Thoughtful leftists might have realised that Marine Le Pen would have probably done more for their socialist economic cause than Emmanuel Macron ever will.
Still, this hasn’t stopped them gloating since the glaringly obvious (to me, anyway) happened, and Marine Le Pen was defeated yesterday in the second round of the French Presidential election.
“Your movement is dead!” they cried. “The populist/nationalist cause is over!” they screeched.
Even CNN… sorry, especially CNN were basically popping champagne bottles all over their studios. The ever odious Christiane Amanpour couldn’t have been more inappropriate on air if she had jumped on stage and started twerking along to Ode to Joy (rather than La Marseillaise).
Still it brings me great satisfaction that our political and philosophical adversaries are so complacent, having lost their globalist battles in the two most important Western nations in the world in 2016 — the United States and the United Kingdom — they’re now performing cartwheels over managing to bully the playground whipping boy, France.
France, ladies and gentlemen. Where the working day is about 3.5 hours long, punctuated by garlic bread breaks and miniature riots (usually after someone worked an extra hour and didn’t get an additional garlic bread break).
Such victories are scarcely more than Pyrrhic.
We saw their same happy clappy antics when the Green candidate won in Austria at the end of 2016.
The headlines are always the same, using phrases like, “roundly rejects the far right!” or “an embarrassment” for someone the election scarcely concerned.
You never see the same when the left loses though. When the Remain campaign were beaten in Britain, no one ran the headline: “Britain Roundly Rejects Pro-EU Campaign!” When Hillary lost, where was Christine Amanpour to hurl abusive “isms” and “phobias” at her? (There were plenty of reasons to, remember?)
Nevertheless, the buffoons who prop up the likes of Macron while he picks their pockets are pleased with what transpired on Sunday.
But so are the Front National.
The party has achieved something many thought it never would. Thirty-five per cent of the vote in a Presidential election. Double what Jean Marie Le Pen achieved in 2002 when he shocked the French and global political establishments by progressing through to the second round. As Germany’s Foreign Minister remarked, Marine Le Pen attracting 11 million votes was something the “centrists” and leftists were not ready for.
The party has used this opportunity to build a far more robust election machine than it has ever had. I visited their offices in Paris in February and they were far more organised and tech savvy than Trump or the Brexit team. So what if the timing was wrong for them? In June there are legislative elections in France and you can bet your bottom dollar Euro the FN will walk away with a net swing in their favour.
As ever, of course, the Germans are keen to act as puppet masters to the new French president. As ever, the French voted someone in keen to dance to the tune of Deutschland Uber Alles.
“[I]f Macron fails then the next president will be Marine Le Pen and we need to prevent this at all cost,” said Foreign Minister Roth. At least he is attuned to what yesterday’s results meant, even if his base is too busy celebrating the defeat of patriotism by the forces of globalism.
But let them eat fake hope, I say.
The truth is for the nationalists and populists around the world, this was a rite of passage. A coming of age into the political mainstream. A French Presidential election candidate discussing — openly — radical Islam, immigration, national sovereignty and the demolition of the European Union? And winning over one third of the national vote?
Raheem Kassam is the Editor in Chief of Breitbart London and tweets at @RaheemKassam
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