French far-right leader Marine Le Pen appeared to be nearer to power than ever last week after her National Rally party triumphed in the opening round of legislative elections
Seemingly so close, and yet still so far away.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen looked to be nearer to power than ever last week after her National Rally party, strengthened by new allies, triumphed in the opening round of legislative elections. Its first place wasn’t a hole-in- one but looked like an impressive position to possibly win or get close to an absolute parliamentary majority in the decisive runoff.
But what Le Pen hoped would be a watershed victory turned into another setback. Although her party won more National Assembly seats than ever, it yet again hit a wall of voters who don’t believe the National Rally should govern France or has shed its links to racism, antisemitism and the country’s still painful World War II past of collaboration with Nazi Germany.
“The tide is rising,” Le Pen said. “It did not rise high enough this time.”
This was by no means the first time that French voters and the far-right’s political rivals maneuvered strategically between voting rounds to block its path in a runoff.
The same thing happened most notably to Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the presidential elections of 2002. The fiery ex-paratrooper, a co-founder of what was then called the National Front, which initially included Nazi-era collaborators, had multiple convictions for antisemitic hate speech, having repeatedly described the Holocaust’s gas chambers as “a detail » of WWII history.
Yet he stunned France and its partners in Europe and beyond by advancing from the election’s first round into the winner-takes-all runoff against Jacques Chirac. There, horrified French voters massively said, “Non!” They overwhelming rejected Le Pen, with even leftists voting to put Chirac, a conservative, in the presidential Elysee Palace.
