Arc de trump
Fiery outsider Le Pen surges in France’s prez polls ... sound familiar?
‘Her winning is a leg up for the populist right-wing nationalism in a number of other countries. It can reverberate. ’ — MATTHEW BAUM Harvard University professor
Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate whose recent surge in the polls has analysts comparing the charismatic politician to President Trump, could ride the global populist wave that landed the New York billionaire in the White House to an upset victory.
Le Pen’s National Front party is trailing independent centrist Emmanuel Macron by a hair with only three weeks before France weighs 11 candidates in a first-round election April 23. A run-off between the top two vote-getters would be held May 7. Recent polls have Macron with 25 percent of the vote and Le Pen with 24 percent in the opening round, though the gap widens to double digits in a head-to-head matchup.
Le Pen, 48, whose father JeanMarie Le Pen founded the National Front party, is polling strongly among French youth and could benefit, some say, from the type of shy voters who helped Trump into the White House but wouldn’t proclaim their support to pollsters. Le Pen has pushed to normalize the ultra-conservative National Front and scour racism and anti-Semitism from its ranks. And though Le Pen may see more eye-to-eye with President Trump than other candidates, Boston University international relations professor William Keylor cautioned that a nationalist France wouldn’t necessarily be a boon to the U.S.
“‘Make France Great Again’ is not necessarily all good news for Trump and the folks in the White
House,” Keylor told the Herald. “Marine Le Pen is a French nationalist, and if she wins, France will not be the kind of ally that it has been to the United States for so many years since the foundation of NATO. Nationalism divides countries rather than unites them.”
In addition to the impact a Le Pen win would have on the nation’s relations with the U.S., her party’s anti-immigration stance and insistence on strong borders has it on a collision course with the EU and could very well determine the fate of the economic and political bloc France helped create.
“If Le Pen becomes president of the French Republic and sets in motion a Frexit — or withdraw from the European Union — I’m afraid that would be the end of the European Union,” Keylor said, adding, “I just can’t imagine the organization would survive ... France probably more than any other country created the forerunner of the EU, and for her to leave would be a crushing blow.”
Le Pen made her stance on staying in the European Union clear during a debate last month.
“The EU is locking us up, is preventing us from any movement,” she said. “You, the French citizens, have the right to make up your own minds, to protect yourselves ... from the sources of insecurity that come from opening up our borders.”
And though it’s unclear how the rest of the member countries would react to a Le Pen win and a French exit from the EU, Harvard University public policy professor Matthew Baum said having a right-wing populist in power would make dramatic changes to the EU “more likely.”
“There’s nothing immutable about these institutions of this system,” he said. “It’s something that rose up after World War II, and it’s something that could recede.”
A Le Pen victory in France, he said, would be a victory for nationalists everywhere and would put additional pressure on Germany to hold the union together.
“Her winning is a leg up for the populist right-wing nationalism in a number of other countries. It can reverberate. If it does reverberate, it becomes harder for Germany to hold the line,” Baum said, “but I wouldn’t expect an immediate cascade.”