Portugal’s far right vaccine stops working in the Algarve

 

Portugal’s far right vaccine stops working in the Algarve

 

In Portugal’s southernmost region, Brussels won’t feature in the upcoming EU election. Instead, it will be a battle to stop the ascendant Chega party.

Licinia Matos, who voted for Chega in March, argues Portimão has long been abandoned by the government. |

APRIL 30, 2024 4:00 AM CET

BY VICTOR JACK

https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-far-right-chega-eu-election-algarve/

 

POLITICO’s reporters are speaking to voters to find out what will convince them to head to the ballot box (or not) in the European election in June.

 

PORTIMÃO, Portugal — Licinia Matos has had enough.

 

“The government thinks only about tourists,” said the 55-year-old health care worker, her frustration slicing through the calm spring afternoon as a light breeze blew over the cobblestone promenade lining the city’s sun-kissed harbor.

 

Since moving to the city deep inside the Algarve six years ago, Matos complained that everything from rent to staples like coffee has doubled in price in Portugal’s southern tourism heartland.

 

“I live here all year round and … [it’s] intolerable because my salary is low but prices are rising a lot,” she said, adding the government must also “control” rising immigration in the area.

 

Like almost one in three locals in the city, in the country’s recent national election Matos voted for Portugal’s anti-establishment far-right party, Chega — which means “enough” in Portuguese — for the first time.

 

This city of 60,000 residents has been loyal to the left since the 1974 revolution that overthrew Portugal’s dictatorship. Now, Portimão leads the country’s sudden swing to the far right. Chega’s messages for locals are about rising prices, perceptions of increased migration, and a longstanding feeling that the state cares little for the area.

 

That’s emblematic of a broader shift across Europe, with far-right parties leading the polls from France to Austria, and the hard right vying for third place in this summer’s EU election.

 

But that change is more jarring in Portugal, a country where the memory of the repressive Estado Novo regime was long considered a vaccine against the far right. Its voters rejected ultranationalist parties long after the hard right gained representation elsewhere in Europe. However, since Chega first entered the country’s parliament in 2019, extremism has been on the rise.

 

So far, mainstream parties have refused to cooperate with Chega — with the recently elected center-right government ruling out a coalition. But, as elsewhere in Europe, continuing to do so may become increasingly difficult if the party’s success continues.

 

In the Algarve, the EU feels far away. But June’s bloc-wide election will still be important. For locals, it’s a chance to send a strong message to Lisbon on issues like housing, which they say isn’t being heard. For mainstream parties, it offers an opportunity to stem Chega’s seemingly unstoppable ascent.

 

“They are European elections but we have to talk to the people [about] local problems,” said Pedro Ornelas, a local campaigner for the Socialist Party. Ultimately, he added, the election will be more about “restoring confidence in all of the [mainstream] parties” than anything else.

 

Enough is enough

Compared to its European peers, Lisbon has long leaned left.

 

“In Portugal … voters are much more prone to ideas from the left than from the right,” said Luís Serra Coelho, an economics professor at the University of Algarve. Beyond a historical distaste for far-right politics, that’s also because more than half of voters rely on the state for benefits, pensions or employment, he added.

 

In fact, during the last EU election in 2019, 14 of Portugal’s 21 European Parliament seats went to center-left or leftwing MEPs — the largest share of any country and matched only by Malta and Cyprus.

 

Even by national standards, Portimão favors the left.

 

Poor working conditions in the city’s once prolific fish canning industry — fed by the gaping Arade river nearby — prompted some of Portugal’s strongest workers’ movements in the early 1900s.

 

Since the country’s return to democracy, the city has only ever elected Socialist mayors. In the wider Algarve, 62 percent of voters cast their ballots for left-leaning parties back in Portugal’s 2019 election, compared to 57 percent of voters nationally; in the 2022 snap election, 54 percent leaned left, compared to 53 percent nationwide.

 

But in March, that all changed dramatically.

 

Led by charismatic sports commentator André Ventura, Chega charged to first place in the Algarve, becoming the party’s topmost region nationwide on the back of a campaign that leaned heavily on anti-immigration rhetoric, defense of traditional family values and accusations that the previous Socialist government was corrupt.

 

In Portimão, that success was particularly stark: the party more than doubled its vote share, snatching 31 percent of the vote.

 

Double dilemma

Like elsewhere in Europe, that spectacular shift is partly down to economics and partly the politics of migration, according to Coelho, the economics professor.

 

Around a quarter of the region’s 400,000 residents are foreigners, he said, with a growing share of those being low-income migrants from South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh who take advantage of relaxed visa rules to get jobs as seasonal workers in the Algarve’s tourism sector.

 

Locals complain the new arrivals are disturbing life in the seaside resort.

