Every major economic upheaval produces a corresponding political upheaval.
The First Industrial Revolution, beginning in the late 18th century, challenged absolute monarchies and set up a century of conflicts between the conservatism of the land-owning elites and the free-market liberalism of the rising capitalist class. But, just as industrialization once imperiled the livelihoods of millions of agricultural workers, so now the march of information technology is imperiling the livelihoods of millions of industrial workers. In the process, the old political landscape is being altered beyond recognition, just as the physical landscape has been altered by the shuttering of old factories and the hollowing out of old factory towns.
Across the West, the battle is increasingly not between centrist conservatism and centrist liberalism, as it has been for much of the post-1945 period, but, rather, between globalism and nationalism. On one side are those who support the free movement of goods and peoples, embracing the changes wrought by the Information Age. On the other side are those who want somehow to preserve the fast-disappearing Industrial Age by erecting tariffs to stop the free flow of trade and physical barriers to stop the free flow of workers.
The victories of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election and of Brexit in a British referendum were seen as major successes last year for the nationalist, anti-globalization agenda even if the actual reasons why people voted for Trump and Brexit varied widely. Perhaps those were just the shocks that a complacent system needed to reinvigorate itself because, in the more recent European elections, extreme nationalism has been losing. On December 4, Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party, lost the Austrian election. On March 15, Geert Wilders, the far-right candidate, lost the Dutch election.
And now, on Sunday, the far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen finished second in the French balloting, with 21.4 percent, behind the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, who received 23.9 percent. It is always perilous to make election predictions, which have been upended time after time, but Macron is much farther ahead than either Hillary Clinton or the anti-Brexit forces ever were. He has a 25 to 30 percent advantage in the second round of balloting, and that was even before he was endorsed by two of the runners-up, the conservative Francois Fillon and the socialist Benoit Hamon. Macron is thus the prohibitive favorite to become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.
His likely success is the all the sweeter and more symbolic because he is a former banker at Rothschild, the Jewish-owned investment bank that has long been an object of hatred by the conspiracy-mongering far-right which is represented in France by the National Front. Le Pen made an effort to clean up the National Front’s image, but she is surrounded by the same crew of racists, anti-Semites, and Holocaust-deniers that have long rendered her party toxic. Le Pen let her own mask of moderation slip right before the vote when she denied Vichy France’s complicity in the Holocaust.
Even if Le Pen’s party didn’t have a long history of anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, and anti-immigrant ugliness, it would still be disfigured by its support for Vladimir Putin, hostility to the United States, and opposition to the European Union and NATO—the two great institutions that have upheld the post-1945 liberal order. It is no coincidence that the Kremlin has been such an avid supporter of Le Pen, providing her with everything from financing to covert help from Internet trolls. Vladimir Putin, who recently met with her, sees her as a convenient cudgel with which to batter the West into submission.
The contrast between Macron and Le Pen could not be clearer, as was made obvious by their election-night speeches. “The major issue of this election is runaway globalization, which is putting our civilization in danger,” Le Pen said. By contrast, Macron said, “I want to be the president of patriots against the threat of all the nationalists.”
The fact that together Le Pen and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon received more than 41 percent of the vote suggests that there is a disturbingly large constituency in France for extremist ideologies. The fact that, for the first time in the modern era, neither the conservative nor the Socialist candidate made it to the presidential runoff suggests that the traditional political parties are all but bankrupt.
The challenge for Macron now will be to show that his brand of centrism is more than an alluring public-relations package. He will have to address France’s serious problems, including an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, two and a half times higher than in Germany. Among the young, the unemployment rate is even higher, at 25 percent. France also has a large Muslim minority (an estimated 4.7 million people) that is far from assimilated and that has given rise to a serious terrorism problem, including the slaying of a police officer on the Champs Elysees just before the presidential vote that was claimed by ISIS. The incumbent Francois Hollande’s failure to deal with such woes made him the least popular president in memory and all but destroyed his Socialist party.
Will Macron be able to get France moving again as his party name En Marche (On the Move) promises? To do so, he will have to cuts in taxes and spending in ways that are sure to be resisted by public-sector unions and to change attitudes about assimilation in ways that are sure to be resisted by both Muslims and non-Muslims. If Macron fails, the nationalist threat will arise again in France. But at least the disaster of a Melenchon vs. Le Pen runoff has been averted. In France, the center appears to have held. For now.
