Opinion

What Exactly Awaits France On May 7th?

REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

Marc Biglary Marc Biglary
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With the first round of the French presidential elections being over, a new campaign has taken off, opposing Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in a final round to be held on May 7th. Not even during the campaign for the Brexit referendum or the recent US presidential elections had two world visions so antithetical been confronting each other, with one believing in the nation-state as the best means for the social and physical protection of individuals and their identities, and the other considering borders, cultures, identity and any form of economic protectionism and patriotism as dated and old-fashioned.

Le Pen, who now needs to make alliances for the second round and to gain a presidential majority in the upcoming legislative elections of June 2017 in order to carry out her measures, pleads for the reconstruction of the European Union through the model initially championed by Charles de Gaulle. That would be a Europe in which nation-states will cooperate closely while their territorial, legislative and monetary sovereignty remain guaranteed. She has also been a fervent opponent of the Schengen agreement which allows the free movement of persons within its member states. An initiative whose consequences have been as regrettable as allowing the free flow of Islamist terrorists all across the continent, as we saw with the itinerary of the Paris and Berlin jihadis, not to mention that of all sorts of other criminals.

Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker, on the other hand, is the heir and the lovechild of the globalist elite in the West. Breaking protocol, top EU officials such as Jean-Claude Juncker have voiced their support for the candidate. Likewise, both François Fillon, Sarkozy’s former prime minister and the candidate of the mainstream right-wing Les Républicains as well as Benoît Hamon of the currently ruling Socialist Party, were quick to call on their electorate to vote for Macron, to defeat what they dismiss as being ‘far-right.’ Both candidates were eliminated in the first round in a massive rejection of establishment parties by the voters. The fact that these otherwise vindictive and ruthless adversaries endorse Macron however directly challenges his claim to be an eccentric post-partisan ‘neither-left-nor-right’ candidate. There also exists a whole spectrum of different career politicians who have joined him, ranging from ex-Trotskyists such as Robert Hue to advocates of laissez-faire economics like Alain Madelin, outdated figures that Macron tries to sell to the public as the renewal and the rejuvenation of the French political class, no less.

The incoherence of such a ‘new’ political composition does not, however, seem to be a matter of concern for the man who created his political movement ‘En Marche!’ after his own initials. With the legislative elections lying ahead, many of the former and currently serving members of the parliament from across the board will seek reelection under the new political brand. Far from being a rejuvenation, this is an occasion for most of them to hold on to their seats and to promote European federalism. Meanwhile, the common currency continues to add to the seven million unemployed French citizens whereas cheap foreign labor is forced on the economy.

The globalist and the post-nation-state generation of the likes of Macron believe that countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands or the UK for that matter, are too small, too weak and too old-fashioned to succeed outside the EU. Any look at the map, however, proves otherwise. Not only the best-functioning economies and societies in the continent are those not within the EU, namely Norway and Switzerland, but there are numerous other examples across the globe, the likes of Japan, Israel, and Singapore, who do not belong to some sort of supra-national undemocratic gizmo like the EU and whose societies and economies function quite decently, to say the least.

Moreover, this French presidential campaign has also been an opportunity for everyone to learn a lot more about each candidate. For instance, Macron had the occasion to deny the very existence of French culture, famously saying that “there isn’t a French culture,” or that he has never seen such a thing as French art. These declarations followed his previous ones in which he branded France’s colonial heritage as a “crime against humanity,” referred to the hard-working women of a French slaughterhouse as “illiterates” and accused the unemployed French miners of alcoholism.

On the other hand, in a failed attempt of poor taste to discredit Le Pen, the French media who openly favor her rival, unintentionally outed her as someone with uncompromising Republican and Gaullist values. The controversy was born out of the yearly commemorations of the Vél d’Hiv Roundup of July 16-17, 1942 during which 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris. When asked about these crimes, Le Pen, whose father has been condemned for Holocaust denial on different occasions, acknowledged the responsibility of those who were then in power. Holding the same position as De Gaulle himself, she mentioned that it was not France who was responsible, as facts are that Free France, the legitimate France recognized as such by the allies, was in exile in London from 1940-1944. Upon liberation, the collaborationist government of Vichy was officially declared “illegitimate, null and void.” Consequently, if anything, it would be morally absurd and historically contradictory to expect Le Pen or any other decent human being to grant the Vichy government the legitimacy that it did not enjoy back then from the Allies, and does not deserve today from anyone.

Le Pen has repeatedly presented herself as the best shield for the protection of French Jews against the greatest threat they face, which is from Islamist fundamentalism. Nevertheless, she whom Roger Cukierman, the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, has famously characterized as “irreproachable” when it comes to antisemitism, had to face false allegations of Holocaust denial.

Most of these slanderous accusations on behalf of the Parisian intelligentsia also express great disdain and little respect for the genuine victims of racism, fascism, and antisemitism in history. Besides, rarely any indignation is shown towards nationalist Middle Eastern countries who openly embrace racism, fascism, and antisemitism. If in fact some 25 to 30% of French voters were Nazi bigots, the question would not be what to do about it, but rather where to go, and quickly so.

On May 7th, were either of the otherwise interchangeable left and right-wing establishment parties to be present in the second round, the French people would go as usual to the ballot box to decide who will get to live in the Elysée palace for the next five years while the transfer of sovereignty to the EU, migratory submersion, destruction of borders and identities, unemployment and poverty will perdure. Ironically, however, just a few hours before Victory in Europe Day, with Macron and Le Pen each representing polar opposite views, the French presidential elections will simply be a referendum on the abolition of the nation-state, peoples, borders, and identities or their conservation and promotion.

Marc Biglary will earn a graduate degree in international security from the Catholic University of Paris in May. He speaks fluent English, French and Persian.