After the first round of French presidential elections on Sunday the media, especially in the USA, has simplified matters as a race between sanity and madness, moderation and extremism. No, it ain’t that simple.
France‘s famous pop-philosopher Bernard–Henri Lévy is a good representative of the ruling elites of France. Recently he waxed eloquent about the establishment candidate, Emmanuel Macron. He compared him to John F Kennedy. I don’t know M. Macron, but I know a lot about Jack Kennedy. Macron is no Jack Kennedy. He is more like Bill Clinton, and we know what he did in the 1990s, the deals he cut against trade unions and poor minorities who kept voting for him and his wife because they were terrified of the rapacious Republicans.
Macron represents the usual candidate of a corrupt smug French establishment. He is just younger. If he comes to power his instinct will be to toe the European and Globalist line, strip the middle and lower classes of France of as much of the social safety net as he can get away with. He is closer to the British conservatives than to an American liberal, but just barely (American liberals are also closer to British conservatives than they like to think or admit).
Marine Le Pen appeals to many French and European racists, no doubt. But she is in fact closer to the working classes of France than even the Socialists have been lately. She is no Donald Trump, she is more genuine in her own way. Trump is a billionaire with phony populist claims, he got elected by deceiving many voters with a fake agenda. Trump’s first instinct upon taking power has been to try and strip the health and other benefits middle class and poorer Americans get, in favor of giving the rich more tax cuts.
Trump‘s other instinct has been typical of the American establishment in recent years: if all else fails at home, start or expand (or surge) an existing foreign war. This is typical of both major parties: Republican and Democrat. (Expect an escalation in Yemen, Syria, Libya, possibly in the Persian Gulf if the Arabian king and this princes get their way).
Le Pen might, or might not, pull France out of the European Union. She might scale back cooperation. That is what scares the establishment the most: they have so many vested interests, so much invested in the European plan.
In this coming election the left and the right-center are the terrified establishment, and the Front National represents the insurgency. Possibly a genuine insurgency, not a fake reality-TV insurgency that brought Trump into the White House.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum