France held a primary election last Sunday. This time the fascists came in second instead of winning.
Not as successful as the Russian collusion (apparently) between the TRump campaign and (increasingly apparently) other Republican leadership figures, along with emerging Chinese corruption. But it was still successful enough to defeat a couple of contenders.
The French general election is coming up in May. Macron is predicted to win, but then so was Clinton.
Marine Le Pen just engaged in a little fake political theater, stepping down temporarily (supposedly) as leader of the National Front, the bigot antisemitic party that is promoting lies about the assistance nasty right wing French bigots provided to Hitler's "final solution" rounding up French Jews for the gas chambers.
It is going to be hard to pretend however that she is not owned by Putin after she took 9 million euros to support Putin grabbing Crimea, attacks on NATO ( including pulling out entirely, and a French exit from the European Union, aka Frexit).
And now it emerges that in addition to big dirty Kremlin cash, the very same hackers tried to do similar cyber attacks on the leading candidate, sane sensible centrist Emanuel Macron.
Like Putin, like TRump: another treasonous attack on representative government by dictators.
Le Pen's appeal is much the same, if more covert, appealing to a new generation of radical right wingers with the same prejudices, just as post election analysis demonstrates that TRump voters were substantially both racist and authoritarian.
Like poorly educated and badly informed far right blind ideologues, the supporters of Le Pen hate and fear immigrants, and are Islamophobes and homophobes.
We can only hope the French object to having their elections rigged by Putin and his sell out puppets, and therefore reject both Le Pen and fascism.
I am waiting to see how long Republicans approve, condone, and endorse fascism before they decide it is too high, and too Un -American, a price to pay for power, like selling their souls to the devil. Except of course like the French Nazi collaborators in WW II, the soul sellers aren't the only people enduring Hell as a result of their unjustified fear, hatred and perfidy.
Treason never plays well in the hindsight of history, and that is what selling one's country to Putin is: treason.
Debate Magazine