 

“They don’t respect our rules,” insists Ana Lucia Caetano, 30, a hostel owner in Portimão, who claims shops run by migrants close far later than legal opening hours and says security has become more of a problem.

 

“We don’t feel very safe with these new people here, especially when it’s dark and we are alone in the street,” she said, sitting inside the sleek brunch restaurant attached to her hostel as pop music blares in the background, and “people are really angry with that.”

 

But the realities for migrants also are tough.

 

 

Vijay Kumar, 25, a restaurant worker who arrived in Portimão from the Indian state of Haryana three years ago, says he’s faced racism from locals and found it hard to settle. He currently lives with two others in a two-bedroom flat to afford the €1,200 per month rent on minimum wage.

 

There’s a “big problem in housing” and finding “work is very difficult,” said Kumar, speaking from Portimão’s vast seaside strip littered with concrete hotel blocks, the faint bays of the summer season’s first British tourists echoing in the distance.

 

And that’s far from the worst-case scenario. In recent years, police have carried out sweeping raids across farms in the neighboring region of Alentejo suspected of using forced labor and bringing migrant workers via human trafficking.

 

Yet Portimão also faces a second, very different type of immigration challenge.

 

Lured by Portugal’s good weather and recently scrapped rules that allowed foreign retirees to pay little to no taxes, the Algarve hosts tens of thousands of wealthy expats mainly from the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries.

 

And while locals like the fact they boost investment in the area, that’s putting pressure on prices. As a result, house prices have risen fivefold in some places over the past decade, according to Coelho.

 

“It’s fair to say that there is a tension there,” said Michael Reeve, 55, a former British police worker who moved to Portugal 22 years ago and now runs its largest foreign residents’ association, Afpop.

 

“There is no coincidence there that whilst these people have been coming in … Portuguese wages have stayed the same,” he said from his snug basement office in central Portimão. “In my opinion, that’s one of the reasons that Chega got so much of a turnout.”

 

Stranded at sea

But perhaps the biggest frustration is a prevailing sense by locals of abandonment by the government.

 

“We don’t have any investment here,” lamented João Filipe, a 43-year-old teacher, citing poor public transport connections and healthcare services where patients in the emergency room can wait 24 hours to be seen.

 

“It’s a region of Portugal that is forgotten from the rest,” he added, so “many people revolted.”

 

A case in point is the construction of the Algarve Central Hospital, promised with loud fanfare by several governments starting almost two decades ago but never built. That’s forced many in the region to turn to expensive private healthcare.

 

Adding to that anger is the fact that the region contributes more in tax revenues from tourism — which makes up 70 percent of the local economy — than it receives, said Coelho, the professor.

 

“So when you mix the economics plus the idea that you’re just paying taxes with no return, that then explains why we want to show the ‘red card’ to the central government,” he said, while insisting votes for Chega were more about rejecting mainstream parties than the far-right’s program.

 

But João Paulo Graça, who heads the party’s political office in the Algarve, disagrees.

 

“Chega did well because it was the political party that worked the most in the region in recent years,” he said, pointing to the party’s success with young people and first-time voters. “It was for pure conviction and belief that Chega is the one who will change for the best their lives.”

 

Close to home

Now, June’s election offers an opportunity to test that hypothesis.

 

In 2019, just 31 percent of voters in Portugal turned out in the EU election — 20 percentage points lower than the bloc-wide average — a figure Coelho expects will be similar this time too.

 

But the election will still be important since all the parties will be gunning “to make sure that whatever the result is for them, it’s worse [for the far-right],” he said.

 

Although campaign season hasn’t formally kicked off yet, Chega is already planning its next move.

 

We will be “traveling throughout the Algarve [and] doing door-to-door politics,” according to Paulo Graça. “We hope again for a victory,” he said.

 

But Ornelas, the 28-year-old Socialist campaigner, isn’t giving up hope.

 

While admitting the party has “to do an internal job to think [about] what’s gone wrong” in the recent election, he said, the party will be “more present” locally and send party activists to campaign in the Algarve on issues like housing, water scarcity and public infrastructure.

 

Carlos Baía, a councilor in the Algarve’s administrative capital Faro from the center-right Social Democrat party, said he too will be out knocking on doors before June’s election to fight back against Chega. Better controls on migration, housing and job opportunities will be top of his party’s agenda, he added.

 

“If governments are able to listen to people, to answer to their needs, probably Chega’s … momentum will start to go down,” Baía said.

 

Some locals are willing to be persuaded.

 

Olina Kovalska, 30, a Ukrainian pharmacist who’s lived in Portimão for 15 years and opted for Chega in her first-ever trip to the ballot box in March, said she’s open to vote “for the person who makes the difference” in the region this time around, especially on healthcare and housing.

 

For others, though, it’s a done deal.

 

Matos, the frustrated healthcare worker, has decided she’s voting for Chega again.

