In the 2002 French Presidential Election, a 28 year old postal worker got 4.25% of the votes in the first round. Olivier Besancenot, a theoretical communist headed his own party, the LCR or League Communiste Revolutionnaire. Though through his education and evolution, he came into communistic ideology as a Trotskyite, in his own words he says, "Im neither Trotskyist nor Guevarist or Luxemburgist, I'm a revolutionary. And revolution needs to be reinvented, for no revolutionary experiment has ever succeeded. Some of them ended up as bloody caricatures."Olivier has been very successful adapting and evolving, in the 2007 elections he ran for president again and garnered 4.08% of the vote. Of course he had no real chance of winning, but his calm, friendly charisma and skill as a deadly debater and the ability to explain the most complex economic issues to the common man has consistently made him the most admired political figure in French polls.
In 2006, he spoke out against the TASER Corporation and the use of Tasers in law enforcement. He exposed the cover up in the numbers of fatalities resulting from the casual use of tasers by law enforcement. The TASER Corporation sued him for defamation and hired a law team to prosecute him here in France. During the months leading up to the trial, a number of arrests were made of agents hired by TASER to trail Besancenot for the purpose of exposing his personal life. Consequently, charges have been made against the president of TASER, who never showed up to answer them and the charges against Olivier were dropped. The bottom line is that the claims he has put forward about Tasers have been authenticated daily in the news and France is now going to follow Canada's lead and ban tasers from France.
He has always been in the forefront of Labor demonstrations and an ally of the Unions and has developed into one of the UMPs most formidable opponents when it comes to exp[osing the lack of imagination and the sheer greed of their policies.
Last Year, Besencenot announced that the LCR was going to be dissolved and he was going to form a new party, not based on ideological communist doctrine, but on the relationship of the common man to the current economic and politicval realities of the world we live in now.
The new as of yet officially un named party is called the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste.
It will have its first official congress in a few weeks, February 6-9. They have a very active internet presence and plan to be a European Party. I was very interested to hear that Besancenot was listed as the 4th most popular political figure in Scotland last week.
The Party is becoming very successful at communicating its message and ideas across the university level society here in Europe. Their first aim is to get a number of Deputies elected to the European Union next year.
Before that, they are going to be very active here in France in the coming weeks and Besancenot is one of the prime movers in the major work stoppage that will occur here on the 29th of January.
The party claims it will have no leader, but will be driven by the militant members and decide its agenda collectively. In America, we are seeing a party emerge as a power, even if it doesn't claim to be an official political party, the organization, moveon.
The agenda is determined by the registered members. That's how they decided to back Barack Obama. The organization, over 3 million members, voted on the internet.
This is a true democratic politics for the age of the web. A collective will, a forum of ideas and participation, drawing from the wealth of all of us.
4 comments:
Not to take a cheap shot at Besencenot, but why does a revolutionary even bother with the electoral process?
Anyways, I agre that the Internet has the potential to revolutionize politics beyond simply helping major parties fine-tune fundraising and election-rigging. The Web allows people to connect beyond borders, while preventing the state and corporations from limiting information access.
Then again, there are the dark possibilities, like using the Web as a tool of repression.
My head hurts....
Well, Mike, I suppose it has to do a lot with how you define a revolutionary.
He definitely is way to the left of Barack Obama and in his statements about revolution, he has drawn a clear and distinct line, defining himself as striving for radical change economically and socially but a supporter of activist socially participative politics as the way to accomplish this.
As i have had tried to say before, the modern European lables of Communist and Socialist have very little to do with the politicized perceptions that Americans have been force fed.
It is more of a matter of accepting responsiblity on all levels for the society in whioch you live.
Happy to see our Olivier is so well known and appreciated ! just a remark : his name is Besancenot, with an "a" ;-)
And to answer to historymike : electoral process is one of rare ways for revolutionaries to make their opinion widely known, at least in France. So why should they refuse to use it ??? By a rigid idea that "Revolution" has nothing to do with government ? If it can help revolution come nearer (and in sarkozy's France we more and more NEED a revolution, it seems the last hope to get rid of growing tyranny), that's the essential.
PS : excuses for my bad english.
Peacebird, I totally agree witth everything you say...I not onlu respect and appreciate Besancenot, I admire him!
And you comments about Sarkozy become more apparent every day, supposedly he was falttered with the referneces to Napoleon, but now he is openly comparing himself to Louis XVI!
Mike, like many Americans is the victim of many years of the over hype and histrionic use of the word revolutionary to portray a cariacature or visionary change.
Change, as Americans have been recently reintroduced to this concept, can also occur peacefully through the will of the people using a ballot box.
Thank you for pointing out my mis spelling, I will go back and correct it in the post.
You write much bettter English than my French!
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