Newswise — On Sunday Dec. 6, France will vote to elect presidents of its thirteen regions. Since the early fall, opinion polls have indicated that – for the first time – the right-wing anti-immigrant party National Front is likely to win in two regions. Mabel Berezin, sociologist at Cornell University, author and expert on France and European politics says recent terrorists attacks in Paris, and the European debt crisis have given momentum to the – once fringe – National Front and their leader, Marine Le Pen.
Bio: www.soc.cornell.edu/faculty/berezin.html
Berezin says:
“The upcoming regional elections, usually no more than a blip on the international media radar screen, have gathered international significance. The main reason is the upward trajectory of Marine Le Pen’s party. No one can argue that the National Front is fringe to the national political discussion anymore.
“This week, the socialist leaning regional newspaper ‘Voix du Nord’ ran an op-ed claiming that ‘Marine Le Pen and the National Front aren’t who they say.’ But, in fact, Le Pen and the National Front are exactly what they say, and people in France might be voting for them because of it.
“When Le Pen took over the National Front from her father in 2011, her goal was to make it a party of governance and policy, as opposed to her father’s style of provocation and xenophobia. Her signature issues were – and remain – the sovereign debt crisis and the euro, border control and immigrant integration.
“In 2015, fate handed Marine Le Pen the ‘gift’ of multiple dire events: the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January, the Greek debt crisis in July, and the refugee crisis in September. These events spoke to Le Pen’s agenda on issues and policies around which the established political parties of left and center right had either failed or offered weak solutions. With events such as those, a politician who says that France needs to control its borders and free itself from the shackles of European fiscal policy sounds sensible and not particularly extreme.
“The November attacks in Paris were a ‘coup de grâce’ to the idea that Marine Le Pen was fringe – particularly when Hollande declared war on terrorists and immediately shut France’s borders.
“This is bound to be a bellwether election for the future of Europe writ large. Virtually, every European national state has a party like the National Front that wants to control borders and is distrustful of the European Union as a governing entity. They represent the only opposition force as mainstream left and center right parties become more and more indistinguishable from each other.”
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