France’s Far-Right Lost Another Battle, But They Could Still Win the War [OP-ED]
Far-right French presidential candidate Marine le Pen at a rally in Paris on April 17. Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
“Après moi, le déluge.” [After me, the floods]
After a nearly-successful attempt on his life, followed by a crushing military defeat at the hands of the Prussian Army in 1757, King Louis XV pondered the precarious future of France with four biblical, nihilistic words: “Après moi, le Deluge.”
Nearly thirty-two years later, France would be plunged into chaos– not by the hands of a foreign adversary, but by its own citizens, who, in a cathartic fit of rage, obliterated a monarchy that had routinely ignored and engendered their collective misery.
Fast forward two-and-a-half centuries later, and such a flood - perhaps, if only an electoral one - seems, once again, upon the horizon.
Last Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron struck a second victory over far-right conservative Marine Le Pen, making him the first French premier to eke out a second term since Jacques Chirac’s victory as an incumbent in 2002. While not as convincing as his previous win over Le Pen in 2017, in the second and final round of elections, Macron still comfortably snagged 58.6 percent of the national vote compared to Le Pen’s 41.4 percent. Even so, Macron’s success may only be a temporary victory for the moderate establishment in France, given the nation’s current political and economic climate.
Why? Well, French voters are, to be blunt, exasperated.
For almost three years now, a global pandemic has ripped through the nation, claiming more than 145,000 lives in France alone. Macron’s response to the crisis seemed, at times, haphazard, disorganized, and incoherent. And when second, third, fourth, and fifth waves of the virus slammed the nation in quick succession, it only seemed to highlight the apparent maladroit of the French government.
Now, along with the continued headaches of managing life with the coronavirus, France faces acute supply chain difficulties, intense inflation and, at its doorstep, the deadliest European war since World War II.
It is clear - at least, to an outsider like myself - why the average French voter may feel increasingly anxious at the country’s state of affairs, and the political establishment’s presumed inability to adequately address their needs.
Although few are fearing the annihilation of the French Republic within the next few decades, there is certainly the potential for an enormous, rightward shift in France’s politics and government over the next decade. If the country’s current political establishment hopes to avoid an electoral beheading at the hands of the far-right within the next ten years, Macron must make real strides in reaching out to those voters, who, in a cathartic fit of rage, have bolted to the fringes of the political spectrum.
Already, the tides are shifting.
In fact, not only did Marine Le Pen receive 7.5 percent more of the national vote than she previously did in 2017, but voter turnout actually declined by nearly 3 percent - the nation’s lowest since 1969. Moreover, the classic, big-tent parties that have dominated French politics for decades, the left-wing Les Socialistes and right-wing Les Républicains, garnered an abysmal 1.8 percent and 4.8 percent of the national vote in the first round, respectively.
The large, diverse pluralities these parties used to command have fled the center in favor of France’s radical politics, leaving Macron’s La Republique en Marche party (LREM) as the defacto representative of the nation’s statistically older, more moderate and practical section of the populace.
Emmanuel Macron at a campaign rally for his first election bid in Lyon, France in 2017. Photo: Robert Pratta/Reuters
Far-right reactionaries like Marine Le Pen represent an extremist, xenophobic brand of conservatism that has infected the nation’s discourse. Regardless of one’s irritation or anxiety with French politics, there is no valid excuse for voting for candidates like her, who - among other things - minimize the Holocaust, villify immigrants, cozy up to dictators and liken Muslims to Nazis.
But if they are to build a broad, lasting political coalition - one that can not only represent a diverse, plural group of people but also deliver lasting results for that constituency - moderates like Macron must seek to understand why Le Pen’s voters have come to her in the first place.
It is ridiculously simplistic to write off large swathes of a country solely as irrevocable bigots. From a sociological perspective, there is an abundance of research which strongly suggests that economic woes often enflame, and perhaps generate, socio-cultural anxiety. In other words: weak economies tend to produce and prolong culture wars.
Accordingly, it is no coincidence that, within the last fifteen years, a greater percentage of French citizens have identified with reactionary movements which appear to grant them dignity and stability, during a time in which neither are guaranteed.
From another perspective, follow a timeline of US politics for the last fifty years. When doing so, it is hard to miss that a comparatively significant portion of former President Donald Trump’s base (white, working-class men from the Midwest and Rust Belt) were traditional Democratic voters for much of that time period. However, when these regions began to face acute economic hardship, neither party of the political establishment did much to alleviate their pain.
Now, this group overwhelmingly votes in favor of Trump, who courted their support– promising to fight for them by bringing back industrial labor, protecting domestic manufacturers and limiting immigration. Subsequently, the former president’s racist, anti-democratic identity now constitutes the backbone of the Republican Party, in no small part due to his appeal (albeit a dishonest one) to voters who were inarguably failed by both Democrats and Republicans.
In short, if a party can lose voters, it can also regain them. Very few people - if any - are ‘lost causes.’ And painting an entire segment of the country as, say, a “basket of deplorables,” is only ever productive for the extremist party that’s trying to recruit them.
That being said, Macron now has a second chance.
After five years of underwhelmingly functional governance, Emmanuel Macron has, overall, done a decent job as president. But he has simultaneously failed to adequately address the ‘pocketbook’ issues that most people in France are truly concerned about.
If Marine Le Pen or another far-right candidate were to become president, France would almost certainly damage its relationships with NATO and the EU, in favor of Russia. Cartoon: Economist/Kal
In 2027, Macron will be unable to run again due to constitutional term limits, and it is unclear if LREM will continue its political primacy, or merely fade into irrelevance as quickly as it emerged in 2016. If the latter occurs, it isn’t difficult to imagine that a unified, far-right coalition could capitalize on its disorganized opponents to the left.
If, say, Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, or some other enthusiastic right-wing demagogue were to seize the Élysée, France would almost certainly distance itself from its Western European neighbors and transatlantic allies.
We would witness a French administration which would likely align itself with the likes of Andrzej Duda, Viktor Orban, and most concerningly, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Above all, a far-right France on the national stage would presumably butt heads with its fellow members of NATO and the EU. This could create the possibility of the nation distancing itself, or even exiting, either arrangement.
On a domestic level, the rights of immigrants, French Muslims and other socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized groups would be at risk of increased harassment and discrimination. These potentialities, and many others, make it very clear that an extremist far-right political leader as president would spell catastrophe for France, its people, and its allies. And if Macron and the rest of the political establishment continue to sleepwalk into 2027, there is a significant chance of such a catastrophe.
Or, as Louis XV may have put it, “Le Déluge.”