The French Election

Nick Berlet ’18, Staff writer

In an effort to preserve the far-right movement around the globe, the National Front party of France put forth Marine Le Pen to contend in the French election against a slew of candidates ranging from far-left to centrist, most notably, Emmanuel Macron. The founding leader of the En Marche party, Macron is a socially liberal centrist who believes that he can unite the left and the right. Throughout almost the entirety of the election, aside with some interference from Republican Francois Fillon, these two were seen as the favorites to be the future leaders of France, unsurprisingly as both strayed from the far left beliefs of current unpopular President, Francois Hollande.

As with every election within the recent few decades, interesting circumstances were sure to arise. The drama following Macron primarily focused on the huge age gap between him and his wife, which spans to almost twenty five years. Sixty four year old Brigitte Macron was a thirty nine year old high school drama teacher when she met student, Emmanuel Macron. Although she was married at the time, she continued to have an affair with Emmanuel. Amidst all of the conflict, they married more than a decade after he promised to do so as a 16 year old.

In a much less romantic form of drama, Marine Le Pen has been compared to Donald Trump and Hitler, as her rather alt-right policies, such as shutting down all French borders and her strict stances on immigration, have certainly raised eyebrows. Also, the attempted hack by the Russians sounded too familiar, and instead of having it go their way as it did in America, it greatly affected Le Pen’s campaign, as she was destroyed in the second round.

Peddie post graduate Cameron Hochberg ‘17, a resident of France, gave his opinion regarding the election, saying, “I wanted Macron to win. I didn’t specifically want him in particular, but I just think that he was the best out of the worst. As for what I think will happen, I think we will have a repeat of what happened these last 5 years. He never really told us anything on what he wanted to do, but at the same time now he is taking some actions. It might be better, but I frankly don’t know. The election on its own was more on why did the FN manage to get where it was and how to counter and on all the scandals that were discovered right before the start of everyone’s campaign.”

The global far-right movement started by the regaining of Tory majority in British government, followed by Brexit, then again by the electing of Trump is seemingly coming to a close. In Austria, the far-right was outlasted by the Green Party, and in France, as reported, the centrist by the name of Emmanuel Macron was elected.