 

“For who knows how many years we were the trashcan of Europe,” she said. “It’s not fair … we need to change everything.”

German far right’s eastern stronghold has clear view on spy allegation: ‘It’s a witch hunt’

 

German far right’s eastern stronghold has clear view on spy allegation: ‘It’s a witch hunt’

 

Alternative for Germany’s core supporters are sticking with the party despite allegations of dodgy links to Russia and China.

 

For many of the party’s faithful, the allegations surrounding Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European election, hardly matter. |

 

MAY 1, 2024 4:00 AM CET

BY JAMES ANGELOS

https://www.politico.eu/article/alternative-for-germany-afd-russia-china-espionage-maximilian-krah-magdeburg-spying-far-right/

 

MAGDEBURG, Germany — Will the sensational allegations of espionage and dubious links to Russia and China implicating politicians of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) be the decisive blow that ends the party’s long ascent in German politics?

 

For many of the party’s faithful, at least, the answer is clear: The allegations, particularly those surrounding Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European election, hardly matter.

 

If anything, they may only deepen their loyalty.

 

That was glaringly evident at a recent party gathering in the city of Magdeburg, located in a part of the country — in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in the former East Germany — where some of the party’s most extreme politicians and most fervent supporters are based.

 

As people in the crowd sat at long tables, sipping on beer and slurping asparagus soup, Martin Reichardt, a former military officer in a tan suit who heads the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt and serves as one of its lawmakers in the federal parliament, opened his comments with a few words about Krah, who cancelled his participation at the event in the wake of the allegations.

 

“We would’ve loved to have him here,” Reichardt said to applause from the crowd. “I think it’s particularly important in these times that when someone is being targeted by the establishment media, it’s very important that the party shows solidarity and that we stick together and don’t let the establishment destroy us.”

 

A few days earlier, police arrested Krah’s assistant over allegations he was a spy for China. Soon after that, public prosecutors in Dresden said they had launched preliminary investigations into Krah on the suspicion he’d accepted payments from Russia and China “for his work as an MEP.”

 

For the AfD, the allegations could have hardly come at a worse time.

 

For years, even as the party became increasingly extreme, its popularity continued to rise. Near the end of last year, the AfD hit a new polling high of 23 percent. What was once unthinkable — that a far-right party could take power in Germany for the first time since the Nazis — suddenly appeared not entirely far fetched.

 

But beginning in January, the AfD began to slip. The turning point came after an investigative report by Correctiv revealed AfD politicians were present at a meeting of right-wing extremists in which a “master plan” to deport migrants and “unassimilated citizens” was discussed. That news sparked massive protests against the AfD across Germany.

 

Even before the latest allegations surrounding Krah, the party’s No. 2 candidate for the European election, Petr Bystron, was already facing allegations that he accepted payments from a source linked to the Kremlin. Both the candidates deny wrongdoing.

 

But as the event in Magdeburg showed, the AfD’s base of support — particularly in the party’s strongholds in eastern Germany — is so deeply entrenched that the latest allegations are unlikely to be a breaking point for the party.

 

The AfD’s base of support — particularly in the party’s strongholds in eastern Germany — is so deeply entrenched that the latest allegations are unlikely to be a breaking point for the party. |

 

Rather, the party’s core supporters live in something of a parallel world, viewing Krah as a victim of a grand conspiracy involving the mainstream media and a German state that seeks to undermine its own people and use every instrument possible to stop the AfD — the people’s saviors-in-waiting — from taking power. The only proper response, they therefore believe, is to hit back at the establishment.

 

‘Even the Stasi wouldn’t have allowed it’

After his opening comments, Reichardt briefly changed tack, turning his attention to boilerplate themes for the far right, lamenting the “deindustrialization and destruction of Germany” due to “leftist-green” climate policies, and then attacking the coalition government for passing a law to make it easier for people to legally change their gender while Germany’s “external borders are being stormed by hordes of asylum seekers.”

 

Next to Reichardt sat Oliver Kirchner, a bald man with thick-framed glasses who serves as the head of the AfD faction in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament. Kirchner opened by telling the crowd that they might want to invest in diapers, because the “old parties” were so busy soiling their pants out of fear of the AfD, there was likely be a national diaper shortage.

 

“When I see what’s happening here in this country, what’s happening to the lead candidates of a democratic party, the accusations that are being made against us, then I have to honestly say that their pants are so full,” said Kirchner. He then urged everyone to vote for AfD so the political establishment “gets the bill for what they’ve done to this country, what they’ve done to the citizens and what they’ve done to the Volk.”

 

Domestic intelligence authorities in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, who are tasked with monitoring anti-constitutional groups, have classified the state branch of the AfD as a right-wing extremist organization — in part because its politicians use terms like “invaders” and “intruders” to describe migrants. State party leaders have called the extremist designation “defamation” and depict it as part of the state conspiracy against them.

