In perhaps the most ridiculous attack yet, Sir Roger Scruton is being accused of supporting the National Front… due to a column in which he mocked the racist political party and compared it to the mass-murderers of the French revolution. To any thinking person, that is a form of criticism, not endorsement, but to the Huffington Post UK’s Paul Waugh, it is not so.
The dishonest article has already been cited in Parliament, but it’s worth laying out why it is wrong.
Dr. Scruton opens the column by discussing the French National Assembly in 1789, and the establishment of the “right” and “left” in that context. He goes on to argue for a political axis founded more on the basis of totalitarianism vs freedom than a poorly-applied framework from 18th century France.
To this end, he points out that both major totalitarianisms, communism and fascism are quite close to each other, rather than being polar opposites. Each is built on a rejection of tradition and norms, and cites a spurious claim to the volonté générale, or general will, which in the words of Bertrand Russell, “made possible the mystic identification of a leader with its people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot box.” (The description recalls Stalin, Hitler, and Mao alike.)
Having established this, he calls the National Front “an egalitarian and populist movement, hostile to constitutional government and to traditional authority, fired by ideology and a spurious search for a common purpose.” These are not words of flattery; to a traditional conservative like Dr. Scruton, populist movements which rail against tradition and the rule of law, invoking their ideology for a universal mandate recall the devastation wrought by the Nazis and Soviets. He notes that this combination of views puts it on of the “left” of the French National Assembly.
Many have latched onto the word “egalitarian,” perhaps because they use it describe themselves, but in this context it is far from a term of praise, and anyone who is reading it as such is being ignorant, whether wilfully or not. It is a clear invocation of the French Reign of Terror, during which, in the name of égalité, tens of thousands of people (some have estimated about 50,000 in total) were killed by the regime as supposed enemies of the people. In the same holy war for égalité, the regime went on to kill well over 100,000 people, many of whom were civilians, in the Vendée region for their opposition.
French diplomat Jacques Villemain, who has represented France at the International Court of Justice, wrote a legal study of the Vendée campaign, applying the analysis used in the Srebrenica and Rwandan genocides as well as the norms of the time. He writes, “‘Genocide’ as a term hadn’t been defined until the 20th century, but the reality of the acts committed [by the regime] in the Vendée were clearly already considered criminal in 1793-1794. These crimes were so monstrous and unprecedented that they had to invent words for them, ‘dépopulation‘ and ‘populicide‘. These words means what we do when we say ‘genocide’ now.” [translation mine]
The Burkean conservatism that Scruton espouses came about in direct opposition to this brutality, to which he compares the National Front. This is a condemnation, not an endorsement. To say otherwise is to blatantly lie.