The smell that emitted out of France on Sunday is the same stench coming from the United Kingdom and the United States.
The anti-immigrant movement is pure populist hatred. Let’s throw out people who don’t look like us. We need to live in fear. Vote for me and I’ll hate it hard. Yay hatred!
The Brexit movement rode fear, hatred, and nationalism to success in the UK. Donald Trump used it and proved that there’s enough racism in America to give him an electoral victory. Now it’s being implemented in France, where they’ve had several terrorist attacks recently, including one last week.
Marine Le Pen is a far-right candidate of the National Front party. She’s not just a fan of preventing Muslims from entering her nation, but she wants to kick them out. She told her cheering supporters that the biggest issue of this election was “untamed globalization” that is threatening France and its culture. Le Pen wants France to follow the UK’s lead and exit the European Union. That would be a “Frexit” She’s also cuddly with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who’s sticking his fingers into the French election much like he did with the U.S. Guess which French candidate he prefers? The same one Donald Trump is rooting for.
Marine Le Pen came in second to Emmanuel Macron, who is a centrist. The vote locked out the two major parties and for the first time in nearly 60 years the French presidency is between two outsider candidates. Imagine if our choices were between Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
The Guardian writes “The contest on 7 May is a contest between openness and bigotry, internationalism and nationalism, optimism and hatred, reaction and reform, hope and fear.” The election we had last November were between the same choices. Unfortunately we chose bigotry, nationalism, hatred, and fear.
Let’s see in two weeks if France can be better than we are and not vote for the Russian stooge.
Clay Jones can be contacted at [email protected]