The results of the first round of the French presidential elections surprised nobody because anyone in France or anywhere else in the world was ready to accept the possibility of the presidency of the extremist far-right politician Marine Le Pen. Additionally, the stock exchange rates in France also proved that the French markets welcomed the first round results very positively.
Most probably, on May 7, the second tour of the French elections will be held and centrist Emmanuel Macron will get the race thanks to the ‘Republican front’ which is formed to prevent the presidency of Marine Le Pen. Nevertheless, this will not mean the French society’s rejection to the rise of the far-right in their country when seeing the 21.30 percent vote rate of Le Pen, while Macron gets 24.01 percent. Meanwhile, the other two centrist references, the Socialist Party and Les Republicans have been excluded from the political race for the 2017 elections. The far-right and an extreme left politician, Jean Luc Mélenchon, have gained considerable support from the French voters. All this is the crystal clear proof of how the extreme political winds have become in the main stream political formations, as the centrist politics is being thrown to the corner. A centrifuge-like political modification is also being observed.
This rising support for populist far-right discourses is not only related to France but another developed European country, Germany. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right German political party, is likely to get a considerable place in the German political system in near future. Indeed, the number of seats is not important but it shows something worse: that the far-right ideology, which caused the greatest tragedy in the modern history of the European countries for years, is again being approved by the German public. Yes, the radical Nazi ideology, this time in a different form and in a modified manner, is emerging years after the end of World War II.
Dutch society also has become a victim of the populist wing across Europe. No need to even write the concrete proofs for this inference, it would be enough just looking at the extremist Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s statements.
Unfortunately, the new trend of far-right and fascism have become a political reference which is digested by the whole European political spectrum. The European Parliament (EP) elections in 2014 was the most apparent example for it when the far-right representative received a considerable vote from the European public opinion. In an absurd parenthesis, these political formations carried out their propaganda against the idea of the European Union with the help of the great EU funds.
Lastly, another shocking news appeared after the recent decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decision to start a monitoring process for Turkey. The non-sense decision, demanding Turkey to end its state of emergency, was ironically taken in the French city of Strasbourg where the state of emergency rule is carried out by the French government. Ankara declared the state of emergency after the deadly coup attempt of the July 15, when 249 innocent people were killed and the Parliament building was bombed. Instead of showing clear support for the Turkish government against the coup attempt, PACE is trying to judge Turkey’s efforts to combat terrorism by a state of emergency. It is undoubtedly one of the biggest hypocrisies of European history.
COURTESY: This article was originally published in Daily Sabah.
