Vol. 78/No. 17      May 5, 2014

The elections, which ended March 30, had the lowest turnout in decades, around 60 percent. The Socialists lost more than 150 cities, including in traditional strongholds like Toulouse and Limoges, held by the party since 1912. The conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) received 46 percent of the vote; the Socialists and its allies 40 percent. The National Front won 7 percent, up from 0.9 percent in 2008.

The elections reflect disillusionment with the status quo and greater willingness to consider a more conservative, nationalist alternative to the party in power. But the growing votes for the National Front are also a sign of continued rejection of ultrarightist politics among working people. The National Front has succeeded in planting a firm foothold in bourgeois politics by shifting toward the center, moderating many of its positions and remaking itself as a more mainstream socially conservative party with a certain populist streak.

Marine Le Pen replaced her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as head of the National Front in January 2011. This put her in a position to accelerate the makeover of the party she had been working for since 2000, when she became president of Générations Le Pen, a loose formation with the stated aim to “de-demonize” the National Front.

Marine Le Pen has been a candidate in various elections since 2002 and a member of the European Parliament since 2004. The party has disassociated itself from street fighting, thuggery and anti-Semitism. She opposes cuts in government spending and social programs and calls for stopping further immigration — especially of Muslims, among whom she claims lies the “greatest danger” of anti-Semitism.

Le Pen combines these nationalist appeals with opposition to the European Union, which helps the party gain a hearing among working people who have had enough of its intrusive regulations and demands for government spending cuts that always come down hardest on workers and farmers. “Give back to the French their sovereignty” over their territory, currency, economy and the law, she said in a Washington Post interview April 14.

Le Pen fraudulently paints France as among the victims of the EU, when in fact Paris and Berlin have been the trade and currency union’s main beneficiaries at the expense of weaker and less economically developed nations like Greece, Portugal and Spain. When Paris has been able to wield this clout it largely ignores EU “benchmarks” on deficit reduction. Hollande had pledged to lower the budget deficit to 3 percent by 2013, in line with the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact, but the deficit last year stood at 4.3 percent.

“May 6 should be a great date for our country, a new start for Europe, a new hope for the world,” Hollande said when he won the presidential election in 2012. He told cheering crowds that he would bring “an end to austerity” and promote “growth, jobs and prosperity.” He campaigned for a $26 billion increase in government spending over the next five years. He said he would tax the rich and lower unemployment.

But official unemployment has persistently hovered above 10 percent — more than 25 percent for youth. There was 0 percent gross domestic product growth in 2012 and 0.2 percent in 2013.

According to a 2012 survey, 27 percent of the French population said financial reasons prompted them not to get medical treatment, because of rising deductibles and cuts to government financing.

In a New Year’s televised address Dec. 31, Hollande said he had underestimated the depth of the recession, that taxation in France had become “too heavy.” The bourgeois socialist said he would bypass parliament and use decrees if necessary to “cut public spending” and to eliminate welfare “abuse.”

Le Pen, on the other hand, calls for a large role for the state in social welfare policy. “The French are attached to public services — for them it is the guarantee of equality among citizens,” she told the New York Times April 2.

“We are at year zero of a big patriotic movement, neither right nor left, which is founded on the opposition of the current political class, on the defense of the nation, on the rejection of ultra-capitalism and Europe, that is capable of rising above the old political rifts to ask the real questions,” Marine Le Pen said in a recent interview with Le Monde. Since she was elected president, the National Front has increased its membership from 12,000 to 80,000.  
 
 
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