Him and Le Pen advance to the second round with a minimum gap, both just over twenty percent of the votes. The victims left behind the crushing defeat of the socialists and the Gaullists. The candidate of the extreme left gets almost as many votes as hollist Fillon. All this was more or less predictable, but overall, we witness a significant change in French politics, which is all the more important that similarly occur in other countries, for example, in the Netherlands. The main feature of the new political situation — it became obvious during the voting crisis the major parties of the center-right and center-left and the growth of populist and radical right-wing forces, bearing openly xenophobic and racist.
Makron — by all indications, the next President of France — is a reflection of the fears, which included the French, a pretty mediocre candidate and because the only impediment to marine Le Pen. The truth is that Le Pen must be a major concern, but even if you lose, she wins. Disturbs not that the candidates of the National front, father and daughter Le Pen, has never won in the second round of the presidential election, and the fact that they significantly strengthen their positions. Today the front national is the first French party that stands behind its own presidential candidate, while the Macron there is no such party. He will act as President, but these rules are not fit for the parliamentary or local elections. There’s something Le Pen and achieve the main and the territorial government, which received the election result will only strengthen.
Take a look at Le Pen and her party: this is not a marginal political force in France, but the most important party of the far right in Europe. And when I use the word “ultra”, I am aware what it means. Marine Le Pen came to the finish line of the race in France, with the support, which might have seemed unthinkable and absurd, yet it perfectly illustrates the policy of today: the support of trump and Putin. Putin gave her a Grand reception in the Kremlin, and trump supported in their tweets. Both have a lot in common, they are looking at a lot the similar way, and, though unable to materialize this unity of thought as they would have liked, especially trump, in many things they are still “brothers in arms”. And one of the binder yarns is marine Le Pen, which both openly support.
Thus, the novelty of the current geo-strategic situation makes the French elections are significant not only for Europe, both geographically and institutionally, but for the entire world. The novelty of this situation is that the candidate of the extreme right, which is Le Pen arrives at the Kremlin, not fearing for his anti-Communist reputation, which, whether we like it or not, is still associated with Russia and Putin. But trump, the leader of American democracy, shamelessly support the most prominent representative of the radical right in European politics that it would be suicidal step for any other American President.
Le Pen, like trump, is the embodiment of change in the current presidential campaign, and only therefore has the votes, which the traditional parties managed to fill nauseam. That she will belong to voices of protest that the European left, it seems, is unable to enlist due to the decline of socialist parties and at the same time spin-off of a more radical left-wing, although these forces have in France a candidate, which in contrast to the socialists manage to survive the complete collapse of the left. As has happened with the Republican party in the U.S., centrist and center-right forces, or even a little more moderate than Le Pen, right wing parties are serious disagreements and involved in a whole series of scandals. As in the case of trump, the scandals of the same kind do not affect Le Pen as Fillon. The tribal spirit of its supporters does not allow them to reach the core of the electorate that continues to grow.
But Le Pen isn’t a trump, it is the successor of one of the worst political traditions in France: in the thirties it was fascism, during the war, collaborationism, and then a fierce defense of French Algeria, Catholic traditionalism, monarchism, and especially xenophobia, pure xenophobia. The main moment of triumph and betrayal here was the collaboration with the German occupiers during the war, French history has been stained, and wash away the shame of the French was much harder than the Germans. In Germany, almost all residents had encouraged the Nazis to put it mildly, with their acquiescence were committed the most heinous crimes, but the defeat in the war had somehow cleared the local air — to a greater extent than in France. Of course, many Germans had to “remake ourselves” for the new Germany as one, and on the other side of the wall, but no conditions in order to cover everything that happened or to feel nostalgic for the days of Hitler, was not.
In the underground there was always the Nazi political layer and neo-Nazis that have appeared in the postwar years, but to this day even with the growth in the number of followers they, unlike the National front, remain marginalized in the political life of the country. Meanwhile in France, the collaboration always remained a kind of disease engendered by shame and taboos, and some form of French fascism, without the axe, “Francisco”, but with the rooster and the tricolour, always continued to find support among the French, even if they are not willing to acknowledge it. The successors of the “action française” and Mr. Pugeda, mixing rural nobility with the grocers, the French Algerians and the “black” France, which exists in the Church and municipalities, has always been an integral part of the French political landscape. The Algerian war showed what incredible acts of violence were capable of French with impressive support of the metropolis, including the widespread use of torture. De Gaulle stopped the growth of this France, as later, Mitterrand, but it will not go away.
The French plague, nationalism, even in its absurd extreme of denying the reality played a decisive role, he turned around racism and xenophobia, which in fact became the program of the National front, and even more than a brand. For countries where an important part of the population historically has Algerian origins — blacks from former French colonies in Africa — which was power, after the First world war who took control of Lebanon and Syria, and which has a very significant percentage of the Muslim population, the national front is a threat of national importance. The economic crisis, the marginalization of many of the French in closed communities, rejection of alien habits and customs (often developing into an open confrontation, because in this type of conflict is very often just two sides and both are wrong), young people of Arab origin, born French, but dropped on the outskirts of the city, without a job, who grew up among crime and violence, all contributed and continues to contribute to the strengthening of the National front.
The extreme right represented by Le Pen, one of the most dangerous in Europe, not only because of all our fears related to them are justified, but also because — as difficult as it is to admit — Le Pen had already achieved considerable success and every victory can not fail to inspire alarm. Not to mention Europe, where the situation today is that victory is called a successful attempt to avoid collapse — the picture is not very good. A week or two Europe is like happy, and then everything starts anew.
