French Election Shows Major Similarities to America Over Russia, Inflation, Covid and Immigration
Usually, at least when Donald Trump is not a candidate, the easy part of elections, including Sunday’s presidential election in France that returned Emmanuel Macron, is determining the winner.
But even if the result is expected through polling and wide numbers of voter interviews, figuring out what it means may be more complicated.
In the end, the rejection of the far-right alternative, Marine Le Pen by 17 percentage points made the outcome seem a handy win for Macron. But it obscured two far more important observations for us in the United States.
Among Le Pen supporters, the post-election message sounded a lot like what we hear from MAGA. we hear at Donald Trump’s rallies.
There is a parallel between the French election and our own pending contests in November.
First, in both countries we see a rising tide of anti-establishment anger about everything from what it means to be French or American these days to Covid mask-wearing, to high prices due to the global inflation, to immigrants’ influence on changing each country’s values.
Second, was the number who chose not to vote. This was a race in which the French found fault with both candidates, and the low turnout challenged previous dismal turnout records.
Third, in a very recognizable refrain in America, many preferring Macron said they were voting against Le Pen as an even worse alternative.
Those parallels sound extremely familiar.
The Results
Indeed, 41 percent of voters cast ballots for Le Pen’s anti-NATO stance and support for Russia amidst a war raging in Europe, is troubling. You would imagine that maintaining an international alliance would take on a higher profile and reduce her support. Her win would have broken NATO unanimity on supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend itself against Russian aggression.
The French campaign grew increasingly ugly about Muslim immigrants. French journalist and filmmaker Rokhaya Diallo noted in a Washington Post column that the voting showed that “the far right has succeeded in normalizing its ideology — and that should worry us all.”
Despite Le Pen’s advocacy of laws to favor natives over immigrants in a wide swath of social programs, the columnist concluded that France no longer sees Le Pen as a far-right threat divorced from reality.
Le Pen herself declared that she won simply by increasing her share of the vote over previous attempts and focused on parliamentary elections this summer. She managed to sanitize a political history that includes consistently warm words for Vladimir Putin and Russian banks that have backed her and her desire for far broader policing powers and anti-immigrant fervor.
Macron’s team owned up that the messages sent by citizens in the election will require changing policies to focus more on inflation to attack a perceived erosion in purchasing power and living standards that has fueled resentment and public protest.
That might take the form of measures to increase pensions, raise subsidies for households and provide tax breaks to encourage companies to give hefty cost-of-living bonuses. It likely also means extending caps on rising oil and gas prices rising after Russian oil sanctions and the effects of Covid on oil markets.
Lessons Learned?
It takes little effort to see a similar divisiveness in our own country.
In France, as in the United States, slogans and easy answers dipped heavily in the sauce of “populism” are spreading to preserve traditional values, shun foreigners however needy and to insist on a me-oriented society.
Some issues are unique to France, of course, where the labor force is far more protected than in the United States. Workweeks, pensions, pay and everyday finance is more under government control in France than here.
Still, both business and labor unions praised the Macron victory, while suggesting that he must work harder at bridging division – another familiar note in America.
Obviously, France has taken a leading role in the international coalition to face down Russia, and the potential for a rift with Le Pen could have proved fatal to Ukraine.
Among Le Pen supporters, the post-election message sounded a lot like what we hear from MAGA. The vows to keep pressing the French government over a sense of being left behind were exactly what we hear at Donald Trump’s rallies.
From a broader perspective, we hear much the same rumblings across Europe’s right-learning parties from Hungary to Germany, where right-wing activity is way up.
California Rep. Kevin McCarthy went to the Mexico border on Monday to stir the Immigration pot in opposition to the Joe Biden administration. That he did so to take the heat off a brewing scandal of an audiotape that showed him lying about Trump and Jan. 6 is almost beside the point.
It’s the same playbook as France: Upset over prices, blame immigrants. It wasn’t a winning formula there, but could it be here?