<i>&quot;Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.&quot;</i><p><pre><code>            -- Bertrand Russell
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But if you think this is something, wait until Le Pen comes to power.<p>It&#x27;s not just France either.  Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.<p>France is a particularly interesting case, however.  As on the one hand they&#x27;re the land of Voltaire, of the French Revolution, of the ideals of &quot;liberté, égalité, fraternité&quot;, and on the other of authoritarianism, colonialism, and xenophobia.