Now Appearing on Appeasement TV

Robert Redeker tells M6 that he’s moved and has had to sell his home. The risk to him is permanent in nuance-land:

Redeker wrote, "As in the Cold War, where violence and intimidation were the methods used by an ideology hell bent on hegemony, so today Islam tries to put its leaden mantel all over the world. Benedict XVI's cruel experience is testimony to this. Nowadays, as in those times, the West has to be called the 'Free World' in comparison to the Muslim world; likewise, the enemies of the 'Free World,' the zealous bureaucrats of the Koran's vision, who swarm in the very center of the 'Free World,' should be called by their true name."

In reaction to Redeker's column, Egypt banned Le Figaro and Redeker received numerous death threats. His address and maps to his home were published on al-Qaida-linked Web sites and he was forced to leave his job, and flee for his life. While Redeker e-mailed a colleague that French police have set free the man they know was behind the threats to his life, Redeker recently described his plight to a friend in the following fashion, "There is no safe place for me, I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there... I am under the constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences."

In the mean time, the predicted numbness over the Socialist Party is setting in. The issue at hand posed to these folks is “would you vote for Ségolène Royal (reduced to a single name, much like Prince) because she’s a woman?” Well... we’re talking about the sort of things that Europeans fret over. By looking for something painless to fret over they don’t think they’ve wasted their vote, so the comfortable thing is taken seriously and they feel ‘hooked in’. Yes, many people indeed would vote for someone just because they’re female.
For many, the concept of equality amounts to silly, feel-good acts of that sort.

The balance of the babble is about the environment, geared perfectly to play into the hands of the left in a positive, yet impoverishing way. Like Prince, sooner or later all populist politicians will become little more than a glyph.

Meanwhile, a bit of publicized personal controversy changes the election equation for the moment. Economic liberal candidate Philippe de Villiers’ son has accused his brother of raping and molesting him as a child.

Quoted in Nouvel Obs:

The facts of the case go back fifteen years when both boys were minors. The two brothers faced an investigating magistrate last Thursday who also compel an investigation of the credibility of the younger brother, the author of a complaint dated October 30 against his older brother. An expert for the court determined that the plaintiff’s complaint was “credible”.
Under investigation for rape, Guillaume de Villiers was placed in custody. He is married and the father of three.
“It is my son who is being investigated. He had been the target an undercover investigation for several months over giving me confidential documents for my book “The Mosques of Roissy” to be precise”

Though it’s really to soon to say that this will knock the best-known figure of his Mouvement pour la France party out of the race for good, it doesn’t help. It would, however, split the votes he would otherwise take from the UMP. I suspect that people with a genuine interest in individual freedom, less government micromanagement of people’s lives, and lower taxation, would not be readily attracted to a traditionally nativist, tariff and trade-barrier oriented party like Le Pen’s FN.

So it goes.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)