 

The extremist classification never seemed to dissuade the party’s supporters. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party is now polling second, just behind the conservative CDU. Throughout much of eastern Germany, where the party is strongest, it holds a lead in recent polls.

 

Kirchner went on to tell a story about how, during the pandemic lockdowns, he had compared the German government’s measures to East Germany’s repression — a comment, he said, that had gotten the attention of domestic intelligence authorities.

 

“That leads to you being classified as a right-wing extremist?” Kirchner asked rhetorically. He then doubled down on the comparison — suggesting the current German government is even worse than East Germany and the Stasi, that regime’s secret police.

 

“The Stasi was bad, no question,” Kirchner said. “But what these guys are doing? Even the Stasi wouldn’t have allowed it back then.”

 

‘They want to defame the AfD’

Over the course of the rest of the evening, during a question-and-answer session, it became clear that members of the crowd perceived Germany to be in an almost apocalyptic state of decline.

 

“What are our children learning?” asked one woman, who later gave her name only as Bettina and said she’s a mother of eight children. “They are no longer taught anything.”

 

The problem starts, she added, “with masturbation rooms in kindergartens and the unspeakable sexualization of children at an early age.” (Far-right media postings in Germany have long spread disinformation about the alleged prevalence of so-called “masturbation rooms” in daycare centers).

 

Another man in the crowd, who had been taking meticulous notes all night, spontaneously decried what he saw as the mainstream media campaign against the AfD, yelling out: “It’s a game of mockery directed at the small citizen!”

 

Though it was one of the biggest stories in the news at the time, the subject of Krah barely came up. People in the crowd asked questions about taxes, migrants, retirement payments.

 

Near the end of the event, Bettina rose again to ask what the party would do to stop German military support to Ukraine.

 

“A war in Ukraine is not in Germany’s interest and German involvement in this war is not in Germany’s interest at all,” said Reichardt. “It’s solely in America’s geo-strategic interests.”

 

What he found particularly hard to bear about the situation, he added, was how Germany’s Greens — a group, as he called them, of “militarily untrained, former conscientious objectors and whiners” — had become hawks when it came to military support for Ukraine. He then targeted one long-haired Greens politician in particular: Anton Hofreiter.

 

“He should cut his hair before talking about the military!” People in the crowd whooped in delight.

 

After the event, several attendees said they believed that accusations against Krah were concocted.

 

“We are mistrustful and believe this state leadership and its journalists and their media are doing this to bash the AfD in order to keep voters away,” said Gerald Wolf, a retired neurobiology professor wearing an ascot.

 

Outside the hall, Bettina, the mother of eight, took a drag from her cigarette and said that, due to her upbringing in East Germany, she was skeptical of what the state told her. (She, like others interviewed in Magdeburg, refused to give her full name for fear of repercussions for making her views public.)

 

“You should always ask the question: Who benefits from what is happening?” she said of the accusations surrounding Krah. “If I don’t use my head and question it and allow myself to be influenced, then I’m just as much a puppet as everyone else.”

 

A friend of hers, a man with a pointy beard tied with an elastic band, then pulled up in a white BMW decorated with political slogans, one of which said: “Financial capitalism threatens the values of civilization.” They said they would both be attending a rally the following day, on the square next to Magdeburg’s gothic cathedral, an event Bettina described as “all about sovereignty” where people can “talk about the coronavirus measures.”

 

“A war in Ukraine is not in Germany’s interest and German involvement in this war is not in Germany’s interest at all.” | 

The next day, hundreds of people attended the protest, which brought together an assortment of marginal groups, many protesting NATO and military support for Ukraine. Some demonstrators waived Russian flags, others blue flags with dove designs on them.

 

Local AfD politicians handed out brochures under a canopy that read: “Take your country back.” Among them was Kirchner, who once again claimed the current German government is employing East German-style repression.

 

“To get the domestic intelligence agency on board for the election campaign so they can try to discredit us, to infiltrate us and destroy us, I already had that with the Stasi,” he said. This explains why the AfD is particularly strong among people living in the former East Germany, he said. “They’ve seen it all before.”

 

One supporter of the party, a large man who refused to give his name for “privacy reasons,” concurred with the assessment, saying the investigations — including the one against Krah — were all politically motived.

 

“I believe it’s a witch hunt,” he said. “They want to defame the AfD.”

Bardella, Glucksmann : les visages souriants de l’anti-macronisme

France has turned against Macron. Will Europe set the stage for President Le Pen?

France has turned against Macron. Will Europe set the stage for President Le Pen?

Paul Taylor

 

The president is trailing the hard right – and forthcoming European elections could leave him a political lame duck

 

Wed 1 May 2024 08.00 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/01/france-emmanuel-macron-europe-president-marine-le-pen

 

In the latest of his visionary speeches on the future of Europe, Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to transform itself into a military power or face “death”. Yet his own presidency of France may be about to enter a long twilight zone unless he can reverse his party’s deepening slump in June’s European parliament election.

