Marine Le Pen thinks careful language is the route to power. Jean-Marie Le Pen, her predecessor as leader of France’s far-right National Front (FN), worries that his daughter’s craving for office will dilute the rabid xenophobia of the party he co-founded. My friends in Paris say they are both right. Shocking as the prospect is to outsiders, France is beginning to imagine a president Le Pen.
This weekend Europe will be watching the elections in Greece. Governments across the continent worry that victory for the populist left Syriza party could provoke another crisis in the eurozone. My guess is that the immediate fears are overdone, though on its present trajectory the euro’s long-term future is far from assured. Never mind. If the present backlash against austerity in Greece could shake the EU, the rise to power of the FN in France would certainly break the 28-member union.
The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks brought an outpouring of national unity. The optimist in me says the mood may endure. Two of the heroes of the outrage — one a murdered police officer, the other a worker in a Kosher supermarket — were Muslims. François Hollande has been given a chance to rescue his ailing presidency. Manuel Valls has promised that necessary measures to tighten security against Islamist extremists will be accompanied by action to end the economic and social exclusion of much of France’s Muslim population — apartheid, the French prime minister calls it.