FRANCE. XENOPHIBIA AND RADICALISM, 2017.
It should be reminded that a Presidential election took place on 23 April ‘(first ballot) and 7 May (second ballot), followed by a legislative election in June and the swearing-in of a new Cabinet on 21 June. In the Presidential election Emmanuel Macron, a former Minister of the Economy under President François Hollande, defeated the candidate of the Extreme-Right party, Front national, by a 66-33% margin, with Marine Le Pen nevertheless polling a record 21, 3% on the first ballot and a record 33,9%, that is 10,6 million votes, on the second. As usual, the FN candidate campaigned on fear of immigration and the refugees, especially those with a Muslim origin, called for a policy of zero legal immigration and for the detention of those people who have not been convicted of any offense but have a file with the Intelligence Services because of their involvement, or suspected involvement, in legal or illegal Radical movements, most of them Muslim. Marine Le Pen’s badly run campaign and her inability to efficiently challenge Macron on economic issues pushed analysts to believe that the future of the party is bleak. However, FN secured 8 seats in the National Assembly and should not be dismissed as irrelevant...
