The European Elections and the Extreme Right
The final filing date for the European Parliament elections was May 3, 2019, with the vote to be held throughout the member nations from May 23 to May 26. The Local, a Paris-based English language newspaper, has a full explanation of the process. In brief, however, the French MEP elections will not be held in two rounds, as is normally the case with elections in France, but rather the total number of seats won by each party will be determined proportionately in a single round. (France is scheduled to go from 74 to 79 when Brexit is finally accomplished.) The cut-off, which a party has to reach in order to be allocated any seats, is set at 5%.
As a result, in the lists of the various smaller parties, only the top or perhaps the top two names have any chance at all, and most heads of their list have no chance whatsoever, because they will not reach the required 5%. Those running in the 20-plus percentile–so far only the Rassemblement National (Marine Le Pen’s party, RN) and La République en Marche (Macron’s party, LREM)–have a chance of getting twenty or more of their people into the European Union Parliament. Le Monde has provided a breakdown of the thirty-three lists of parties and candidates, from the extreme left to the extreme right; see also LCI. LREM and RN have been running within one or two percentage points of each other, in the low 20s, with Le Pen’s party recently pulling ahead.
A bit of history first. In the 2014 European elections, Le Pen’s party won 25% of the vote, compared to the UMP (now Les Républicaines, the conservative party, or LR) with just over 20%, and to the Socialist Party, already collapsing, as it did completely in 2017, with only 14.7 (Le Monde, Le Figaro). At that time Macron’s LREM, currently the largest party in the National Assembly, did not yet exist–an indication of the volatility of French politics and parties in this contemporary era.
Le Pen’s victory in the European elections in 2014, and her likely repeat of a similar percentage in 2019, lends support to what has been one of her strongest arguments for constitutional change in the Fifth Republic–single-round proportional, instead of two-round, voting in the National Assembly elections. (This would require districting changes as well, since candidates currently run for single seats; those history students who have drowsed over the Third Republic battles about scrutin de liste, or proportional representation, and scrutin d’arrondissement, the single-member constituencies that France has currently, now have a concrete example of what the dispute means in real life.) Le Pen’s argument is that the two-round system deprives her party of its rightful share of seats; in the second round, in effect, there is a either a piling-on of her opponents against her party’s candidate, and she gets fewer seats; or her candidates perpetually come in third or less, in a way that does not allow for the true representation of the national support she has.
She has a point. One could even argue that the manner of election has the effect of concealing the real–and ominous–strength of the RN throughout the country. Her best evidence can be seen in the vote totals for the first and second rounds, or tours, of the 2017 National Assembly elections. The official 2017 National Assembly voting results from the Ministry of the Interior show, in the “first tour,” that LREM received 6,391,269 votes, while RN (then FN, or National Front) received 2,990,454 total votes, or a little under half as many. The party that came in second in total votes was the conservative party Les Républicaines, or LRs, with 3,573,427 votes, and the extreme left La France Insoumise, or LFI, came in just below Le Pen’s party with 2,497,622.
After the first tour, the two top candidates in each constituency ran head to head, as in the presidential elections. Many who had voted for the FN were not able to vote for their preferred candidate in their constituency, so they either abstained completely, cast a “blanc” vote (the total numbers of both categories reached record highs) or perhaps moved to the LRs. The result, in total numbers of seats:
LREM, 306 seats (and their alliance with the MoDems, who gained 42 seats, gave them a commanding majority in the 577 seats of the National Assembly);
LR, 112 seats;
LFI, 17 seats;
FN (RN): 8 seats.
(The view that the election results do not adequately represent the will of the voters, as Le Pen has claimed, is one that was shared by candidate Macron, who promised in 2017 to introduce some “proportionality” into the vote, and has recently done so; more on that proposal later.)
Therefore, despite her pronounced disdain for the European Union itself, the elections to that body have been very important to her overall strategy of positioning the RN as the “first party” of the opposition or even, simply, as the “first party of France.”
Le Pen’s party platform includes a reform agenda for the European Union. She has explicitly renounced “Frexit,” her 2017 campaign promise, and now talks of change from within (no doubt because of the catastrophic way that Brexit has unfolded). Her reform plan is rhetorically framed around “liberty,” by which she means taking back the power of the sovereign states. Marion Maréchal [Le Pen] dramatically declared at CPAC in 2018 that “France is not free,” that “80%” of her laws are dictated by the European Union.
