The French Center Holds — In a World Coming Apart
So terrified of Le Pen was the European establishment that before Sunday’s election, the leaders of Spain, Portugal and Germany intervened in France’s politics by imploring the French people to vote against her.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
So wrote William Butler Yeats in the wake of the Great War of 1914–1918 that had ravaged the Christian civilization he had known.
In France on Sunday, the center held, as President Emmanuel Macron rolled up a crushing 59% to 41% victory in the runoff election against ethno-nationalist Marine Le Pen.
Four years ago, Le Pen got 34% in the runoff. And the highest vote that her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front, ever received was 18%. While Marine Le Pen lost Sunday, her positions continue to attract converts.
So terrified of Le Pen was the European establishment that before Sunday’s election, the leaders of Spain, Portugal and Germany intervened in France’s politics by imploring the French people to vote against her.
This runoff is “for us, not an election like any other,” wrote German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa and Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez in Le Monde.
France faces a “choice between a democratic candidate … and a far-right candidate, who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and our democracy.”
More than 4 in 10 French voted for the candidate the EU leaders had described as anti-democratic.
In the first round of voting, Le Pen, along with rabid leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon and the hard right’s Eric Zemmour, who ran third and fourth, behind Le Pen, together carried 52%.
Thus did three of the top four candidates for the presidency of France, and a majority of the French nation, show support for an idea that all three of them shared — hostility to NATO.
In ruling France for the next five years, Macron, himself a critic of U.S. leadership and NATO, will have to keep this constituency in mind.
And Macron knows it. On his night of triumph, he conceded that many of those who voted for him were motivated not by an appreciation of what he had accomplished, but by a fear of Le Pen.
In the East of Europe, however, change may be on the horizon.
Major media — Newsweek, the New York Post and Daily Mail — are reporting rumors, based partly on recent videos of Russia’s president, that Vladimir Putin may be suffering from cancer.
Also, news that Sweden and Finland may be joining NATO as the 31st and 32nd members of the alliance has caused a sharp reaction from Moscow, which is warning of a redeployment of nuclear weapons to the Baltic.
Again, have people thought through what it would mean to bring Finland, a nation the size of Germany with an 830-mile land border with Russia, into NATO?
With 4% of Russia’s population, Finland would need NATO ground troops to man the border bases and crossing points into that country, and some of those troops would likely have to be Americans.
They would be staring across that chilly border directly at Russians, as in East and West Berlin in Cold War days.
Last Friday, in a press conference, Gen. Rustam Minnekayev said Russia seeks full control of all of southern Ukraine to give it “another way out to Transnistria” — the breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova.
Minnekayev charged Moldova with oppressing the Russian-speaking population of Transnistria, an echo of the claim the Kremlin used to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
Was this weekend’s missile attack on Odessa an indicator of that Russian intent?
Putin’s ally in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, in his sixth term, having held the top office for three decades, is now 68, and his last election victory in 2020 was almost universally regarded as fraudulent.
Would Moscow, having lost Ukraine, sit still as Sweden and Finland moved onto the threshold of NATO and accept a neutrality for Belarus that would leave Russia without two of the three critical components of his Russian Federation as allies?
China’s largest city, Shanghai, is today in a lockdown ordered by Xi Jinping, as China suddenly seems no longer the country that showed the world how to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic that began in Wuhan.
President Joe Biden may be making trips to New Hampshire, but few believe he will be running again in 2024, as the manifestations of his cognitive decline appear more frequent and disturbing.
Yet, one recalls.
Woodrow Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke during a national tour to sell the peace treaty and League of Nations he had negotiated at Paris to the country and the Senate in 1919, yet survived his successor Warren Harding, who died in office in 1923.
As Macron was rolling up his election victory, Ron Klain, Biden’s White House chief of staff, chortled at the outcome.
“An interesting observation, just FYI,” tweeted Klain. “President Macron appears to have secured a double-digit victory over LePen, at a time when his approval rating is 36%. Hmmm … ”
If Macron can pull it off, why can’t Biden, Klain is contending here.
Unconvincingly.
What a refreshingly lucid and accessible post. Thank you for the clear and understandable commentary, Mr. Buchanan. I wish more people would write as well as you do.
Macron rec’d 38% of the votes cast. Not exactly a thumping mandate.
Never underestimate the Will and ability of Democrats to cheat.
This whole analysis is pathetic. Exactly what makes Le Pen so frightful? Surely one as seasoned as Mr Buchanan should have some skepticism regarding media’s repetitive use of “far right” as a tactic. Her policy recommendations are actually pretty tame. It is more than disappointing the Buchanan sees Macron–the oppressor of the Gilets Jaunes–as a wholesome “center.” Maybe it was a mistake to take him on a a regular.
