Who and why in France voted for Le Pen and Bardella
The success of Le Pen and Bardella's party in the first round of the elections in France seen by political scientists and geopolitical experts
While France is agitated by the not unlikely triumph of the Rassemblement National also in the second round of the legislative elections, analysts are wondering about the profound reasons for the Lepenist political earthquake , which, however, according to everything, could represent anything but a surprise. This is how the outcome of the first round was commented, also from a socio-economic point of view, by political scientists, geopolitical experts and writers,
France on the right
“In the second round, on 7 July, the victory of the Rassemblement national will be confirmed”. Yves Meny, French political scientist, scholar of public institutions and European construction, is convinced of this, because, in his words, "France is sociologically right-wing, and at the moment there is no doubt that the wind is blowing in this direction".
“We have witnessed – the French political scientist explained today to Corriere della sera – a transfer of the electorate from the communist and socialist parties towards” that Rassemblement National which today, according to the political scientist, “is the most popular movement in France, the most working-class ”.
Advanced
Béatrice Giblin, director of the Institute of Geopolitics of the University of Paris VIII and of the historic magazine Hérodote , also speaks to the Courier , with a map of the results in hand.
«Only the heart of the big cities is resisting the advance – he comments –: Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes…: voters who have studied, have a stable job and a decent salary».
The rest of the territory is a reserve of the RN. «The Breton countryside entirely voted for the Rassemblement National; Pas-de-Calais, Aisne, Lot-et-Garonne, Vaucluse: there are departments where the far right could take all the deputies."
The lesson.
According to Jacobin , what is the lesson of this first round of the French legislative elections?
The lesson is that the political establishment is not at all afraid of what will most likely happen next Sunday, i.e. the definitive victory of the RN and the start of cohabitation between the probable Lepenist Prime Minister Bardella and President Macron.
A mainstream campaign.
The credit, according to the English historian David Broder, editor for Europe of the magazine Jacobin , can be attributed at least in part to the unusually soft tones used by Bardella before and during the electoral campaign, which saw him characterize his party not as a loose cannon ready to destroy everything but as the vanguard of a broader right-wing coalition which even aimed to guarantee national unity.
Bardella's promise to "get France back on its feet" signaled the intention of his future government to defend the country in all forums whether they are called the EU or NATO.
But he did so, the magazine specifies, without proclaiming his intention to use the ram and therefore to radiate devastating waves.
Economic issues.
Having put the terrifying Frexit in the drawer, in economic matters Bardella worked above all to reject the impression that his spending plans were unsustainable.
Despite the difficulty in defeating the skepticism of entrepreneurs, the Marine dolphin was able to present those same plans as the viaticum to obtain the desired social justice, to be understood on the one hand for the benefit of the native French and on the other to the detriment of those migrants who use the State as a “benefits office”.
The promise to establish a "ministry for the prevention of fraud" which will have the task of tracking down and punishing crafty people of all ethnic groups belongs to this category.
With its eyes focused on those middle and lower classes considered abandoned by the traditional parties, the RN then threw on the table a series of tax exemptions and tax cuts including the problematic lowering of VAT on fuel.
A wink to business.
Although the party has always refused to position itself on the left or right of the political spectrum, during the election campaign there were repeated nods to the economic policies that conservatives like.
The most successful blow was perhaps the one delivered by Bardella to Prime Minister Attal during a television debate in which he crucified him for having created "the largest public debt in the EU".
And also regarding the other perplexity of the business world, namely the announced desire to cancel Macron's pension reform, numerous signs of moderation and renunciation of the most nefarious ambitions have been launched.
Macron's gift.
But perhaps the decisive assist to the Lepenistas was given by their nemesis called Macron who, according to Jacobin, is not much of a nemesis.
Firmly committed to differentiating his own political proposal from that of a left considered compromised with the most radical positions on immigration and multiculturalism, in his seven years in power Macron has nurtured a genuine obsession with the issues of identity and security, reiterating on several occasions the threat posed by Islamic "separatism".
And here Jacobin has a good hand in pointing out the ideological convergence with a RN that has made the fight against Islam its mantra and fetish, also becoming a champion of the now famous and deprecated theory of the great replacement.
However, in the end it is only a question of nuances if Macron's ministers also resorted to expressions such as "Islamo-leftists" to demonize the rival municipalities of Mélenchon's France Insoumise.
The counterhegemony.
Jacobin 's conclusion is that the triumph of Bardella and Le Pen can be attributed largely to the ability to build a sort of "counter-hegemony" also making use of the help of those who, although outside the party, nurtured the same ideological threads.
The result can be measured from the data of an Ipsos poll which shows the Lepenist votes overtaking those attributed to the New Popular Front among the working classes and in particular among a working class where more than 50% voted for the RN.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/chi-e-perche-in-francia-ha-votato-le-pen-e-bardella/ on Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:26:38 +0000.