The RN Manifesto sums up its plans for reforming the European Union as a matter of taking power from the appointed European Commission, aka the “bureaucrats of Brussels,” which executes the laws through a federal system that works through the various nations; sometimes a nation is taken to the EU court by the commission, where their differences can be adjudicated (Pinder and Usherwood, p. 45). The RN calls for more power for the elected bodies:
Because the Council of the Heads of state and of the governments and the European Parliament alone have democratic legitimacy, they should be the seat of decision-making. A technical instrument of the second rank, the European Commission will become the General Secretariat of the Council, that is to say a simple administrative secretariat without a decision-making role. The initiative of laws will return exclusivement to the European Council, which will unite the heads of state and of the legitimately elected governments in each of the countries” ( Manifesto, also here, pp. 25-26).
The only real change she is proposing lies in the last sentence. The Commission does indeed currently exercise the right to propose laws, which must then be passed by the Council and the Parliament. It was given this right by the Treaty of Lisbon (2009, Pinder and Usherwood, p. 14), on the assumption that the Commission, appointed by member states and then approved by the European Parliament, would be more likely to propose more “general interest” laws than would individual states (Pinder and Usherwood, p. 45). Le Pen might realize this if she attended the European Parliament, of which she is a member, more frequently, or indeed at all. Marine Le Pen is tied with Nigel Farage, the father of Brexit, in terms of voting record–which is to say, neither has voted on anything.
But her strategy also calls for a European alliance of the far right, as a part of her partnership with Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy and head of the Northern League. The situation in regard to that alliance seems to change daily, and will require a further perspective after the dust of the EU elections settles. However, two recent events seem to shed light on the fragility of this alliance, and the controversial role of–predictably–Russia.
One of these two events was the May 18 rally in Milan, called by Salvini, and no doubt meant to give a splendid final send-off to their parties in the nascent alliance of the far right, Europe des nations et des libertés (ENL) “The European elections,” Salvini said, “are a referendum between life and death, the past and the future, between a free Europe and an Islamic state based on fear,” adding that those who neglect to vote are making themselves “the allies of Merkel, Macron, and Soros” (Le Monde).
A pall was cast on Saturday’s rally by the sudden resignation of vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria, head of the Austrian Freedom Party, because of what Le Monde described as his “attempted collusion with the pseudo-niece of a Russian oligarch.” And there were videos, released on May 17 by Der Spiegel, revealing that in addition to the promise of sweetheart government contracts for the Russian oligarch, Strache was also trying to persuade the niece to buy up major media outlets in Austria so they could control information, just as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does in Hungary (Le Monde, The New York Times).
Orbán of the Fidesz party was also absent from Milan, keeping a conspicuous distance from Marine Le Pen. As Orbán revealed in The Atlantic, he is not an ally of hers. The reason is not terribly convincing: “When political leaders are out of power, they can say and do anything they like. They can slip out of control. I don’t want to get mixed up with any of that.” A more likely reason was the fact that Laurent Wauquiez, head of Les Républicains, had told him that Le Pen was “a red line.”
Orbán’s Fidesz party was kicked out of the Parti populaire européen (PPE), the conservative coalition in the EU, in March, because of his violent anti-migrant rhetoric, his over-the-top attacks on George Soros, the fact that the PPE’s presidential nominee refused to take any support from him, and so on. (President Trump’s praise of Orbán for “protecting Christian communities” is a way of expressing solidarity with his anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions.) But despite his expressed admiration for Salvini, Orbán obviously hopes to return to the fold of the PPE, and implied that Wauquiez had suggested as much; and Wauquiez, for his part, is looking for a respectable showing against Le Pen for his own party in France (BFMTV).
The second preliminary episode of the European elections is symbolic of a potential division among the right-wingers of Europe: whether they are pro-Putin or not. That was made quite clear during the Le Pen visit to Estonia, where she took a selfie with a member of the Conservative Peoples’ Party of Estonia (EKRE), and made the hand signal for white supremacy. She stated that she believed she was making the universal sign for “okay,” and later asked to have the picture removed from the instagram feed. (The advantage of the ambiguity of such signs is well described by Doug Glanville in an op-ed in The New York Times.)
But that was not the worst of it: because of Estonia’s quite reasonable concerns and historic memories of Soviet-era dominance, Le Pen’s visit raised the issue of Russian interference in the elections. During the presidential election in 2017, Marine Le Pen was suspected of supporting her campaign with Russian money. Her claim at the time was that no French banks would lend to her, thus she was forced to go elsewhere; but she denied (and continues to deny) that she is beholden to Russia, even though she supported Putin’s seizure of the Crimea and the end of sanctions. Just before the first round of the presidential elections in 2017, Mediapart published an exposé of the Russian government funding and the attempts to conceal the source of that money. The former prime minister of Estonia, Taavi Roivas, stated that her presence would remind the people of his country that “right-wing populism is also a strongly pro-Kremlin movement.”