 

Macron’s unpopularity is the main reason why his centrist pro-European Renaissance party is trailing a distant second in opinion polls behind Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally (RN). Le Pen’s list is led by Jordan Bardella, 29, the rising star in the populist anti-immigration party. Renaissance, whose list is headed by little-known MEP Valérie Hayer, is down to 17.5% in the latest survey while the RN is on 31%. The two parties were neck-and-neck in the last European election, five years ago .

 

The EU ballot is seen as a test because it is the last scheduled national vote in France before the 2027 presidential election, in which Le Pen is expected to make her fourth, and most promising, bid for power.

 

Macron is barely two years into his second term in the Élysée Palace, yet lacking a parliamentary majority at home and with his government under the permanent threat of a no-confidence motion, he risks becoming a premature lame duck. His European influence is also at stake because the liberal group (Renew Europe) his party sits with in the European parliament is set to lose seats, and the number of liberal leaders is also shrinking as European electorates swing to the right. Besides, France’s standing is diminished in the eyes of many by its chronic high budget deficit and mounting debt, which is set to incur an EU disciplinary procedure after the election.

 

The 46-year-old president mostly has himself to blame for his political predicament. He has so personalised his style of governance that voters blame him for everything from the cost of living to the rise of youth violence and the risk of terrorism during this summer’s Paris Olympic Games.

 

“Macron thinks it doesn’t matter that no one has heard of his lead candidate because he’s convinced he can swing the pro-European vote behind his name,” a senior MEP in the president’s own group told me. “Everything is decided at the Élysée so we are waiting for the oracle.”

 

The party still hasn’t agreed who will be on its list of candidates, due to be announced on 7 May. Intense struggles continue behind the scenes between incumbent MEPs clinging to their seats and the four allied centrist parties seeking to place their own candidates, while the need for gender balance and pressure to field some new faces all complicate the task. Of the French centrists’ 23 seats in the outgoing parliament, pollsters reckon only 13 are safe on current ratings.

 

Renaissance faces growing competition for centre-left voters from the other surprise star of the campaign so far, Raphaël Glucksmann, leader of the small Place Publique party, who heads the Socialist list and is credited with 13% in the latest polls. The intellectual son of philosopher André Glucksmann, campaigning on a platform of massive support for Ukraine and greater social justice, is hoovering up disaffected Macron supporters as well as leftwingers alienated by the strident pro-Palestinian rhetoric of hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

 

Indeed, Mélenchon’s political career could be another casualty of this election. If, as polls suggest, his La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party finishes a distant sixth in the vote, trailing not only the Socialists but also the Ecologists, the 72-year-old firebrand’s ambition to lead the French left into the 2027 presidential election will look threadbare.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, the mainstream conservative party, Les Républicains (LR), could be another victim of the June vote. The once mighty Gaullist movement, riven by in-fighting and policy rifts, looks set to be dwarfed again by Le Pen’s RN, which is consolidating its position as the leading force on the French right, and the only one that has not yet had a chance at power.

 

Political scientist and pollster Chloé Morin argued in a book entitled On aura tout essayé (“We’ve tried everything else”), that Le Pen could win the next presidential election because French voters feel that successive presidents of the right, left and centre have failed to solve their problems or reverse what many perceive as the decline of their country.

 

That may be premature. There’s a long way till 2027 and Macron still has options to regain momentum, even if none is easy. He could reshuffle his government again, but he did that recently to little lasting effect. He could dissolve parliament and force a new legislative election if a no-confidence motion passed, but that might well hand victory to the RN. He could also call a referendum on some popular issue, but voters might use it to punish an unpopular president.

 

Perhaps his best hope of escaping his domestic predicament is to seize the vacant leadership of Europe and drive forward the agenda he set out in his speech at the Sorbonne. He called for a defence build-up funded by joint borrowing and a more dirigiste and protectionist economic policy to compete with the US and China. However, he will face a tough task convincing frugal Germans to raise common debt to fund joint defence spending, free-trading Dutch, Nordics and Poles to accept a “buy European” policy and smaller states to give up their national vetoes over EU foreign policy.

 

Macron’s big vision for Europe may not save his party from a drubbing in the election, but it might just position him for a comeback on the EU stage if France can win those arguments.

 

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

1 year ago: French far right picks Bardella, 27, as Le Pen successor | AFP

Can anything stop the rise of French far-right leader Jordan Bardella?

 

NEWS

POLITICS

Can anything stop the rise of French far-right leader Jordan Bardella?

 

Pro-Macron officials are struggling to find an effective way to break the charismatic 28-year-old’s momentum as European election ticks closer.

