In politics, it is necessary to avoid superficial parallels. Sarkozy is not a fascist and the Gaullist UMP is not a fascist movement—at least not at this point. Nevertheless, Sarkozy’s style in many respects evokes disquieting memories of the most horrific period in European history.

There was the mass parade of 80,000 jubilant members of his party, which terms itself a “movement.” There was the 98 percent result in the poll of UMP delegates in favour of his candidacy. And there was the non-stop invocation of honour, nation and patriotism.

Amidst the bombastic trappings more appropriate to the crowning of a monarch, Sarkozy used his acceptance speech at the UMP convention to condemn the class struggle and call for the surmounting of differences between left and right. “My France,” he declared, “is that of all Frenchmen, who basically do not know if they stand on the right, the left or the centre because they are, above all, of good will.”

He sought to reconcile the irreconcilable: “My France is the country which carried out the synthesis between the Ancien Régime and revolution, between the Capulet state and the Republican state.” He evoked the figure of the socialist opponent of war, Jean Jaurès, who was murdered at the start of the First World War, and Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister who in 1918 declared his intention of continuing the war to the bitter end. In the space of one sentence Sarkozy conjured up the revolutionary Danton, the colonialist Jules Ferry and the post-war French leader Charles de Gaulle.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sark-j20.shtml