A promotional video by the National Front Party on March 27 in which Marine Le Pen appeals to her supporters via the Internet after the first round of municipal elections, commending their patriotism and calling on them to mobilize for the second round. PARIS - News that France’s far-right National Front party was set to take control of 11 towns across France following municipal elections on Sunday was greeted with a mix of nationalist triumphalism and more than a little fear.
The party, which rails against the European Union, immigration and untrammeled capitalism, attained its best result in municipal elections since the late 1990s when it ruled four towns.
Its relative triumph â€" and the success of the rightist parties in general â€" was seen as a harsh rebuke of the country’s Socialist president, François Hollande. Once nicknamed for a brand of wobbly caramel pudding, his perceived weak leadership and stewardship of a faltering economy have alienated many French.
The National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, in contrast, has sought to portray herself as a strong and modern-day Marianne, the female symbol of the French Republic, and her potent cocktail of feel good nationalism and immigrant baiting has appealed to voters.
Heralding a new era in French politics, she told French television Sunday that the National Front had finally broken the stranglehold of the two main political parties. “We have moved on to a new level,†she said. “There is now a third major political force in our country.â€
The party performed particularly well in the east and south of the country, which are both blighted by joblessness and have large immigrant communities. In Béziers, a seemingly unlikely National Front candidate, Robert Ménard, former head of Reporters Sans Frontières, won more than 47 percent of the vote.
While many of the town halls won by the party are relatively small, even the left-leaning Le Monde, one of the its staunchest critics, signaled that the elections appeared to transform France’s political landscape. “Bipolar politics is dead,†the paper said on Monday, suggesting that the creation of a three-party system was a seismic event.
As in France, the response on Twitter and in the international press reflected the polarizing force of the National Front, which has been dogged by a perception that it is racist. After the party’s success, Le Figaro noted that Germany’s Focus magazine has warned that France was lurching toward “fascism light.â€
Blow-back to the election wins circulated on Twitter. One writer who calls himself Henry IV did nothing to conceal his abhorrence for the party. “I hate so much, but so much, The National Front,†he wrote. Another writer noted mockingly that while Ms. Le Pen preached protectionism, some of her campaign T-shirts were made in Bangladesh.
Yet elsewhere, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was cited predicting that his daughter would one day become president. Meanwhile, apparent supporters outside of France appeared to rejoice in the possibility that the party’s robust showing presaged a strong performance in upcoming elections for the European parliament in May. “French lefties crying into croissants,†a nationalist supporter wrote on Twitter.
Some commentators noted that the ascent of the National Front held up an uncomfortable mirror to the French.
“The French Far-Right Isn’t Scary Anymore and That’s the Problem,†declared an English-language blog in the French daily Liberation. Renée Kaplan, the blog’s writer, noted that many were mortified by the realization that the tendency by the French intelligentsia to dismiss the National Front as marginalized pariahs no longer corresponded to reality. She wondered ruefully: “Maybe this France â€" a real voting part of which supports a far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-European, nationalist party â€" actually is France today.â€
The telegenic Ms. Le Pen has sought to rebrand the National Front as mainstream by distancing herself from her father, the founder of the party, and a man widely viewed as anti-Semitic. She has even vowed to take legal action against anyone who characterized the party as “extreme right.†Yet the National Front has cleaved to its mantra of France for the French. Last summer, Mr. Le Pen called the Roma community in Nice, in the south of France, “smelly†and “rash-inducing.â€
Sentiments such as this have stirred strong emotions about the party, and as its success became apparent on Sunday night, police said fights erupted outside the town halls where the party triumphed, including in Frejus in the south, where riot police were guarding the offices of party officials.
Riot police trying to prevent clashes between opponents of the National Front and the party’s supporters in Fréjus in the south of France on March 30. For all the hype about its success, some analysts cautioned that the National Front’s victory was still relatively modest, given that these were local elections. Yet there was little doubt that the elections had laid bare Mr. Hollande’s deep unpopularity.
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