The French right is in chaos following the defeat of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen at the hands of the pro-European Union Emmanuel Macron in the recent presidential election.
After the election collapse, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the photogenic niece of Marine Le Pen and favorite of the party’s traditionalist base, announced she had made a “personal choice” to retire from politics.
She had been seen as a future party leader and a more stalwart champion of traditional values and Catholic identity than Marine, and her departure further raises doubts about the ability of the National Front to win future elections.
The National Front itself may not even survive as a name. Marine Le Pen reportedly wants to change it to broaden its appeal, defining its mission as championing “patriots” against “globalists.”
Still, it’s far too soon to write off the National Front, or Marine Le Pen herself. Though the National Front was crushed in the election, Le Pen won more votes than any other candidate in the party’s history. She also won the endorsement of some smaller conservative parties, though Francois Fillon, the candidate of the major center-right party Les Républicains, endorsed Macron.
One of those who sees signs for hope is G.M. Davis, author of “House of War: Islam’s Jihad Against The World,” who argues Macron’s mandate is deceptively weak, and the European nationalist right is still showing signs of growth.
“Though Le Pen was beaten nearly two-to-one, her showing helps to consolidate the normalization of supposed ‘far-right’ parties in Europe,” he told WND. “Strong second-place showings in 2016 and 2017 for right wing parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party and the Dutch Party for Freedom, and now that of the National Front in France, testify to the fact that so-called ‘extremism’ has gone mainstream. The question now is what will happen in the upcoming French legislative elections in June, now that France has a president whose party does not control a single legislative seat.”
Macron, whose party Le Republique En Marche! is a new creation, is unlikely to win a majority in the upcoming elections. In contrast, Le Pen’s National Front is is poised for strong gains after its presidential candidate won an absolute majority of the vote in more than a dozen districts. It remains to be seen how the loss of Marion will affect the party.
Davis believes Macron, whose triumph was overwhelmingly supported by the mainstream media, may come down to earth sooner than he and his journalist cheerleaders anticipate.
“In many ways, Macron seems very much an Obama figure: young, attractive, energetic, who, while certainly intelligent, seems to get by primarily on his looks and a youthful optimism that has yet to make serious contact with reality,” Davis observed.
“Like Obama, he may wind up proving highly popular and highly ineffective – and, over the long term, disastrous for his party. Indeed, now that the dust has settled on the deck after yet another general election in a Western nation-state, we can see that the great ship continues to list most alarmingly: the Islamic demographic time-bomb continues to tick.”
And that demographic issue is why other observers are far more pessimistic.
Internationally known anti-Shariah activist Pamela Geller, author of “Stop The Islamization of America,” thinks France is “finished.”
“France has chosen to go quietly into the cold, dark night,” she said. “Instead of rising up against the jihad and Islamization of France, they have chosen to submit to the most brutal ideology on the face of the earth. They voted for submission over freedom. In the short term, there will be ever more frequent and bloody jihad attacks. In the long term, civil war and conquest of the non-Muslim population.”
Geller was savage in her critique of Le Pen’s campaign, characterizing it as riddled with incompetence and confusion.
“She had no real defined strategy or policy platform,” Geller said. “Being anti-Islamization was not enough. And she was stigmatized and demonized in the establishment media as ‘racist,’ ‘bigoted,’ ‘xenophobic,’ ‘Islamophobic’ and the like. She should have shown more clearly that she was on the side of freedom and human rights: The Jews in France suspected her of anti-Semitism, and some of her proposals gave them good reason to do so. So, of course, did her father. And her links to Assad and Hezbollah didn’t help her either.
“She never articulated a more comprehensive program for France’s immediate future. And her debate performance was a disaster.”
Paul Nehlen, the populist candidate who challenged Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in last year’s congressional elections and is the producer and director of the documentary “Hijrah: Radical Islam’s Global Invasion,” was more charitable toward Le Pen. However, like Geller, he acknowledged the mainstream media’s smear campaign had an effect.
“I think Le Pen lost for the same reason Geert Wilders lost in the Netherlands and Norbert Hofer lost in Austria,” he told WND. “There is a concerted effort by the mainstream media to paint nationalist candidates as xenophobic or racist, when in fact, defense of one’s own culture, traditions, heroes and holidays is the only thing that keeps them alive.”
It’s difficult to second guess a wholly different culture as it relates to their political process and long standing traditions. My sense is that Marine Le Pen will be vindicated by increasing, not decreasing Islamic violence and further degradation of French culture and security under Macron. Further, the EU will not economically improve given the huge structural regulatory behemoth they’ve built and add to every day in Brussels.”
