One if our jewish inlaws in the US received a particularly hate-filled span mail which was then forwarded to Mrs Lupin with a touching "Can this be true?" message.
From I can best guessed the source is a zionist/tea party person (a frightening combination).
That email purports to have been written by a French jew, but I strongly doubt that this is the case; I am well familiar with our National front & other far right extremists’ views, and none (AFAIK) would express similar ideas in such a way. Obviously I can’t be 100% sure, but I smell a rat.
The text of that e-mail is below the orange squiggle:
“This e-mail was sent from a friend in France XXX [NAMES DELETED BY ME].
“Hello to my American friends,
“As you know, the Socialist François Hollande won the presidential elections in France, last Sunday. It is a catastrophe for France.
“Hollande was elected by the Muslims:
“A survey (of 10,000 Muslims) shows that 93% of the Muslims voted for him.
“As 2 million Muslims participated in this election, Hollande got 1,720,000 Muslim votes more than Sarkozy did: (0.93-0.07) x 2,000,000 = 1,720,000. But at the end, from the entire population, he got only 1,139,316 votes more than Sarkozy. So, without the Muslims’ votes, Sarkozy would have been re-elected.
“All the Muslim criminals feel now empowered. Criminality is already on the rise (1,700 cars were burnt in France for the first night). Muslims are screaming anti-French and anti-Jews watchwords in our streets.
“Veiled women, wearing the illegal burqa, are strolling in our streets.
“And, as if this wasn’t enough, Hollande wants to give to all the foreigners the right to vote in our elections!!
“France will face a very hard situation. We are heading for civil war in a few years.
“That’s the last news from occupied France.”
The “statistics” above strike me as just a bunch of hooey. This entire thing is yet one more strike in the crazy right-wing screed emanating from the United States. (And the Breivik case in Norway has taught Europeans to not ignore such vile propaganda.)
It is true that the so-called 1% don’t like Hollande because he is likely to target them to a much greater extent than the previous Sarkozy regime. But if you look at the real election results, he got a whopping majority of votes in virtually all geographical and social classes — not just “Muslims”.
(In fact, our region doesn’t have many “Muslims” at all, it’s an old historical “white” region, and Holland got something like 62% of the vote.)
As for “Muslims”, most are simply French citizens, 3rd, 4th generation descended from immigrants from the 50s and 60s; they can vote for whomever they want. The reality is that many are poor and working class, and poor, working class people in France tend to vote Socialist (or Front National, sometimes, which is also anti big business), in the hope that these parties will improve their lot in life.
Contextually, Sarkozy made it harder for those living in rural communities by closing down or curtailing various public services. It’s no wonder that the same folks voted for Hollande, when he promised to try to improve things.
France is a country of great solidarity amongst the majority of its people. IMHO we are far less likely to have a civil war of any kind here than you are in the US. We are most definitely a “laic” (ie: not religious), and while it is true that that has created some friction with religious fundamentalists (not just Muslim ones, although they get more attention), laicity is so ingrained in our Constitution and Laws that trying to undo it would be like undoing your First or Second Amendment in the US.
No one is obligated to pretend to go to church to get into political office, and their religion is their personal business, not something that gets talked about on 24 hour news!
I suppose I should consider it flattering that France is still deemed important enough to attract the attention of the American right-wing propaganda machine, but it is really irksome to have to deal with such tripe (my wife had to wrote a long explanation to her cousin).
End of rant.