Social problems go hand-in-hand with a lack of political perspectives. François Hollande was elected President because his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had reached an unprecedented level of unpopularity (in April 2012, Sarkozy’s job approval rating had fallen at 36%), yet Mr. Hollande has now broken that record and is now the most unpopular president in French history. Before his sexual escapades were revealed, his approval rating stood a little over 20%; since then, it has sunk to 19%. During the past eighteen months, the government he formed has increased taxes, multiplied useless regulations, and enacted societal reforms widely rejected by the population, such as the introduction of gay marriage, and removal of mandatory minimum sentences for recidivist criminals. The moderate right stagnates and does not offer proposals that meet with popular approval, either.
One political movement, and only one, seems to escape the general disenchantment: the National Front. When Marine Le Pen, its president, took over the party, she claimed she wanted to conduct an operation of “de-demonization” and she was successful. Municipal elections in March and European elections in May will probably show that the National Front is now the first party of France. Unlike her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen does not publicly utter anti-Semitic remarks, but neither does she ever condemn anti-Semitism. She has criticized Islam in the past, but does not do it anymore. She intends to build on the “widespread and multidimensional frustration,” and not alienate anyone.
She says she is resolutely hostile to the “European construction,” “globalization,” “capitalism,” “finance” and politics as practiced by all other parties: she calls them “members of the system.” She does not say she is hostile to democracy, but uses words used decades ago by the rightist anti-parliamentarist Charles Maurras, such as describing herself as embodying the “real country” [pays réel].
She recognizes that the present mindset of the population is socialist, and she has an economic program that could be accepted by the far-left if it did not include nationalist and xenophobic dimensions. She is an ardent defender of the French welfare system, but wants to reserve welfare benefits for French citizens. She also wants to shut the borders and stop non-white immigration. Her chief economic advisor, Florian Philippot, now number two in the party, comes from the “souverainist” anti-capitalist wing of the Socialist Party.
Her foreign policy orientations show an inclination for authoritarian governments and she seems to favor closer ties with Putin’s Russia and Iran’s mullahs: Aymeric Chauprade, her foreign policy mentor, was a professor at the French Military College in Paris until he was let go in 2009 after publishing a book “explaining” how the 9/11 attacks were an “orchestrated American-Israeli conspiracy.”
She knows that France is ailing. She waits. She thinks her time will come, perhaps in the next presidential elections, which will be held in France three years from now. The rejection of François Hollande is currently such that his chances of being reelected seem nil. The right wing candidate will most likely be Nicolas Sarkozy, the man François Hollande defeated in 2012.
Widespread frustration does not appear to be subsiding — and changing that would require a dramatic turnaround which will almost certainly not happen.
The most widely read economic books in France are the works of unrepentant Marxists.
The main nonfiction best seller of the last ten years is called Indignez-vous [Time for Outrage]. It is short — a dozen pages. It is a “call to the spirit of resistance” and a denunciation of the power of “money,” “free markets,” America and Israel. Its author, Stéphane Hessel, who died in February 2013 at the age of ninety-five, had become a media star. He never was a soldier, but he was buried with military honors. Another book that became a best seller a few months ago, L’identité Malheureuse [The Unhappy Identity] by Alain Finkielkraut, describes a “France that is crumbling before our very eyes.” The book offers no solution; Finkielkraut was harshly criticized by those who still admire Stéphane Hessel.