Le Pen's real threat

Macron, the centrist pal of French big business and Marine Le Pen, recent defender of women and gay rights against the apparent threat of Islam - and an all-round nicer type of fascist than her dad, share the lead in France's Presidential elections' polls. Both are running at around 25 -26% after the first candidates' debate. Fillon, the Republican Party candidate, gets 18% and Hamon (Socialist Party) and Melanchon (Communist Party plus) are on 12%. (There are six other candidates polling under 5% each.)

All the mainstream, non-social media comfortably predict the defeat of Le Pen in the second round elections in May. The British Financial Times (March 21) averaged out all the main French polls results (historically the most accurate in the West) relating to second round voting. That gave the following results; if Le Pen faces Macron the vote will be - Le Pen 38%, Macron 62%; if Le Pen faces a resurrected Fillon the prediction is Le Pen 44%, Fillon 56%.

When all this is added up together with Wilders' 'defeat' in Holland's election on March 15 and the failure of Austrian fascist Norbert Hofer to win the 2nd Presidential election in December 2016, (Hofer denounced British UKIP leader Farage for his 'support' when Farage announced that Hofer would take Austria out of the EU) media optimists are wondering out loud if the 'populist' wave is breaking and could it now be in decline in Europe? Perhaps it can be corralled into the limits of the anti-cosmopolitan Anglophone region of the world?

This blog has already commented on the less than positive aspects of Wilders' vote in the Dutch elections. And the throwaway, feather-headed  'populist' definitions of the political process unfolding in the West all need a thorough overhaul. But it is still the French election that holds the key to Europe and also to the next stage of the extreme right's development. Waves break but that does not signal that the storm has ended.

Voting in the US election for Trump and in the EU referendum for Brexit in Britain was a markedly older activity. In the US among 18 - 29 year olds, 37% voted for Trump. 75% of 18 - 24 year olds in Britain voted against Brexit largely on an anti-racist, pro internationalist ticket according to a range of social attitude studies. (A false turn out total for younger voters of 36% put out by Sky News, based on projections from the 2015 General Election, was repudiated by a 2000 plus poll taken after voting by the London School of Economics and Opinium, which calculated that actually 64% of the age group voted.)

In Holland the youth vote, see age group voting, was distributed more generally across the main parties, including Wilders party the PVV. And it certainly did not favour either the traditional Labour Party, or the left Socialist Party. In France, 39% of voters aged 18 - 24 say they will vote Le Pen. This is much higher than the 26% that already makes Le Pen a leading candidate across all age groups. (The same age group were 'only' 18% in favour of Le Pen in the 2012 elections. And Macron supporters are now 18% below Le Pen's following, despite Macron's 26% in the polls in general.) The FT also reports that Le Pen's campaign has the biggest following of all the political campaigns in social media.

Youth unemployment across most of Europe is the most rooted and dramatic sign of the failure of globalisation across the Continent and in France youth unemployment has risen from 18% in 2008 to 25% (FT 18 March) in the dieing embers of Hollande's dismal regime. The younger generation in many European countries do not remember fascism, and their parents do not remember fascism. Their grand-parents were probably brought up in the shadow of the occupation - but anti fascist culture in Europe is waning. And the far right, in France, dominate the white and politically active youth. Fillon, France's sinful Republican, is vying with Le Pen over immigration controls - and the phenomena of a wrench to the right from mainstream conservatism is common between the Anglophone and the rest of the West - as seen in Prime Minister Rutte's approach in Holland. There is however, at least in Holland and in France, a considerable and deeply significant difference in respect of young people - in their distance from the left and where a large part of the youth in France are crystallising their political formation behind the far right's momentum.

And round one and round two of France's Presidential election? Perhaps the polling predictions are right. But the predictions do not reflect the social and political bases being built up over years in the country. Le Pen remains one serious economic crisis, one serious terrorist attack, away from future Presidential power. If Le Pen takes the Presidency when Macron collapses in face of the next stage of France's crisis, or even sooner, then a new type of struggle starts; the battle on the streets will begin.