In short: Le Pen’s plan to reshape the European Union has yet to find any coherence, either internally or with hoped-for allies. She and the others can certainly serve as wrecking balls.
For Le Pen, however, the real goal has always been to capture the presidency of France; the Gilets Jaunes movement has apparently boosted her hopes. They have adopted as their chief program the RIC, the populist-inspired “citizens referendum” for passing legislation. She had the RIC in her 2017 platform. (See “What is the RIC,” from March 2019.) They hate Macron. So does she.
But Le Pen has had to tread a careful path, because the Gilets Jaunes initially insisted that they were not interested in political parties (and, as they implied, resentful of any attempt to co-opt them). While keeping her distance, she has nevertheless reached out to them, as she did in January (see below), in an appeal to their mutual common causes. And she has been urging them to use the European elections to register their displeasure with Macron.
As Le Pen stated bluntly in this January speech that launched the RN campaign, she wants the EU elections to be a referendum on Macron–and indeed, these elections are the only midterm course corrections available to French voters. Since the presidential term changed from seven years to five years (during the presidencies of Jacques Chirac, 1995-2007), the presidential elections are held in the same year as those of the National Assembly. The intention in changing the presidential term to coincide with the five-year term of the National Assembly was to prevent the uncomfortable “cohabiting” of a president with an incompatible majority in the National Assembly after off-year elections (notably the conservative Jacques Chirac with the Socialist Party prime minister Lionel Jospin).
The perhaps unintended consequence: since the national elections are mandated to occur only every five years, the European Parliament elections, held every five years but on a different schedule, are virtually the only way to register midterm disapproval of an incumbent (that, and “the street.”) This is particularly true in 2019, since the elections are being fought nationally. In previous elections, France was divided into regions, each with its own candidate lists, and the battles were fought locally; this is a national election, and Le Pen suggested recently that if Macron’s party does not come in first, he should resign (francetvinfo).
Her campaign has been smoothly produced and comes complete with a 75-page online Manifesto. She has been consistently on message, highlighting “forgotten France” with an early campaign rally in the tiny Norman village of Saint-Ébremond-de-Bonfossé, a town of under a thousand, where she was met with protests as well as a reasonably large crowd (Ouest-france). It is true that she was forced to expel her no. 12 on the list, for a rather too grossly padded resumé, just as she had earlier excluded another for being a Holocaust denier and still another for blaming immigration for the massacre perpetrated by a mass murderer in Norway (Mediapart). Still, compared to the halts and hesitations of LREM, for example, her campaign has been well run.
But with no real solutions to economic ills, beyond closing the borders and imposing tariffs, as she promised in 2017, her campaign has focused entirely on issues of culture, ethnicity, race, and religion. Her appeal is to those with “roots” in France, who have been there for generations, and are now seeing their lives and livelihoods constantly under threat (“precarity” has become the word of choice). The Rassemblement National has left behind the soft-focus 2017 campaign (see “The Disappearing Left,” posted in April), and has turned to a hard-edged and even crude rhetorical strategy that dogwhistles the “Great Replacement” theory. (In brief, the “replacement” theory refers to a belief that the white races will be “replaced” in their homelands by immigrants of other races or religions.) Americans were roughly introduced to the “Great Replacement” theory, popularized by Renaud Camus (The New Yorker), in the 2017 Charlottesville march (The Atlantic). For the United States, it was something of a wake-up call; the French, on the other hand, have been dealing with the openly extreme right for many years.
Le Pen’s choice for the top of the list in this high stakes election is perhaps an unusual one. Jordan Bardella, who has the responsibility for leading the other 78 candidates, is only 23 years old. In the several months of campaigning, he has become a practiced speaker.
Our country has allowed 400,000 foreigners to enter per year. 400,000 per year.[1] Never has such a level of immigration occurred in our country. In the department of Var, the population is 1,050,000. That means, in a three year period, immigration will exceed the population of Var. Three short years.
Shame on those who dare to deny the migratory submersion which is overwhelming the country, and which is in the process of shattering our unity. We do not want the French to watch helplessly as the Provençal markets of Var are transformed into Islamic Souks. (Applause.) We will never accept that the laws of the Republic are replaced in certain areas by tribal and Islamic Fundamentalist laws.
My compatriots, France is progressively suffering today from a veritable partition, a territory in which the inhabitants “don’t live side by side but face to face,” as Minister of the Interior Gérard Collomb declared a few months ago, and who soon had the good sense to leave [his post]. (Gérard Collomb made this comment in the context of speaking of the need for racial integration.)
