by Steve James on Tue Apr 25, 2017 7:22 am
Marine could possibly win, but mostly because Macron just doesn't inspire or offend anyone. His story is very drole. Otoh, one can never tell whether the people will come out to vote against Le Pen. Macron won the majority of votes, but didn't reach 50%. So there must be a runoff with the candidate who received the second most votes. However, Le Pen got only slightly more votes than the next two after her --who were the more traditional politicians.
Anyway, people who think that LePen's popularity is a response to Islamic terrorism are partly right, but miss the point about the French. No one has or can change French cultural values. But, for the old Le Pen, no culture that was not French should be legal.
For example, people here might ask "what's wrong with banning a burkhini?" Maybe nothing, but for the old Le Pen that applied to all public expressions of religion. So, Jews should not wear yarmulkes in public, and no turbans for Sikhs, etc. The idea could be extended to Catholics, except that Le Pen's original "National Front" party needed French Catholics to promote French culture, which was/is legally secular. But, if you want to know why people may vote against or for Marine, do a search on the National Front.
The nationalist aspect is probably more significant when it comes to France's relation to Europe. And, imo, it's Europe that is on the edge. Almost exactly 100 years ago, there were calls of "France for the French, England for the English, Germany for the German" and, of course, Garvey said "Africa for the Africans." Well, the problem was that all the European powers were trying to divide up the African continent in order to utilize its resources. That "scramble for Africa" led to WWI, and control of N. African oil was central to WW2. After that war, it was argued that Europe should unite and not compete.
Of course, one asks, "why should they compete anyway?" Why should there be tensions between east and west Europe? Hold on, why should there be tension between England and Scotland, or England and Germany? Ok, so what happens when every European nation (or wanna be nations) says "Me First" (or uber alles, sobre todos, etc)? Who will actually be first? And, who will accept being number two? Or, is it really just a word game?
"A man is rich when he has time and freewill. How he chooses to invest both will determine the return on his investment."