This French presidential election is a good illustration of the conflict that runs through all Western societies, namely the fight between the mobile and the rooted, between globalists and nationalists, between progressive elites and common citizens, between those who feel good everywhere and those who feel good where they were born.
But in France, this classic conflict between the top and the bottom of society is not perceived as such. Since the late 1980s, all French political life has been built on a fiction. In France, anyone who opposes the progressive establishment, anyone who opposes immigration policy, anyone who criticizes, say, the violence -- or the suppression of women and free speech -- in Islam, is considered the equivalent of Adolf Hitler's nephew.
This strange situation was created in the late 1980s by France's socialist president, François Mitterrand. To divide the right and prevent them from returning to power. Mitterrand promoted, through the state-owned radio and television corporations, a microscopic far-right party, the National Front, the first that actually dared to speak out against immigration.
From the middle of the 1980s until now, the media and the "left" together manufactured an industrial-strength shame machine to stigmatize as "racist" and "Nazi" anyone who dared to raise his voice on issues of immigration or the arguably less-sympathetic aspects of Islam.
During the two weeks preceding the second round of the just-concluded presidential election, all observers had the feeling that in France, a titanic metaphysical battle was taking place between Good and Evil.
The daily Le Monde sought out veteran sociologists such as Edgar Morin to assert that France was facing a "historic risk" if its citizens were losing their minds and voted for Marine Le Pen. In another article, Le Monde quoted Prefects (representatives of the state in all regions of France) who "themselves draw parallels" between a possible election of Marine Le Pen and the invasion of France by the Nazis in 1940.
Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin explained that with Marine Le Pen, "the rich may lose weight, but the poor may die".
Some left-wing media outlets, such as L'Obs, raised the spectre of nuclear war. "If Marine Le Pen were elected, "48,000 Hiroshimas" would become possible.
The public service radio certified every five minutes that Marine Le Pen was "extreme right" (meaning "racist" and "Nazi").
And the leftists of the Canard Enchainé headlined, "neither Marine, nor Le Pen". Even Charlie Hebdo featured on its cover, "Sunday, let's get rid of that" (meaning Le Pen)
NGOs of course were on deck. The Licra, an anti-racist NGO, declared that the victory of Le Pen would mean "the liberation of xenophobia and racism". The League of Human Rights called for "demonstrations against the extreme right". And the NGO SOS Racism added that Le Pen's victory would mean "the establishment of a French-style apartheid".
The Archbishop of Strasbourg called for a vote for Macron, although the French Bishops' Conference magnanimously left Christians free to "vote according to their conscience". The Protestant Federation of France warned against the Le Pen's National Rally Party, while Jewish organizations (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France and the rabbis of the Consistory) called to "put up a barrier" against Le Pen.
The Rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, of course, called for voting in favor of Macron in the name of the fight against "malicious forces that call for the banishment of Muslims" and the Rassemblement des Musulmans de France (close to Morocco) explained that "only a vote for Emmanuel Macron allows our country to preserve the principles of the republic".
About 50 sports stars -- all those athletes who see no problem in going to the Winter Olympics in Beijing or kicking a ball in Qatar ,where thousands of workers died while building of air-conditioned stadiums -- signed a vibrant call to block the National Rally Party and to defend "Republican values".
After the athletes, came the artists. Nearly 500 actors, singers, directors, producers and dancers called to "block Marine Le Pen... whose program remains that of xenophobia and inward-looking attitude.
The unions followed. While Le Pen came out on top in the first round of the presidential election in all blue-collar area, while she was the candidate of the Yellow Vests and the French working classes, the two largest trade union organizations, CFDT and CGT, called to "make a barrage" against Le Pen. The leaders of these two unions even signed an op-ed together, explaining that "Marine Le Pen is a danger for all workers."
The environmentalist and feminist Alice Coffin tweeted that Le Pen was preparing to "assassinate" all feminists.
The author Julia de Funes was astonished in Le Figaro by this outpouring of opinions, and remarked that the exhibition of voting intentions in favor of Macron "was kind of a farce". All these personalities who express themselves on the vote, do not seek to "share an opinion... but to exhibit their perfect morality". For these people, "to think right is to think well. And to think well means to think like them".
Another author, Michel Onfray, noted on Twitter that in France there is "a single party and if you are not part of it, you are a fascist, a racist, a xenophobe!"
These debates prevented -- but perhaps it was their function -- the real problems from being covered by the media and politicians – such as Muslim mass-immigration (2 million more Muslim immigrants under the Macron presidency); the creeping Islamization of the suburbs ; the rampant lawlessness and lack of security (an assault occurs every 44 seconds and the police are confronted with refusals to comply every 30 minutes); the abuse of power by the European Union's courts of justice; the authoritarian drift of the European Commission; Macron's authoritarian and terrorizing management of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the violence he wielded against the Yellow Vests --none of these subjects was ever addressed during the presidential campaign.
Now that the results of the presidential election are known, the media bubble may revert to how it was before the titanic metaphysical battle. The first observation that can be made is that the French political landscape is now entirely upended. The classic parties were swept away. The Socialist Party, which dominated the political scene since the 1980s, got only 1.75% of the votes at the first round of the presidential election and Les Républicains, on the right, won only 4.78% of the votes.
From now on, three new political formations share the electoral terrain, all three around a central figure: the La République en Marche is Macron's party (the largest number of voters: 9.8 million voters, 27.8% of the votes in the first round). It was created in 2016 and its electorate is composed of the beneficiaries of globalization, some of the French Muslims and retirees who usually vote for the party in power.
The second largest party in France is the National Rally, centered around Le Pen (8.1 million votes, 23.15% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election). The RN is the party of the non-Muslim working class, the party of the poor people and the middle classes who are attached to the croissant-baguettes "French way of life". The RN represents the "somewheres" fighting against the "anywheres". If we add to the RN, the votes collected by Éric Zemmour (2.4 million votes, 7%), the RN equals the party of Macron.
The third party in France is La France Insoumise, built around the thundering personality of Jean-Luc Mélenchon (7.7 million votes; 21.95% of the vote on the first round). Mélenchon is a former socialist who wanted to ban the Islamic veil and who, in 2015, in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attack that year on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, denounced Islamic fanaticism as his main enemy. Less than five years later, however, in 2019, Mélenchon made an about-face and demonstrated on the side of Islamic organizations. Since then, he has multiplied his attacks against police officers accused of "racist behavior", against secularism which "must not be a state atheism" -- ether against the "persecution of Muslims" or for "the freedom to wear the veil". Today, the main collaborators of Mélenchon are Islamists, leftists and Woke personalities. A recent IFOP poll confirmed that 70% of French Muslims voted for Mélenchon.
On the evening of his elimination from the first round of the presidential election, Mélenchon called several times not to vote for Le Pen. Perhaps he was heard. The Islamists who carried Mélenchon might have joined forces with the globalists who carried Macron. Both defeated the nationalists who supported Le Pen.
The nationalists, the French "somewheres", have become a minority in their own country.