Bardella also uses the tactic of “selective facts”, or the cherry-picking of events to strengthen an established narrative. His tweet, below, states the following: Two Nigerians attacked a deaf-mute woman with a broken arm in a cast, to get her necklace. This savagery and this cowardice have no place here: OUT! It’s very simple, there are several flights a day to Lagos.
He repeated this story on May 1 in his stump speech in Metz along with a resounding OUT! (Dehors!) (An aside: Bardella’s speech in Metz has a theatrical quality to it, as Bardella essentially performs ultra-right nationalism in front of an immobile, silent chorus composed of the rest of the RN candidates.)
This story is true: though it was picked up by none of the majors, at least two local papers ran it, here, and here. The bus driver closed the doors, called the police, and the men, who appeared to be drunk, were taken into custody. Given the number of petty crimes in France (without taking away the emotional trauma suffered by this victim), this crime was relatively minor, the perpetrators were immediately arrested, the woman was saved by the driver and another passenger; but it fits the essential RN narratives of immigration, insecurity, fear, savagery. It has since appeared in a number of social media accounts.
In the following brief interview, one can see both Bardella’s strengths and his weaknesses. He engages in a dogged repetition of talking points which exasperates a number of interviewers (including the one here, Jean-Jacques Bourdin, of BFMTV). He has studied up on the “intellos,” the intellectuals that he dismisses but nevertheless quotes. He has banlieue authenticity, offering a way into the generation that has grown up in the tower block apartment complexes that surround Paris and other cities. And finally, he works “submersion” into the conversation a great deal.
The point of this interview is obviously an attempt to force Bardella to state whether or not he believes in the “Great Replacement” theory. Julian Sanchez, Nicolas Bay, and Marion Maréchal (Le Pen), mentioned by the interviewer, are all prominent RN members who have endorsed Camus’s position, though Marine Le Pen has not formally done so.[2]
At the very end, when Bourdin asks the percentage of immigrants and their descendants who are in France, Bardella states, “That’s not the question.” And, after a moment’s reflection, it’s clear that he’s right. The matter is not about total numbers (Bardella himself is of Italian stock), but about segregation, concentration, the prevalence of people too poor to live in anything but subsidized housing (“HLMs”)–like the tower block cités, referred to by Bardella, where the “substitution of people” has led to a transformation of certain neighborhoods, as immigrants move in and the French working classes move out. Social inequality is the real question; and it cuts across racial lines.
Bardella was born in Seine-Saint-Denis, or “93,” the number of its electoral division. A simple search for images of Seine-Saint-Denis turns up sights like the following: the signs of violence, the tower blocs, or cités, looming in the background, the simple ugliness of the area, which is just outside Paris but worlds away.
He was raised by a single mother (his father deserted them) in this neighborhood, which was transforming into an immigrant community as he grew up. He joined the party at the age of 16. At the age of 19, he ran for departmental elections in 2015 and made it into the second round, though he lost to the socialist candidate. In 2016, he headed “Banlieues patriotes,” a party-directed effort to make inroads among the urban poor. His presence at the top of the ticket allows the RN to contrast itself to the other parties headed by “elites” (Mediapart).
The RN has highlighted the working poor, to its credit. But they have nothing to offer them, except the populist illusion of liberty–that, and race and religious hatred; may they not win. The European Union, distracted for several years by the inability of Britain to “leave,” and by the derelictions of duty of many of those elected to it, deserves better.
======================================
Additional work cited: John Linder and Simon Usherwood, The European Union: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013).
[1] It is not clear where Bardella found the 400,000 number. The EU 2017 figures for migration, on the second page of this linked document, show a total of 370,000 immigrants per year to France, of which 45% are non-EU members (though this, of course, is not necessarily an indication, either for EU or non-EU immigrants, of religion, as Bardella implies).
[2] The others mentioned in this brief interview include Michèle Tribalat, a sociologist who studies French laïcité, or secularism, in the face of a more devout Islam, and the effects this religiosity has had on French public life and free speech (The Guardian). Jérôme Fourquet, a public intellectual and the head of IFOP, a major polling and research firm, is the author of L’archipel français: Naissance d’une nation multiple et divisée (Paris: Seuil, March 2019), p. 146. He postulates an increasing division, a creation of ethnic and religious “archipelagos” among the French, and in one section, referred to by Bardella, measures integration according to the giving of Arab or Muslim first names to boys: in 1968, 2.5% of boys were given those names; in 2015, 18.5%. Fourquet’s maps indicate that the numbers vary widely throughout the country, with a high density in the Paris region. Christophe Guilluy is a noted geographer who has written about the “periphery,” and the social divisions as well as “desertification” caused in France by (he argues) globalization.