Nehlen, whose “Hijrah” film documents the effects of Islamic settler colonialism in the West, predicted dark days ahead for the French Republic.
“The French are going to find out the hard way over the next five years that when Islam is a very small minority, it advocates for minority rights, but it doesn’t stop there,” he warned. “As Islam grows in a new region, there ceases to be minority rights, and Shariah takes over.”
Nehlen called on the French to rally to their historic Christian faith to defend their nation and identity.
“It is imperative that the Le Pen supporters retrench their efforts to win over duped moderates,” he advised. “This is also a clarion call to French Christians of all sects. They must act as the hands and feet of Christ to defend France and Christianity, else they will become second-class citizens in their own country, subjugated to the jizya tax and worse.
“Europe is headed in the wrong direction. Ignoring the Islamic hijrah, migration in the name of Allah, will thrust Europe into a new dark ages. Imagine the whole of Europe a no-go zone where non-Muslims are regularly beaten, attacked with acid, stabbed, shot, plowed down with trucks, and thrown from buildings. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine it because it’s already happening on a daily basis! It’s just not overtly sanctioned. Yet.”
Reporters largely celebrated Le Pen’s defeat as a stemming of the populist tide that saw the United Kingdom leave the European Union and Donald Trump become president of the United States. However, Davis said the comparison is not perfect and their enthusiasm is misplaced. Le Pen’s victory, he cautioned, was always far less likely than Trump’s.
“In a way similar to Trump, Le Pen was fighting the entire secular establishment, though even more so,” he said. “Trump had the advantage of being associated with one of the two mainstream American political parties, whereas it is still customary to refer to the National Front as a ‘far-right’ organization outside the mainstream, which further disadvantaged Le Pen.”
Davis suggested the National Front should perhaps not just change its name,but change leaders.
“While the National Front has always been led by a Le Pen, perhaps the time has come to show the French people that it can stand on its own two feet and elect another leader. It is often customary for a party leader beaten at the polls to step down,” he noted.
“In time, one hopes that the French, and other European countries, will accept their supposed ‘far-right’ parties as the most reasonable options they have for saving their civilization from suicidal globalism and multiculturalism and the most destructive, long-lived religious-political ideology in history, Islam.”
Amid the debates about the future of the National Front and continuing threat of terrorism is a larger issue: Will Europe become Islamic? And will indigenous Europeans give up the continent without a fight?
Davis said nothing is certain, but it’s definitely possible.
“It is always hard to predict the future,” he cautioned.
“However, Europe could well become majority Islamic by the end of the century. Pagan Europe became Christian; the Christian Middle East and North Africa became Islamic. These things do happen.
“The cultural and demographic trends that have been at work in Europe since roughly the end of the Second World War continue apace: White Christians are dying and moving away and being replaced by Muslims. Many come from the old imperial holdings – India, Pakistan, Algeria, etc. – via voluntary immigration. Many are fleeing Western-sponsored war zones – Syria, Iraq, North Africa – and increasingly, many are native births. The trends that appear to drive these demographics show no signs of letting up, indeed, show signs of speeding up. And this process is occurring in the United States as well.”
Davis blames Western man’s loss of faith for removing his sense of purpose and willingness to fight for his own civilization and its future.
“It is religion that gives man a sense of the infinite and, practically, of a future that extends beyond his own lifespan,” he said. “As the Western world continues the process of secularization, it loses its hold on the future and cares less and less for its ongoing social survival: Europe no longer has children.
“European Muslims, however, who as a rule remain more connected with their religion, have comparatively lots of children. While there is nothing necessarily stopping secular Europeans from rediscovering their religious roots – or having more kids for whatever reason – and while there is reason to expect more and more Muslims to become Europeans and have fewer children, the demographic trends pushing toward an Islamic Europe remain firmly entrenched.”
However, though Davis suggests the trends leading to an Islamic Europe are clear, the Stanford Ph.D believes another outcome is far more probable – war.
“A fully Islamized Europe by the end of the century is hard for me to envision, however; a Europe rent by religious conflict and civil war seems much more likely – and much more likely to happen much sooner,” he said. “A significant counterexample in our own time is that of Russia, which is reclaiming her Orthodox Christian heritage after decades of Communist brutality and Western manipulation. It can be done, but the widely held assumptions of secular modernity have to be jettisoned.”
Geller is far more pessimistic. When asked what she would advise the French to do now, her suggestion was blunt: “Emigrate.”
And Geller argues Europe has only two choices in the wake of Le Pen’s defeat. Islamization or “the bloodiest civil war the world has yet seen.”
