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Marine Le Pen is easily the most popular politician in France.
On Sunday, a poll found her the clear front-runner for the 2027 Presidential election. On Monday, a French court said she couldn’t run.
A judge in Paris found Le Pen and her right-wing National Rally party had used funds from the European Union to pay party workers. For this sin, the judge sentenced Le Pen to two years of house arrest — and banned her from the 2027 election.
The decision is France’s version of the Democratic efforts to chase Donald Trump from the 2024 Presidential race. It comes as German politicians are considering moving against the AfD, that county’s major right-wing party. When will the left realize these games undercut its claim to stand for democracy and the rule of law?
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(Calling all freethinkers!)
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Legacy media outlets, in Europe and the United States, call the National Rally party “far right.” Almost definitionally, that can’t be true; the most popular party in a democracy can be conservative, liberal, even communist, but it can’t be far anything.
The National Rally was founded in 1972 as the National Front by Le Pen’s father, Jean, who defended French collaboration with the Nazis and downplayed the Holocaust. Marine Le Pen ousted her father from it in 2015 and changed its name in 2018.
She repudiated Jean’s most noxious views and moved the party left economically, promising to protect France’s generous welfare state. At the same time, she kept its core anti-immigration and tough on crime attitudes. In other words, she remade it as populist and nationalist first, conservative second, very much like Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Her changes have resonated with French voters, who are frustrated with violence and terrorism from poorly integrated Muslim immigrants. Many of the deadliest terror attacks against Western countries have occurred in France, including the Bataclan nightclub massacre and related attacks in November 2015, which killed 131 people.
France also appears to be swinging against expensive decarbonization efforts, though its backlash has not been as severe as Germany’s, probably because the French have nuclear power plants keeping electricity relatively affordable.
And so Marine Le Pen is now the front-runner for the 2027 French Presidential election. The poll Sunday found her with the support of 37 percent of voters, about 15 points ahead of anyone else.1
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(Far-right! If CNN says it, you know it must be true.)
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But barring an appeal experts on French law say will probably not be heard in time for her to get on the 2027 ballot, Le Pen won’t be allowed to stand for the Presidency.
Is this liberté?
The crimes for which Judge Bénédicte de Perthuis found Le Pen guilty are not quite traffic tickets, but they are minor. They amount to putting a few party workers on the European Union’s payroll. Even the BBC, hardly a right-wing news organization, acknowledged that “practically every French political party has resorted to similar underhand methods in the past.”
The trial, which started last year, had attracted little attention. Almost no one expected that the court would presume to keep Le Pen from running even if it did find her guilty.
But de Perthuis had other ideas.
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It is impossible not to hear in the Le Pen case echoes of the way the Democratic prosecutors and liberal judges prosecuted — and, yes, persecuted — Donald Trump last year.
Europe, like the United States, is riding a nationalist-populist-conservative wave. The rise of the National Rally in France comes alongside that of Alternative for Germany and the Brothers of Italy, which has ruled Italy since 2022, an eternity in Italian politics.
As in the United States, the rise of the right has raised fears among Europe’s elites and legacy media outlets, often tied to Germany’s Nazi past and the continent’s long and bloody history of nationalist aggression.
The elites seem to have forgotten that these are democracies. And voters in them are tired of the way they’ve been governed. Le Pen has been gaining ground for over a decade; with each Presidential election she has taken more votes.
The United States has a problem with income inequality, but Europe has an even bigger problem with economic stagnation. Voters on both continents have clearly decided that welcoming millions of poorly educated illegal immigrants a year is not the answer to either.
European and American elites may not like that view. They may even find it dangerous.
But for a generation, they have controlled every societal lever, including academia, the film and television industries, the news media, and powerful non-governmental organizations. They have worked in coordinated fashion to impress upon the proles the necessity for decarbonization — which they style as opposition to climate change2 — mass immigration, drug decriminalization, and their other obsessions.
They have been rejected.
What they ought to do is try to figure out why.
What they are doing is crying fascism at every opportunity — and looking for ways to force aside the candidates voters prefer.
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(You have a choice. Choose Unreported Truths.)
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Last spring, Democrats tried to use the courts, particularly in New York, to destroy Donald Trump. At the time, I called this strategy out as dangerous and self-defeating, as it so clearly was.
In November, American voters delivered their verdict, punishing Democrats for their arrogance. The lawfare provoked a deserved backlash. Trying to tell people that they can vote for anyone, except the candidate they really like, is a prescription for failure in democracies.