 

MARCH 11, 2024 4:01 AM CET

BY VICTOR GOURY-LAFFONT

https://www.politico.eu/article/can-anything-stop-the-french-far-rights-new-leader/

 

PARIS — Marine Le Pen is still the face of the French far right, but her 28-year-old protégé is snapping at her heels and increasingly stealing the limelight from the perennial political figure.

 

The far-right National Rally officially launched its European election campaign last weekend in the port city of Marseille, just three months ahead of the vote. Thousands of supporters gathered at an exhibition center, with the French tricolor splashed across the room to kick off the election season under the slogan “France is back, Europe is born again.” The loudest cheers came not for Le Pen, but for the party’s charismatic president, Jordan Bardella.

 

The Paris-born leader of the party has become a household name in French politics over a relatively short period of time since becoming party chief at the end of 2022. According to recent polling, Bardella could steer the French far right to its biggest win yet in a nationwide election. His party is projected to net close to 30 percent of the vote in June’s European election, 10 points ahead of the pro-Macron list. The RN has never hit the 25 percent threshold in a contest held across France.

 

The French far right has risen in popularity over the past decade — riding a wave of populism seen elsewhere in Europe — and performing better in election after election. Bardella has played a key role in strengthening his party’s hand since becoming party leader.

 

He is now one of France’s fastest-rising political stars. According to one poll released earlier this month, Bardella is the second-most popular politician in France, behind only former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and ahead of Le Pen. His growing profile has meant he’s seen more opponents attack him, but Bardella’s finesse with witty comebacks, means he remains largely unscathed. His teflon-like popularity has meant that despite a tendency to steer away from party lines, there has been little to no room for criticism of his leadership within his own ranks.

 

Such is the magnitude of the perceived threat from the far-right leader’s momentum that Macron is thought to have picked 34-year-old Gabriel Attal largely as a direct response to Bardella’s rise.

 

“Attal and Bardella are of the same generation, it’s obvious. Attal has political acumen, knows how to deliver a punchline, with substance, so it’s someone who can face off with the National Rally,” said an aide to Macron.

 

Bardella and the National Rally did not respond to an interview request from POLITICO for this story.

 

Pro-Macron camp on the offensive

The pro-Macron party Renaissance, part of the Renew Europe group, hasn’t had much trouble finding arguments to go against Bardella. They’ve tried to paint him as an “arrogant” pro-Russia isolationist — but so far, it isn’t working.

 

“The National Rally will finish ahead, but if we can turn the race into a direct confrontation between us and them, we could fare well,” a Renaissance member of Parliament, who was granted anonymity to discuss campaign strategies, told POLITICO. “The nationalist vs. globalist divide must be at the heart of the campaign. We need to make this a civilizational issue.”

 

Renaissance has been pulling out all the stops to portray the National Rally (RN) as an extremist force: highlighting its ties to Russia, anti-EU leanings and alliances with extremist parties abroad.

 

To that end, Renaissance has put the spotlight on controversy surrounding the RN’s German partner. Members of the AfD, whose MEPs sit in the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament alongside the RN’s, took part in a clandestine meeting of right-wing extremists in which “remigration” plans to deport foreigners and “unassimilated” citizens were discussed — a policy which the National Rally officially rejects. When news of the AfD meeting broke, it prompted widespread outrage and mass protests across Germany.

 

Le Pen and Bardella later met with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel to discuss the matter and ask for an explanation. The National Rally has not, at this point, broken ties with one of its only partners at the European level.

 

“Tell me who you associate with, I’ll tell you who you are,” Valérie Hayer, , the lead candidate for the pro-Macron list, wrote in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), in which she accused the RN and its allies of “seeking to destroy European values.”

 

The RN is also being targeted for its alleged ties to Russia — a longstanding accusation against the party which Macron pointed to in both his presidential campaigns, citing a €6 million loan the party was given by a Russian company. The controversial loan has since been paid off.

 

In June last year, a French National Assembly investigative committee on foreign interference labeled the National Rally, whose 2022 presidential manifesto called for France to pull out of NATO’s  integrated command structure, as a “drive belt” for Moscow.

 

RN officials have said such accusations, including those contained in a recent Washington Post investigation into Russian interference in French affairs, are part of a “cabal” against the party.

 

“The National Rally has a pro-Russia line, all their votes in the EU parliament have shown this,” Nathalie Loiseau, who ran against Bardella in the 2019 European election, told POLITICO.

 

Bardella and other National Rally MEPs voted for an EU resolution to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine immediately at the start of the invasion, but later abstained on a vote to provide financial assistance to Ukraine, and again last June on a resolution mentioning Russian disinformation efforts in the EU.

 

Hayer accused Bardella and the RN of flip-flopping on issues including France’s participation in the European Union and suffering from “political schizophrenia.”

