UPDATE:
As expected, Marine Le Pen and Emanuel Macron were the two winners of the first round in the French presidential election. Also according to expectations, the fascist left erupted in street violence to protest the victory of the National Front candidate.
After 33.42 million votes had been counted, Macron is in the lead with 23.12% of the vote and Le Pen at 23.06%. It is expected that the final result will tilt more in favor of Macron as the results from the cities come in, which are more left leaning.
No matter the final outcome, this is a major victory for National Front, and an equally massive loss for the traditional parties. The Socialist Party was soundly rejected, as they were in the Netherlands recently, and in Britain.
A poll taken right after the voting booths closed showed that Macron will win solidly in the second round, May 7. However, polls have proven to be inaccurate in the past, so the election is still open.
ORIGINAL REPORT:
Elections in France are normally not of interest to Americans. This year’s French presidential election is an entirely different story because of the controversial candidate Marine Le Pen of National Front, who has been likened to a French version of President Trump. If she wins, the course of Europe and the EU could substantially change.
Today French voters will go to the voting booths in the upcoming first round of the French presidential election, but we already know two things about the result. First, none of the candidates is going to get more than 50% of the votes, so there will be a second election round with the two best candidates from the first round. Second, Le Pen is most likely going to be one of those two candidates.
Echoing Trump, Le Pen has spoken passionately about the deleterious effects of immigration in France. From Breitbart:
Front National leader Marine Le Pen has declared that, following years of unrest, riots, and terrorism, “Mass immigration is not an opportunity for France, it’s a tragedy for France.”
“I will protect you. My first measure as president will be to reinstate France’s borders,” promised Ms. Le Pen, triggering enthusiastic applause and chants of, “This is our home!” from a patriotic crowd of 5,000 supporters waving the tricolor flag.
“The choice on Sunday is simple,” she said. “It is a choice between a France that is rising again and a France that is sinking.”
Also, like Trump, she has made unyielding statements about Islamism:
[She] has denounced radical Islam as “a monstrous totalitarian ideology that has declared war on our nation, on reason, on civilisation,” after a deadly Kalashnikov attack on police officers in Paris.
“Hate preachers must be expelled, the Islamist mosques closed,” the Front National leader declared, lambasting the Socialist Party government as “notoriously feeble.”
The strong anti-Islamism and anti-immigration stance of Le Pen is matched by an opposite statement by the main rival candidate Emmanuel Macron:
Mr Macron took direct exception to Le Pen’s comments Friday morning when the Front National presidential candidate called for the arrest of all known radical Islamists and the deportation of Islamists without French citizenship Le Figaro reports. Le Pen made the comments after reports that the shooter of three police in Paris Thursday night had been known to police as an Islamic extremist.
Courtesy BBC.com
If Le Pen wins the presidential election – and there is a real chance that she does – she will most likely insist on a popular referendum to renegotiate France’s treaty and relationship with the EU. This spells trouble for the globalist Eurocrat elite in Brussels. Le Pen as the president of France will further embolden the nationalist EU-skeptics in other countries and strengthen their fight for closing the borders for immigration from third world countries, especially those from primarily Muslim countries. The only way for the EU elite to survive the full onslaught of the populism washing across Europe is to adapt and bend to the will of the people. Whether the EU survives or not, the outcome will be the same: a more nationalistic Europe with tougher immigration laws.
But even if Le Pen loses the battle of the presidency, she and the National Front may ultimately win the war. The reason is the strong demographic difference between the United Kingdom and France. Brexit happened because middle aged and old Christians voted to leave, whereas the young Brits were much more pro-EU and positive to immigration. In France, the opposite is the case.
In an Ifop survey last month, 39% of the young aged 18-24 said they would vote for National Front. As such, the right-wing populist party is more widespread among the young, than among older voters, which is the opposite pattern seen in other countries such as the United Kingdom and Netherlands.
Among the young, Marion Le Pen, the niece of Marine Le Pen, is exceedingly popular. She is also more radical and outspoken than her aunt, aligning herself with the Identitarian Movement in France, which is working to preserve French and pan-European culture as well as protect it from foreign and what they deem to be incompatible cultures, such as Islam.
One possible explanation for this reversed pattern is that France is suffering from very high unemployment among their young people. France is a socialist country with draconian regulations that erect juridical walls around the labor market. These laws protect workers who already have a job, but they also make it exceedingly difficult for people on the outside to get in. This system directly affects young French people.
Therefore, should Marine Le Pen lose the election, chances are we will see a reprise a few years down the line with Marion Le Pen.