I strongly suspect that the French will soon teach their elites the same lesson.
At least this time it won’t come with a guillotine.
1
In the French system, any number of candidates can run, as long as they receive 500 endorsements from elected officials like mayors. If no one receives a majority in the first round of voting, the top two candidates advance to the second round.
2
This does not include grounding the private jets upon which elites rely.
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В Петербурге мужчина воспользовался беспомощностью подвыпившей женщины и прочёл ей стихотворение Пастернака.
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Смерть и оппозиционное (и олени)
НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН, РАСПРОСТРАНЕН И (ИЛИ) НАПРАВЛЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ АЛЕКСАНДРОЙ СЕРГЕЕВНОЙ АРХИПОВОЙ, СОДЕРЖАЩЕЙСЯ В РЕЕСТРЕ ИНОСТРАННЫХ АГЕНТОВ ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА АЛЕКСАНДРЫ СЕРГЕЕВНЫ АРХИПОВОЙ, СОДЕРЖАЩЕЙСЯ В РЕЕСТРЕ ИНОСТРАННЫХ АГЕНТОВ 18+
Сегодня я узнала, что мое любимое издательство Индивидуум (я сама там ничего не издавала, но вижу, что они очень смелые) не пустили на главную ярмарку страны — книжную выставку нон-фикшн. (Ребята не растерялись и устроили альтернативный фестиваль в рюмочных). Покупайте их книги, друзья!
А вот причины такого показательного недопуска озвучены не были. Хотя издательство спрашивало. Но мы с вами понимаем, что речь идет о скрытой цензуре и о самоцензуре.
Эта скрытая цензура в московских культурах кругах устроена очень хитро. Вроде формального запрета нет. Но внезапно тебе говорят: «нельзя ничего круглого… или фиолетового». Почему? остается только гадать.
Например, мои любимые театральные друзья только что рассказали историю. В 2018-2019 годах они организовывали театральные фестивали. Московское начальство им сказало:
Осторожнее с репертуаром. Нельзя спектакли про смерть, оппозиционное и еще про оленей!
(Мы же все помним, что у Сергея Собянина было прозвище "оленевод»? Они что, серьезно думали, что любое упоминание оленей сразу заставить публику думать про мэра? Хорошо бы, если бы так!).
В те же годы я пыталась консультировать ребят, которые хотели сделать выставку про слово в павильоне ВДНХ «Слово». Там мы планировали выставить современные письменные фольклорные образцы: песенники, девичьи, армейские, тюремные альбомы. Вот по поводу последних и возникло предупреждение:
Нельзя того, что не одобрят Кирюша и Сережа.
Я задумалась, как тюремный альбом и записки на носовых платочках могут оскорбить каких-то кирюш и сереж. Музейщики посмотрели на меня странно — это же патриарх Кирилл и Сергей Собянин! Нельзя плохо про Церковь и про Москву.
Интересно, какой цензурный запрет в случае Индивидуума? книга про водку? рекомендации иноагентов на обложках книг (я такое писала и Саша Баунов)
Кирюша и Серёжа!
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It’s still a surreal sight: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as America’s health secretary under President Trump. The scion of a Democratic dynasty who became an anti-vaccine gadfly and seemed, in his final years, doomed to irrelevancy — a Democratic campaign for president was going nowhere, and his independent bid wasn’t faring much better — is now one of the more powerful bureaucrats in America. There is much to be alarmed about with Kennedy, from his hatred of virtually all vaccines to his belief that bird flu should be allowed to run rampant through poultry, but many on the Left make the mistake of dismissing him outright because he’s allied himself with Trump.
The United States needs a health secretary who will, at the minimum, cast a sceptical eye on the pharmaceutical industry, which turns enormous profits and helps ensure American health care will always be commodified. Before the pandemic, most Democrats had little problem railing against Big Pharma. They were the villains, deservedly so, of the opioid epidemic, and it was not an exaggeration to say several of the pharmaceutical behemoths, most notably Purdue Pharma, had blood on their hands.
When Covid arrived, however, the politics shifted. Republicans resisted the vaccines once President Joe Biden was in office, even though Operation Warp Speed had been a Team Trump accomplishment. Democrats defended the Covid vaccines and their manufacturers — Pfizer and Moderna, in particular — at all costs, even though the jabs did cause injuries in relatively rare instances and couldn’t stop the spread of the novel coronavirus as originally promised.
