Should Frenchmen Be Allowed to Act French?
A major French leftist party objects to increasingly popular banquets in France that serve traditional wine and pork, which devout Muslims avoid.
From the BBC:
Giant banquets rile radical left in France
2 hours ago
Hugh Schofield
Paris correspondent
Three-and-a-half-thousand hungry Alsatians wolf down platters of charcuterie and periodically burst into noisy chorus.
No, it is not the police dogs’ annual convention, but the latest iteration of a feasting phenomenon that is sweeping provincial France.
The Alsace town of Colmar – famous for its half-timbered medieval centre – was the scene last weekend of one of the banquets géants – huge banquets whose popularity in the country has suddenly become a hot political issue.
Run by a company called Le Canon Français (The French Cannon), the banquets are massively attended – €81 (£70) buying you four courses of local gastronomy, all the wine you can drink, and several hours of sing-along camaraderie.
The French peasantry had been one of the big winners from the French Revolution, often winding up as small landowners after centuries of toiling for the aristocrats. This drove Karl Marx crazy in his brilliant work of political journalism, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Because Emperor Napoleon I had won the loyalty of the rural masses by confirming that the peasantry could keep the land they had acquired during the 1790s, the peasantry supported his nephew in becoming first President Bonaparte and then Emperor Napoleon III.
Marx was outraged that the 1789 revolution had managed to create a new conservative majority by giving land to the rural laborers, who voted differently than his darlings, the urban laborers.
But the peasantry enjoyed their new found prosperity and developed a level of cuisine seldom before seen among European masses.
But not everyone is cheering. For the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI - France Unbowed), the banquets have a dark side.
LFI, founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is a major force in French politics. Mélenchon just missed out on making the two-person runoff for President of France in both 2017, when he won 20% in the primary, and 22% in 2022.
Disillusioned by the Soviet actions Czechoslovakia 1968, Mélenchon joined the Trotskyite International Communist Organization and then moved over to the Socialists. He led the left wing of the Socialists, then formed his own party of the Left in the 2000s.
LFI says it has evidence of racist chanting, and of immigrant staff being insulted. With pork regularly on the menu, they say the feasts are purposely designed to exclude Muslims and vegetarians.
How dare Frenchmen go to banquets in France that serve traditional French cuisine?
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