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Quick Take on France: Not Necessarily a Defeat
American Righties are distraught over Macron’s win and Lefties are relieved. Both are wrong. In my view, it was a mistake to analogize or allegorize this French election into the Trump/Brexit story as everyone was doing. There is no such easy overlap. I think those two things are something uniquely Anglo-American; something taking shape in the Anglosphere that only has hints around the world. First, as Daniel Hannan recently wrote:
Let’s get one thing clear at the outset. Marine Le Pen is not “far Right”. She is not, in any meaningful sense, Right-wing at all. She wants wealth taxes, higher social spending, limited working hours, worker control of companies, tariffs. The garrulous agitator is Right-wing only in the BBC sense of “baddie” – a designation which the corporation applies to everyone from the revolutionary ayatollahs in Iran to the Stalinist nostalgics in Russia.
Marine Le Pen is a National Socialist. I’m not calling her a Nazi, it’s just the most accurate description of her program. From an American perspective, she is a decidedly left-wing candidate. It was her views on immigration and culture that necessitated her labeling as a “baddie” and thus right-wing. Second, Reuters says of the new French President:
An election draws near, and thousands of campaign emails are dumped online. Sound familiar?
I’ve been interested in the French presidential election since at least January of this year. I think it’s because it has the potential for upset that our presidential election displayed. For even this casual observer of national French politics this election is unique and exciting, relative to recent elections.
