Very Public Sociologist”, Phil Burton-Cartledge

How Not to Frame the Le Pen Politics Ban

Link :
How Not to Frame the Le Pen Politics Ban

When is a crime not a crime? When a far right political leader is caught with their hand in the till. It then becomes a stitch-up and an attack on democracy, at least according to the reactionary international who’ve lined up to defend Marine Le Pen in the wake of her sentence for defrauding the European Union. Viktor Orban, himself no stranger to corruption allegations put out a pitiful “Je Suis Marine”. Nigel Farage claims Le Pen was “cancelled“. A funny way of saying ‘misappropriated funds’ but then again he got done himself while still an MEP. Vladimir Putin had the cheek to call the verdict a “violation of democratic norms“. Something, in fairness, he has a great deal of experience with. And a “this will backfire” came in from Elon Musk.

Is a five year prison sentence, two suspended, and a four-year ban from running for office a harsh punishment for embezzling €4m? Or a punishment that fits the crime? It’s probably worth considering that Le Pen ensured the (then) National Front voted for the law she was convicted under in 2016. If there was a conspiracy out to get her, it’s just as plausible to say she was part of it.

Unfortunately, some on the left have offered a faint echo of the extreme right’s victimology. Jean-Luc Mélenchon said “The choice to dismiss an elected official should only belong to the people” and that the ballots and streets should see Le Pen off. Yanis Varoufakis would also like to see Le Pen “destroyed politically”, and argued this was the sort of lawfare that was used against Donald Trump, but “the French are doing it in a more obvious, less defensible way than the American Democrats.” And David Broder also writes that she should not be barred from standing for the French presidency because it hands the National Rally a propaganda coup.

Does it? Trump remains culpable for the storming of the Capitol in 2021, and it’s down to a failure of constitutionalist politicians on both sides of Congress for failing to make more of it and not prosecuting him with sufficient vigour. The drawn out and half-arsed pursuit of Trump through the courts allowed him to construct a persecution narrative that was always going to play well in a country where similar gambits from the right have played well in the past. One should never underestimate the appeal of the insurgent outsider. But does this read map onto France? Le Pen is certainly playing that card, but cannot escape from the fact that the prosecution and verdict proceeded without any evidence of political interference. She was corrupt and was found to be corrupt – just like any other establishment politician. The sentence was not special or egregious, and has been handed down to others for less. Le Pen’s problem with the politics is that she now stands exposed as someone on the take, which isn’t ideal when one’s project has built up populist capital railing against establishment snouts in the trough.

The second issue with the left critique is its statement of the obvious, as if it’s a profundity rather than a banality. Of course the extreme right have to be faced down politically and defeated. No one, not even the most venal and dumb elements of Macron’s coalition think Le Pen’s conviction means job done. So just who is the likes of Varoufakis taking to task for pretending this is the case? This is where he and the others run the risk of affirming the far right’s framing. Giving credence the the RN’s version is … giving credence to the RN’s version. The left should be clear that it’s not the French establishment persecuting an inconvenient “outsider” via the law. This situation is the result of Le Pen’s proven criminality, nothing else. No crime, no prosecution, it’s as simple as that. Instead of offering backhanded defences of Le Pen, taking the RN on means adding her conviction to the political charge sheet. It’s not a substitution for all other things that need to be done to break the far right, but her own incompetence and idiocy has handed her opponents a potentially useful weapon. One should not look a gift horse in the mouth, and the left should not leave this issue alone to be monopolised by the Macronites.

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No. 2 is written by the NPA

Le Pen convicted, the fight against the far right continues!

n the so-called case of “the parliamentary assistants to the European Parliament”, Marine Le Pen was sentenced on Monday 31 March to four years in prison, two of which were suspended, a fine of €200,000 and was banned from running for office for five years. Thus, taking into account the usual judicial delays before the holding of an appeal and the effect of political destabilization, her candidacy for the presidential election in 2027 is very much in doubt, especially if the election is called early.

As expected, the RN and some of the most extreme right wing forces cried scandal and conspiracy, and their voices were amplified by the reactionary international of Orban, Trump and Musk. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the political spectrum has been content with muttered statements or has remained silent. As for Melenchon’s La France Insoumise, it echoed the anti-judge and populist rhetoric of its worst enemies.

“Clean hands and heads held high”?

Bourgeois justice and the law it is supposed to apply are very much open to criticism. Judges getting involved in the political struggle and class conflict is an unwelcome phenomenon. However, just like the multiple Sarkozy cases, the case that has led to Marine Le Pen’s conviction stands out and it is damning, especially for the heiress of a party that claimed to have “clean hands and heads held high” and a few years ago was demanding a lifetime ban for standing for public office for convicted politicians. Justice must be served, regardless of who is on trial. It is up to the political world to deal with it! By taking such a decision, far from calling into question the “separation of powers”, the judiciary has reminded the political class of its own corruption. Some of the principles and mechanisms of bourgeois democracy are taken for granted. When these apply for once to the most powerful, it is inappropriate to complain about them.

The far right is still a threat

However, the possible barring of Marine Le Pen only slightly calls into question the ability of the far right to take power in the short term. It could even accelerate the process if the RN succeeds in presenting itself as the victim. There is a strong tendency towards fascism with deep social roots which have little to do with the probity of the RN.

Jordan Bardella could emerge victorious in an upcoming election if he manages to unite the purely bourgeois far right resulting from Sarkozyism and then Fillonism, today embodied by Reconquête and the last remnants of LR, with the plebeian far right that Marine Le Pen seeks to embody. This old project is also led by Marion Maréchal, which is a divisive factor… but also an alternative. Finally, the extreme liberal centre, embodied by Macronism, also in constant radicalization, could implement a far-right policy in a form more controllable by the bourgeoisie, i.e. a mainstream, technocratic, pro-European illiberalism inspired by the libertarian experiment underway in Argentina and especially in the United States.

Unity and radicalism against the far right

This is why only our struggles, on all fronts, can avoid catastrophe. Because if the legal system seeks to influence the political game, politics remains sovereign and decisive. Preventing the far right from crushing us with its iron heel calls for the unity and radicalism of our side of the class struggle in the streets, in the workplaces and in the colleges, as well as at the ballot box.

1 April 2025 2025

Link :
Le Pen Convicted – the fight against the far right continues!

The New Anti-Capitalist Party in France was founded in 2009 on the call of the LCR (French section of the Fourth International).