Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: tu guarda un po' i francesi...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/02/french-willing-fit-racist-cliche
Those who perpetuate Gallic cliches about moody waiters, femmes fatales, 
and bolshie trade unionists will be delighted by the results of a new 
survey highlighting the enduringly xenophobic nature of the French. 
According to the influential research institute BVA, one in seven admits 
to being "at least a little bit racist".
Don't be fooled by the relaxed understatement, either. Just as a young 
woman who confesses to being "a little bit pregnant" is clearly being a 
touch disingenuous, what appears to be a mild dislike of those from 
minority ethnic backgrounds usually disguises a far deeper, ingrained 
prejudice. Arabs get a particularly vicious pasting in the survey, with 
almost 28% of those questioned – up from 12% last year – viewing them as 
"delinquents" who are, by the by, likely to be "thieves".
Meanwhile, almost half of those who took part in the survey – 49% – 
thought that immigrant families were far better at exploiting the 
welfare system than native French people. Again, the figure has 
multiplied by two, with Arielle Schwab, who commissioned the latest 
research for an anti-racist Jewish group, saying: "After a year of heavy 
stigmatisation of Arab and Muslim populations, prejudice towards them 
has more than doubled compared with last year."
Schwab, like many others, attributes this disturbing rise to Nicolas 
Sarkozy's woefully uninspired "national identity" debate – one which 
prompted most of the adult population to start seething about the 
nominally Islamic veils worn by a tiny minority of French women. 
Intended to solidify old-fashioned republican values through a series of 
discourses in town halls and on the internet, Sarkozy's debate, in fact, 
brought out the inner bigot in hundreds of thousands, making the country 
a far nastier, less inclusive place for all, and especially for Muslims.
But it takes more than misguided political expediency to get people to 
admit their basest tendencies. Unlike Britain, France still feels 
comfortable with the kind of popular racism exemplified by its Front 
National (FN), the far-right political party that won some 12% of the 
vote in regional elections earlier this year. Its anti-immigrant message 
was hammered home by its founder and leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. During 
the campaign, he introduced a poster depicting an Algerian flag 
superimposed on a map of France, and a woman wearing a burqa, both 
underneath the legend "No to Islamism".
The really worrying fact is that, since the birth of the FN 38 years 
ago, people such as Le Pen have largely been portrayed as 
plain-speaking, if a little rough-edged, representatives of the still 
beating heart of provincial France. Just as the villains in French TV 
soap operas and police series tend to be Arabs, so meaty-pawed old 
crooks from the sticks can express their hatred in a manner that is 
entirely mainstream.
Brice Hortefeux, then interior minister, summed up the problem last year 
when he was captured on film chatting with a Frenchman of Arab origin 
who was supporting his and Sarkozy's ruling party, the UMP. Thinking he 
could not be heard, Hortefeux discussed the young man with a colleague, 
saying: "When there's one, that's OK – it's when there are several that 
it becomes problematic." When a government minister can get away with 
asides like that, it's perhaps hardly surprising that ordinary French 
people have so few inhibitions about reinforcing well-worn cliches about 
themselves.

 to being "at least a little bit racist".
estikazzi. C'era bisogno della ricerchina per sapere quello che il
voto al FN dimostra da anni?