 

The criticisms lobbed at Bardella sometimes hit a personal tone. “In his meetings and interviews, I’m appalled by the shallowness of Bardella’s rhetoric,” Loiseau said. “I see a form arrogance and overconfidence.”

 

Le Pen’s heir

None of the attacks against Bardella have stuck so far, especially those on Russia.

 

Mathieu Gallard, a research director at polling firm Ipsos, told POLITICO that the National Rally’s positions on Russia isn’t the first thing that most voters identify the party with, even if there may be some “hesitant voters who are put off (by them).”

 

“It’s unlikely to lead to Bardella losing points and could at most hinder his momentum,” he said.

 

Bardella has taken extra steps to avoid appearing pro-Russian. In an interview last year with l’Opinion, he said he regretted that the French political class, RN included, had not been quicker to grasp the threat Moscow represented.

 

“There was a collective naiveté about Putin’s ambitions,” Bardella said.

 

A few days later, Le Pen published a letter criticizing the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia and “irresponsible warmongering” in what was viewed as a direct response to the 28-year-old.

 

That wasn’t the only time Le Pen had to clear things up.

 

Bardella broke with party lines on a number of issues, leading to some internal criticism. Most recently, the RN’s president spoke out against the implementation of floor prices for French farmers, despite the movement’s support for the policy — which once more pushed Le Pen to clarify the official stance to follow on the matter during a parliamentary group meeting, POLITICO reported.

 

Still, Le Pen, whose father Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the party, is standing by her political prodigy and cracking down on his critics. According to a Libération report, the former presidential candidate went as far as pushing the party’s vice-president Sébastien Chenu against a wall in the halls of the National Assembly and threatened to exclude him from the movement for his allegedly having voiced complaints against Bardella.

 

“I can get hit by a truck tomorrow,” Marine Le Pen said in a TV interview, in which case, she added, “[Bardella] has the political status and confidence” to replace her.

 

Clea Caulcutt and Sarah Paillou contributed to this report

‘A paradigm shift’: will Jordan Bardella finally normalise Le Pen’s far right?

 

‘A paradigm shift’: will Jordan Bardella finally normalise Le Pen’s far right?

 

Smooth-talking National Rally president aims to change the tone- but not the content- of party’s anti-immigration message

 

Angelique Chrisafis

Angelique Chrisafis in Montereau-Fault-Yonne

Wed 1 May 2024 06.00 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/a-paradigm-shift-will-jordan-bardella-finally-normalise-le-pens-far-right

 

Amid the paté stalls and wine-tastings of a country fair, a young politician hailed as the new face of the French far right was jostled by crowds shouting for photographs and handing him tricolour flags to autograph. “Rockstar!” shouted one 18-year-old.

 

Jordan Bardella, 28, who as president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party (Rassemblement National) has one of the biggest TikTok followings in French politics, never says no to a selfie with teenage fans, flashing his well-rehearsed smile. “Unlike Emmanuel Macron, our party never lost touch with the French people,” he said.

 

“You’re so handsome and you never cock up in TV interviews,” said a grandmother at a champagne stand. “Well, I try my best,” replied Bardella earnestly, while apologising to the wine-maker for not being able to drink a full glass so early in the day.

 

Bardella, who was elected to the European parliament five years ago when he was 23, is leading the National Rally’s European election campaign to unprecedented heights in the polls ahead of the 9 June vote. Ifop polling this month put Bardella’s far-right party on 31.5%, with Macron’s centrists on 17%. If Bardella beats Macron’s party by a wide margin it threatens to panic centrists, right and left, and set the tone in French national politics for the coming years.

 

Bardella’s deliberately humble tone with voters is part of his strategy to deliver the final phase of Le Pen’s decade-long drive to soften the far-right party’s image. He does not seek to dilute the party’s hardline anti-immigration message, which has not changed since the 1970s; instead he wants to make it respectable and fully mainstream ahead of Le Pen’s fourth attempt at the presidency in 2027.

 

For decades, the party founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was regarded as a danger to democracy that promoted racist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim views. Bardella rejects this portrayal. He stands for a new young generation of softly-spoken lawmakers in navy suits and ties who now make up the biggest single opposition party in parliament. “We are reasonable people,” he said. “We stand for reason against excess. I stand for the return to reason.”

 

Much of Bardella’s rising personal approval ratings are linked to his personal story. He grew up on a housing estate in Saint-Denis, at the heart of the low-income, multi-ethnic Paris suburbs that have been so stigmatised. He describes himself as a part of a generation that grew up in the “embers” of the 2005 urban riots, in which young people living in estates across France rose up after the deaths of two boys who died hiding from police.

 

The son of Italians who arrived in the 1960s, Bardella is presented as a “good immigrant” who embraced French culture and civilisation, which he now warns is under threat from what he calls Islamist ideology. With a single mother who he says usually had only €20 left in her purse at the end of the month, Bardella joined the far-right party at 16 and later quit a geography degree to canvass full-time.

