Le Pen scores 10.5% of vote
French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen was unable to repeat his nation-quaking 2002 vote count Sunday, coming in fourth at 10.5% in the crowded field behind conservative Nicolas Sarkozy (31.11%), Socialist Ségolène Royal (25.83%) and maverick “centrist” François Bayrou (18.55%) in Presidential elections. Sarkozy and Royal now advance to a second-round runoff to be held on May 6.
In 2002 Le Pen eliminated Socialist Lionel Jospin, advancing to the second round and finally putting the question of Third World immigration on the open political agenda. The question has remained there and came to dominate the 2007 campaign, as all contenders defined themselves in relation to Le Pen. Sarkozy especially capitalized on Le Pen’s immigration positions, adopting many of them wholesale and convincing conservatives who would have deserted him for Le Pen that a nationalist vote would usher Royal into France’s “White House,” the Élysée Palace. Ironically, Royal herself made a number of concessions to potential Le Pen voters, admitting that the Socialists had become too enamored of political correctness and multiculturalism, and took a “law and order” stance. Both major campaigns poured enormous resources into anti-Le Pen efforts, and the nation’s top intelligence agency leaked an illegal anti-Le Pen poll showing how closely it was watching him and his campaign. There were also attempts to legalistically derail the Le Pen campaign.Nonetheless, Le Pen’s 10.5% is very respectable, especially considering that Le Pen and his Front National deliver such high numbers consistently and on shoestring budgets against official opposition, uniform media condemnation, and extra-legal violence. And the fear of Le Pen and his program has meant that, with the 2002 breakthrough, many of his policies are going to be implemented, while the people who vote for him — and their concerns — are no longer able to be simply ignored.
Those who presently control Europe are gloating that they have “contained” Le Pen, but the vote itself is not the only thing that scares them. They also fear the “normalization” of nationalist thinking Le Pen and the Front National have been able to pull off, one of the main goals of the ballot-box approach. There are indications that the European rulers are taking steps to prevent similar uprisings elsewhere, and to uproot organized, “respectable” nationalism. Pro-white activists in other Western nations seek to replicate the Le Pen phenomenon at the ballot box, growing on the base-building tactics learned from the Front National, while the European Union parliament now has a pro-white alliance. Leading the establishment charge is a new continent-wide “hate” law passed in the week before the election, which has the potential to give governments even more power to crack down on indigenous protest. However, every European nation already has a progressive nationalist presence, largely as a result of lessons learned from the Front National. In the UK alone, the British National Party is fielding close to 1000 hopefuls in the upcoming May local elections.
Even within France itself, the “nationalist” scene has been widened thanks to Le Pen’s success: Catholic and social conservative Philippe de Villiers, who appeals to many of Le Pen’s Catholic constituency (and who was touted as a rival of Le Pen’s in the “mainstream” media), scored 2.24%. José Bové, who holds to Le Pen’s anti-globalist, anti-EU and pro-farming positions, garnered 1.32%, while Frédéric Nihous, part of the once-powerful “peasant” movement, got 1.15%. Taking these thousands of votes into account France, like Europe as a whole, has a nationalist genie that won’t go back in the bottle, especially as the Third World invasion continues.
In terms of “protest” votes, the left, once the only permitted vehicle for such action, has been totally destroyed. The Communists, who not so long ago actually joined a Socialist coalition government and were long a serious player on the French scene, limped in with a pathetic 1.94%. Perennial Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller got 1.34%, while her rival for Trotsky’s mantle, Olivier Besancenot of the Revolutionary Communist League, did the best of all the leftists, at 4.11%, and even he was looking over his shoulder as reports came in that his supporters were deserting him for Le Pen. If one message comes out of this election, it is that political correctness and Third World immigration, which Marxists support, has utterly destroyed Marx’s legacy forever in Western Europe. Where once the far left had forged a genuine movement of white workers, they have now joined the left in the United States as a cultish sideshow of weirdos, fetishists and ideologues. (Some wags would say the left has actually changed places with the nationalists!) The meltdown happened on VI Lenin’s 137th anniversary, adding to the pain.
Le Pen’s success is not measured solely in votes: instead, the votes measure how well the Front National has been able to implant its ideas in the minds of the French people. Whether success comes at the ballot box or in the wake of one of the looming crises confronting a darkening Europe, Le Pen and the Front National have managed to develop a genuine resistance that will continue to bear fruit. And the movement has gone beyond the support of militant activists, attracting people who are basically apolitical yet see the FN as a serious choice: an estimated one-third of French people admitted in at least on poll that they are racially aware.
Within the Front National itself, the election will no doubt have repercussions. At 78, this is probably Le Pen’s last shot at the Élysée. His daughter Marine has made efforts to further “mainstream” the FN, against the harder line taken by Bruno Gollnisch and others. A debate is likely to take place now over just how the post-Le Pen FN should package itself, a debate foreign patriots will closely watch.