COINHERENCE–
Yeah! “Far Right.” “Right Wing.” Is that’s what we are, we who don’t want our ancestral lands taken by strangers? Is the Dalai Lama Far Right?
https://theeuropeanfamily.com/f/right-wing-far-right-is-that-what-we-are
@coinherence
“Maybe it was a mistake to take him on a a regular.”
Buchanan is a gate-keeper and as such he cannot produce valuable analyses. I was surprised and disappointed to see him here.
I bet Muslims and recent immigrants voted for Macron.
I don’t think they reflect what truly French people think.
Too many apathetic White voters and too many muslim voters. Could the election results signal that France cannot be saved by voting ? Allowing non Whites to vote is a mistake that might just doom France as well as America. Overcome your fear of stating the truth : RACE IS THE ISSUE and all else is dross.
Indeed, John. As the browning of the population continues unabated and the white population dwindles, indigenous Europeans and whites in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will simply lose their political power. And with the amount of hatred and blame toward whites that has been inculcated for decades, what will a white-minority world look like? I shudder to think. Call me a Cassandra, but I think we should err on the side of caution by trying to think of ways that we can counteract this onslaught and protect ourselves.
There are Muslim areas of Paris where even the police refuse to go- for self preservation.
The article does not explain that Europe is occupied by the Americans.
Americans are a problem in Europe and the Glaubenjuden are a problem in America and Europe, as they were in Free Germany before the American occupation.
I always laugh when I hear the Americans shouting about the Free World.
They actually believe the drivel. I am 80 years old this month and not very good with computers but I think lol would be appropriate here.
The Establishment in Europe often have a lot of American blood in their veins.
In the UK most of the upper class is part American. The Japanese, for example, do not have this problem.
There is a special relationship between the UK and US Upper Classes. It is called inter marriage. Both hate us peasants, on the rare occasions when they think of us.
One of the Vanderbilts told his mother that his girlfriend had brushed him off. He ran across the room and jumped through a closed window 17 floors up in New York. My students were friends of his. I told my students to never stop a rich Yankee committing suicide, but open the window before he jumps because the falling glass might injure some of my distant relations from Odessa who had moved to New York.
Although we agree about nothing we always look after each other.
Their mother did not like it so I promised her that I would blubber uncontrollably about the rich when the rich did more for the poor (me included).
Happy birthday. Hang in there.
When you spoke of “American blood,” I was taken aback, for we Americans (and I prefer to think of myself as a USan because the Americas comprise a vast landmass that includes Canada to the north and many countries to the south) do not have American blood, per se. Those of us who identify as white or Caucasian are the descendants of Europeans. American blood would refer to the indigenous peoples who lived her before our ancestors came here. Also, we are not a homogenous group in any possible meaning of the word. There are some who are “haves” as you referred to but many more are “have nots,” (myself included) who have very little power, if any.
Us have nots have more power than we realize. The circus trained baby elephants with a chain around their ankle fastened to a stake in the ground. The baby learned it couldn’t go beyond the length of the chain. As an adult elephant they used a rope which the elephant could easily break free of but it didn’t even try because from childhood it was convinced it couldn’t. We can do more than we think we can. There are countless stories of individuals who proved one person can accomplish astounding things.
Buchanan’s article and the various commentaries assume that the election in France was honest. I doubt it. In my view, the globalists, the denizens of the Deep State, the socialists and their allies pretty much resemble those in the US, including the Democrat Party. They have no problem stealing elections. Rather, for them, election fraud is a moral obligation. When your opponents are Hitler, Nazi’s, racists, nationalists, etc., anything goes. Here is what Saul Alinsky advised Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, in his book, “Rules for Radicals,” “In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of “personal salvation”; he doesn’t care enough for people to be “corrupted” for them.” If cheating in an election is ‘good for mankind,’ well, then you have to cheat. Goodness! Certainly, Hillary and Barak and their many friends have the good of mankind as their goal. Just ask them.
Buchanan: “On his night of triumph, [Macron] conceded that many of those who voted for him were motivated not by an appreciation of what he had accomplished, but by a fear of Le Pen.”
In the last few days before the election, Zemmour kept saying that Macron had brought in 2 million migrants in 5 years. How many will it be in the next 5 years? Another two million? Maybe four? I agree with Buchanan and Macron himself that his voters didn’t vote for that.
I don’t think anyone is afraid of Le Pen, but many are afraid to vote for her. They can’t bring themselves to vote for someone who has been continuously mocked by all the media. They are conformists who stubbornly trust the powers that be. Because of them, Le Pen only got 41% of the vote.
Those people see the government replacing them with third-world migrants, and still don’t understand that the government wants them dead. They seem incredibly stupid. In their defense, it’s hard to accept the idea that Western democracy is a giant sham, because it would mean almost everyone in the government, the media, and many other institutions is to some degree a liar and an accomplice of the anti-White system.
Actually, I read that a lot of Muslims voted for le penn.