President Chirac must now defeat Le Pen's racism, not pander to it

After the earthquake, the aftershocks. The spontaneous demonstrations across France after Jean-Marie Le Pen's electoral breakthrough should remind the world that the real France is not represented by this vile old political leftover. The great majority of the French people have shown their disgust, and their leaders – with the exception of the Trotskyist Arlette Lagullier – have pledged to take on Mr Le Pen in an anti-Fascist front, urging their supporters to vote for Jacques Chirac in the second round of the contest on 5 May. All agree Mr Le Pen must be humiliated. Mr Chirac has now to decide how to ensure that happens.

Mr Chirac has a choice; to attempt to peel away support from the extreme right by pandering to the prejudices of Mr Le Pen's supporters, or to fight those prejudices and begin to place French politics on a sounder footing.

There is a superficial argument for Mr Chirac to concentrate on the issues that Mr Le Pen made his own. If the voters are concerned about crime, about asylum and immigration and about the effects of globalisation, surely there is every reason to listen to them, and respond to their worries. Indeed, British chauvinists point to the policies of Tony Blair's government on crime and asylum and argue that that is precisely what he has done, to great effect. Yet the success of the Conservative and Labour parties over the years in subsuming and neutralising the extremes of British politics is overstated. When Margaret Thatcher made her famous remark in 1978 about people being "swamped" she may have undercut the National Front, but she did nothing for the simmering cauldron of race that led to the inner-city riots of 1981 and 1985.

Mainstream politicians who use the rhetoric of nationalism all too often legitimise the arguments used by the extreme right. William Hague's language about Britain becoming a "foreign land" and "bogus" asylum-seekers may have been one reason why the BNP won so many votes in places such as Oldham in the general election last year. Mr Chirac's concentration on similar issues mid-way through his campaign also seems to have given Mr Le Pen an unnecessary boost.

But even if trying to appease the extremists were a successful electoral tactic, it remains an immoral and offensive way of political life.

There is a streak of racism in France, as there is in most countries, but that is no reason to pander to it. Some voters are concerned about levels of immigration and the numbers of asylum-seekers. Crime is undoubtedly a worry. The way to deal with those concerns is not simply to echo them back; it is to persuade the electorate that the future of their country and their way of life is not threatened by more diversity. It is to point out, as some are beginning to, that the French, like the British, are the product of many waves of immigration over the centuries, and that a pure French "race" is a myth. It is to explain the truth about real levels of crime and to point out that members of ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims of crime than their white neighbours.

Most of all, it is to make a positive case for immigration, to stress the economic benefits it can bring, for example by demonstrating how a younger population will be better able to pay for what would otherwise be a dangerously ageing population. And while France understandably frets about the cultural effects of globalisation, Mr Chirac knows well that some French companies lead the world and can be winners in the process of globalisation.

In short, Mr Chirac must cut off at the root the most pernicious aspects of Mr Le Pen's appeal – his atavism and his exploitation of people's anxieties. Modern France has nothing to fear.