 

Tactically, Marine Le Pen has mentored Bardella as party president, while she retains overall control of the party. They share the same hardline agenda on immigration, security and keeping “France for the French”. But unlike Le Pen, with her bourgeois upbringing and the baggage of her name, Bardella is a blank canvas for voters to project themselves on to.

 

Le Pen has said Bardella would be her prime minister if she became president. Others think he could run for president himself. In September, Le Pen and 26 other party members face trial over the alleged misuse of EU funds. Le Pen denies all wrongdoing. Bardella, who is not facing charges, is seen as a potential replacement if Le Pen does not run in 2027.

 

 

“He represents youth, speaks well, looks like the ideal son-in-law, is modern – that is what people want and he’s reached a level of superstardom,” said Aymeric Durox, a history teacher and National Rally senator for the Seine-et-Marne, south of Paris, where support has grown.

 

Le Pen’s party long ago abandoned its ideas of a Frexit, or a French exit from the European Union, although it continues to oppose the EU’s green deal and migration and asylum pact. But in France, Bardella defends the party’s longstanding ideas: the supposed danger of mass immigration and the promise to prioritise native French people over non-French people for welfare benefits and housing. He has warned of a “barbaric” and savage atmosphere in France, saying time is running out to save the nation.

 

At the fair, south of Paris, Bardella said: “I think the biggest threat facing our nation today is radical Islam, political Islam, which constitutes a fifth column. It does not want to break away from France and French society but to conquer it and impose its own prohibitions on all French people. Some people are resigned to that, I’m not.”

 

 

But Bardella sidesteps the classic populist framework of representing the “France of the forgotten” versus the rotten elites. He has appealed to business leaders and entrepreneurs, managing to slightly increase support among higher-earning, educated voters as well as pensioners, who had previously stayed away.

 

“I don’t think ‘the people against the oligarchy’ makes an election,” he said.

 

Pierre Jouvet, a Socialist running for the European election alongside the highest-polling leftwing candidate, Raphaël Glucksmann, said that “beyond the selfies and the cosmetic level of communication”, Bardella represented a “dangerous” project for France and Europe. He said even when the National Rally said it supported Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, the party’s links to Moscow were not clear.

 

Jouvet said the National Rally was dangerous on the issue of migration in Europe, and Bardella wanted a “Europe of barbed wire fences”. He said the party had “a dangerous vision of the fragmentation of society in France”, and while it didn’t present racism openly, “it is always implicit that the enemy is always a foreigner, a north African or a Muslim, held as responsible for French people’s difficulties. So they bring a kind of atmosphere of racism to France, which is foul and which we’re fighting against.”

 

Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford University and a specialist on Le Pen’s party, has analysed two years of Bardella’s speeches. She said they were “as if copy pasted from Marine Le Pen and Jean-Marie Le Pen. It’s still the same triad of immigration, identity and Islam. The big difference is tone and style. The message is the same but delivered in a really smooth, poised and calm, tone of voice.”

 

Whereas Marine Le Pen could be mocking and sarcastic, Bardella delivered his put-downs calmly, Alduy said: “He’s a magazine-ready figure for the far right, everything clean-cut and neat, white smile … He goes even further in softening the party image – smoothing things out so that it feels banal, normal and mainstream.”

 

This is possible in part because the far-right’s ideas have become more ingrained in the political debate, with other parties borrowing their rhetoric on immigration, crime and the threat to civilisation.

 

Stewart Chau, the director of polling at Vérian group, said long-term studies showed French voters were increasingly adhering to the National Rally’s reading of society’s problems and its proposed solutions. The last Vérian barometer in December showed that for the first time since 1984 more French people thought the National Rally was not a danger (45%) than thought it was a danger (41%).

 

“Never before have so many French people considered the National Rally as a completely legitimate party,” Chau said. “From the point of view of public opinion, that is a paradigm shift.”

 

Chau said the re-named party had “detached itself from the whiff of sulphur that surrounded it when it was the Front National set up by Jean-Marie Le Pen”. People no longer focused on the racist, antisemitic positions associated with the party’s founder, he said.

 

Antoine Bristielle, the director of opinion at the Fondation Jean Jaurès thinktank, said Bardella was expected to beat Macron’s centrist candidate, Valérie Hayer, in the European elections with a clear margin. “This will have a huge influence on the whole public debate in France until the next presidential elections in 2027 because the main focus will be who and how to stop a scenario where the National Rally could win the presidential vote,” he said.

 

“The idea is they’re not fascists, they’re credible,” said an engineer in his 30s who voted for the party and met Bardella at the fair.

 

“I should have brought a banner saying: ‘I love you,’” said one 15-year-old girl. Her father, a fairground worker, added: “This man could save France.”