To read most accounts of the recent, internationally-watched parliamentary elections in France, the nationalist party led by three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen came in third and thus fell far short of initial predictions of a big win.
In truth, there is a lot more to the French elections. For now, it seems safe to say that the election, as former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told reporters Sunday, "has instead led to great vagueness."
Le Pen's RN (Rassemblement Nacional), on its own, captured 125 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly — a huge leap for the party since it won 89 seats in the 2022 elections.
In capturing nearly every seat outside the city of Paris, the RN — best known for its hardline stance against illegal immigration and vigorously opposed to any French troops assisting Ukraine is the largest single party in the Assembly. With the support of smaller parties allied with it, the RN's ranks swell to 143 seats.
But several French parties on the left — Socialists, Communists, and Greens — united into the Popular Front and came in first with 182 seats. More moderate parties joined with President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Ensemble and this coalition came in second with 168 seats.
Clearly the joining together of the left and the center thwarted the RN from doing better than they did in Sunday's runoff elections. In more than 200 contests, the centrists or the leftists would defer to one another to keep the nationalists from winning a plurality.
Along with joining forces, campaigners for the left and the middle underscored the history of the National Front — the predecessor party of the RN founded by Marine's father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1974 — as antisemitic and sympathetic to France's pro-Nazi Vichy government during World War II.
"France lived under a fascist government during World War II and, in the end, the French people are not going to put fascists in power," Daily Beast and France 24 contributor A. Craig Copetas told Newsmax on the night of the runoff last Sunday.
Despite Marine Le Pen's years-long effort to detoxify the party and the expulsion of her father and other antisemites — and advocating fervent support of Israel — the idea of the RN as its past incarnation caught on with many French voters.
Sorana, an artist who spoke to Newsmax at the Atlantic Bar in Paris, told Newsmax on Sunday that "the fascists are opposed to equality and justice." When we asked why she felt the RN are fascists, she shot back: "Why aren't they?"
Claude, a sociology professor who also spoke to us at the Atlantic Bar, said she would vote for the left because "Le Pen's name is synonymous with fascism." As for Le Pen's 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella, who was the public face of the RN in the campaign, Claude simply said "He's just a boy."
Days after the votes, Macron is trying to cobble together a majority from the left and his fellow centrists to choose a prime minister and form a government. But forming a majority is not as easy as it seems. The Popular Front and its best-known figure, leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, are committed to repealing Macron's most unpopular move of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and, in contrast to the president, hope to pursue full diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state.
So this leaves the RN — the big loser of the election, according to much of the world's media — in the position of the loyal opposition to the eventual government. It is true, as critics have noted, that the party has no committee chairmanships, no speaker, and no investigative powers.
But in coming back as the loyal opposition and with their largest-ever numbers in the National Assembly, the FN has come a long way from its turbulent past and is very possibly in a stronger position than ever to win the presidency in 2027.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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