One of the most striking processes in French politics in the last year has to do with the perception of the leaders of their extremes: Marine Le Pen (National Regroupment) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise): France increasingly tolerates the first, whose speech until now was viewed with suspicionand gives less consent to the second, whose positions are beginning to be considered more dangerous.
The roles have been reversed and, for the first time, there are more French people who think that Marine Le Pen It is not a danger to democracy than those who think so. According to a survey published by Le Monde and FranceInfo, 45% believe that it does not represent a danger, compared to 41% who believe that it still is.
In 2002, when the party was led by his father, Jean Marie Le Pen, the percentage was 70-26. 43% already see it as a party capable of governing. On the contrary, there are 49% of citizens who believe that Mélenchon does pose a risk to democracy. The turn is important, because in the 2022 presidential elections, he was about to overtake Le Pen and go to the second vote (France votes in two rounds).
The far-right party is moving towards this normalization of its discourse and the republican shield (the alliance of the rest of the parties that until now has acted as a firewall to prevent Le Pen’s victory in the last presidential elections), is fading. “The porosity among the voters of the party of Los Republicanos and Reagrupamiento Nacional is confirmed and this party is seen as the only one capable of embodying an opposition to Macronalso among left-wing sympathizers,” says Eddy Vautrin-Dumaine, director of studies at the Verian Institute, in charge of the survey, in Le Monde.
The process of dediabolization of Le Pen and her party started years ago but the latter has intensified. The situation has favored him, since he has put on the table the central themes of the training: immigration and insecurity. First were the mobilization against the pension reform, where Le Pen remained relatively on the sidelines. Then, the strong riots of June, that started in the neighborhoods of France after the death of a young man shot by a police officer.