The National Front secured a plurality of votes in the first round of regional elections in France, signalling deep dissatisfaction with the governing Socialists in the wake of last month’s terror attacks, Agence France-Presse reported on Sunday.
Support for the far-right party, which has a strong anti-immigration platform, seemed to rise in reaction to Europe’s refugee crisis and the terror attacks that claimed 130 lives in Paris on November 13. Led by the controversial Marine Le Pen, it received about 30 percent of the vote and finished top in six of France’s 13 regions, positioning it to possibly govern at the regional level for the first time in history.
In contrast, the Republicans, the faction headed by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, won 27 percent of the vote, while President Francois Hollande’s Socialist party took 23 percent, despite a spike in Hollande’s personal approval rating following his forceful response to the terror attacks.
In advance of Sunday’s run-off election that will decide the final results, the Socialists said that they will start withdrawing candidates in certain regions to ensure a united opposition to the National Front. Sarkozy, however, has refused to enter any formal tactical alliance against the far-right party.
In 2002, the National Front won the first round of France’s presidential elections under its founder, Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie. The older Le Pen, whose disparaging remarks against Jews, Muslims, and other minorities has led to his conviction on charges of racism or anti-Semitism at least six times, lost badly to Jacques Chirac in the second round.
In To Save Itself after Paris, Europe Must First Rediscover Itself, published in the December 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine, James Bloodworth explained that the failure of liberal parties in Europe to definitively confront the issue of Islamic terrorism has strengthened far-right political factions.
The consequences of this approach have been predictably risible: because the Left has gone missing on the problem of Islamism, preferring to blame the entire phenomenon on foreign policy and often adopting the aforementioned neo-Orientalist mindset, the European far-Right has been able to portray itself as the only reliable foe of Islamist radicalism. Add to this a general unwillingness on the liberal Left to grapple with the politics of integration, and fertile ground has been sown for the kind of hatred spewed by the white fascistic Right. This is particularly true in France, a country with higher levels of racism than Britain and with the added toxicity of highly disenfranchised immigrant ghettos. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National, was already polling at 29 percent before the November 13 attacks. Since then is seems more, rather than less, likely she will top the first round of France’s presidential elections in 2017.
[Photo: France 24 News / YouTube ]