The right-wing populist Front National party has no opponents in the French elections next year
This is a cultural article which is part of Aftonbladet’s opinion journalism.
“The only way to get rid of a Le Pen is to shoot him or her in the head,” the godfather of the clan once said Jean Marie Le Penknown Hitler admirer, torturer and racist.
His daughter Navy confirms the thesis. She was convicted last year of embezzlement of public funds and fiddling with EU grants. And the sentence was severe: four years in prison, millions in fines and deprivation of the right to hold public office, i.e. a ban on being a politician.
The other day the sentence was somewhat softened; the sentence was reduced and her eligibility was not ruled out. A few hours after the court’s decision, Marine Le Pen declared that she saw no obstacle whatsoever to being a candidate for the presidential election next year.
Hypocrisy could not be so much bigger. Marine Le Pen has constantly accused other parties of confiscating tax funds. Her main thesis has always been that the system protects the established parties and that only her party is free from fraud. A classic right-wing populist slogan. Just as obviously, she cherishes the leadership cult of fascism. The Le Pen clan owns the National Gathering party and it is the family that appoints the leader. No party decisions, no party democracy is needed for her to declare herself the party’s presidential candidate. No one will oppose, certainly not the formal leader of the party, the young one Jordan Bardella. Marine Le Pen gave him a small consoling pat on the back and named him in passing as her future prime minister.
Bardella is otherwise an overwhelming favorite to win the first round of the presidential election in 2027. His opinion figures are well above 30 percent, more than twice what the nearest candidate is collecting. Marine Le Pen’s figures have not been measured, no polling institute thought she would run.
There is a certain difference within the fascist sphere that both Le Pen and Bardella are part of. She leans slightly to the left, wants to win over working-class voters and occasionally attacks the global financial elite. Bardella has good relations with the top of the private business world and with the most powerful media moguls. He hangs out with the money aristocracy in Monaco and lives with a real princess, from the Two Sicilies family.
Currently, there is no viable alternative, neither to the right nor to the left.
The two leaders unite of xenophobia, the fight against Islam in all its forms and that social rights should only include the French: “The French first”, as the slogan goes.
Marine Le Pen is now trying for the fourth time to become French head of state. Her chances of being elected depend mainly on the strength of her opponents. Currently, there is no viable alternative, neither to the right nor to the left. Historically, a republican pact existed: The democratic right and the left allied themselves against right-wing extremism.
That pact has long since been terminated by the right in France as in so many other countries.
