Analysis: Loss is victory for far-right in election

PARIS » The far-right has gone mainstream in France.

That’s the headline from the landmark showing by Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election. The fierce nationalist didn’t win Sunday. But she edged another step closer — snatching a victory of sorts from her defeat to reelected President Emmanuel Macron.

With 41.5% of the vote, unprecedented for her, Le Pen’s anti-foreigner, antisystem politics of disgruntlement are now more entrenched than ever in the psyche, thinking and political landscape of France.

Since the Le Pen dynasty — first her dad, Jean-Marie, and now Marine, his daughter — first started contesting presidential elections in 1974, never have so many French voters bought into their doctrine that multicultural and multiracial France, a country with the words “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” inscribed on its public buildings, would be richer, safer and somehow more French if it was less open to foreigners and the outside world.

Had she become France’s first woman president, her plan for fighting Islamic terrorism would have included stripping part of France’s population — women who are Muslims — of some of their liberty. She wanted to ban them from wearing headscarves in public — hardly very equal or fraternal. Same goes for her proposals to move French citizens to the front of lines for jobs, benefits and housing.

For headscarf-wearing voter Yasmina Aksas, Le Pen’s defeat wasn’t a celebration moment — not with such strong backing for her and ideas that “used to be limited to militant far-right groups” becoming increasingly acceptable in polite company.

“It’s still 40% of people voting for Le Pen,” the 19-year-old law student said. “It’s not a victory.”

Internationally, Le Pen wanted to start diluting France’s relationships with the European Union, NATO and neighbor Germany — moves that would have been seismic for the architecture of peace in Europe, in the midst of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In short, France escaped a political, social and economic electroshock by not voting in Le Pen.

Or perhaps just delayed one, should she choose to stand again in 2027. That’s a long way off. Much could change. But Le Pen isn’t done yet.

“In this defeat, I can’t help but feel a form of hope,” she said. “I will never abandon the French.”

Surpassing 40% of the vote elevates Le Pen into illustrious, mainstream company. Since Gen. Charles de Gaulle beat François Mitterrand by 55% to 45% in 1965, all defeated finalists lost 40-something to 50-something.

With two exceptions, both named Le Pen.

Jean-Marie was trounced 82% to 18% by Jacques Chirac in 2002 and Marine lost 66% to 34% to Macron in 2017.

Voters used to regard it as their civic duty to keep the Le Pens’ score low, seeing a ballot against them as a blow against racism and xenophobia. Fewer think that way now.