Naturally, RFK Jr. was a Covid-vaccine sceptic. Hence he became, in the 2020s, a public enemy for many liberals.
Yet he should be listened to when it comes to one of his most cherished causes: banning pharmaceutical advertising from television. In a sane world, this would be a bipartisan cause. Few countries on Earth allow pharmaceutical companies to relentlessly market their drugs to unsuspecting consumers. Non-Americans are always shocked by what is permitted on the airwaves. Turn on the television, especially the news, for any length of time, and you will be barraged by ads for every type of malady under the Sun. Since the Nineties, drug companies have spent tens of billions on these ads.
Drug advertisements began appearing with regularity in newspapers and magazines in the Eighties, but they were mostly kept off TV by a requirement that ads naming a specific illness include the long list of side effects. In the late Nineties, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules, permitting advertisers to briefly summarise the drug’s risks. The TV floodgates were thrown wide open. These days, the most aggressive campaigns are for newer medications that haven’t yet gone generic; competing brands duke it out in a packed field of similar drugs to reach patients with widespread conditions like arthritis and diabetes.
The average American drug ad is easily parodied but plainly effective. Typically, some older adults are shone in a cheery setting with friends and family. The colour palette is bright. A narrator with a warm voice speaks about health challenges that might arise. The older adults are never shown to be in pain or distress; they might be taking a jog, playing with their dog, or firing up the grill. They’re bright-eyed, maybe laughing. Towards the end of the ad, the narrator will briefly summarise the drug’s side effects. Anyone with a morbid sense of humour can enjoy the contrast, just a bit: the scene remains focused on life’s joys as the narrator informs you the drug might cause rashes, bleeding, blackouts, or suicidal thoughts (in “rare cases”, rest assured).
But we know the big business of Big Pharma is no laughing matter. The drug companies are prepared to furiously fight any sort of ban that Kennedy might attempt. They will call up their expensive lobbyists on retainer in Washington to bend rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats to their will. They will probably get to Trump, who doesn’t feel passionately about the issue.
The courts have snagged reforms in the past. Efforts to minimally restrict drug ads have repeatedly been defeated, often on First Amendment grounds. The first Trump administration tried to require that commercials mention the drug’s price, but a judge blocked the policy, saying that it lacked authority from Congress.
Will Congress act? In theory, if Trump prioritised the ban, lawmakers could push it forward. The current Republican Party will obey Trump’s commands. The narrow majority the GOP holds in the House could be bolstered by a slew of progressive and populist Democrats who might view a fight with Big Pharma as a winning issue. Several centrist Democrats in swing districts, including Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington state, campaigned on a platform that was critical of pharmaceutical companies.
There’s a coalition to be built if the Trump administration takes the issue seriously. If a critical mass of Senate Republicans back legislation, it’s not hard to imagine the most Left-wing members of the Democratic conference, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, supporting a ban on TV ads. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut who may run for president and has swerved in a more populist direction, could be a convert, too.
But that’s the rub: Trump has never demonstrated that he is all that interested in the granular work of getting policy priorities through Congress. In the first term, he was content to let Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan hash out a corporate tax cut and attempt — unsuccessfully — to repeal ObamaCare.
“What conservatives don’t quite understand is that the truest owning of the libs will come through triangulation.”
For now, Congress is focused on classic GOP priorities like tax cuts for the wealthy and gutting Medicaid, the health-care programme that covers more than 70 million Americans. In addition to being cruel to the poor, a budget reconciliation package with tax and health-care cuts is likely to prove inflationary, especially when paired with tariffs. Beyond the tariffs, there’s no grander project here. The populism Trump promised isn’t being delivered — DOGE, and its wanton budget cuts, certainly aren’t it.
What conservatives don’t quite understand is that the truest owning of the libs will come through triangulation. Trump can begin to subdue Democrats by pursuing policies like a ban on TV pharmaceutical ads, forcing the Left to stand with him for something popular or oppose him and appear extremely out of touch. Trump doesn’t seem to have that kind of savvy. He’s fine to let his party scheme over Medicaid cuts.
That will not end well for the GOP. Democrats know how to campaign on health care, and taking it away from working-class people will make the 2026 midterms rather easy for the party out of power. Those political ads write themselves. They’ll be sandwiched between the 30-second spots for heart disease pills that may cause internal bleeding and murderous thoughts. In rare cases.
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