French elections

How Bolloré, the ‘French Murdoch’, Carried Le Pen’s Far Right to the Brink of Power

Over the past decade, he has gradually expanded his media assets in France to include television channels, a radio station, prominent magazines, France’s leading publisher, its biggest travel retail chain and, most recently, its best-known Sunday paper.

When conservative leader Eric Ciotti plotted his startling alliance with Marine Le Pen, shattering decades of Gaullist tradition, the head of Les Républicains (LR) consulted none of his senior party colleagues – not even Nicolas Sarkozy, the last of his political family to serve as French president.

Instead, the morning after President Emmanuel Macron called a snap election on June 9, Ciotti paid a visit to Bolloré, the billionaire corporate raider who has built a sprawling media empire precisely to engineer such an alliance.

The purpose of the visit, revealed by French daily Le Monde, was to “orchestrate Ciotti’s rallying behind the National Rally (RN)” – and to prepare for the backlash it was certain to provoke.

When Ciotti went public the next day, drawing furious condemnation from party officials, Bolloré’s media empire was ready to rally to his defence.

“Eric Ciotti has listened to grassroots supporters; it happens, sometimes, to a political leader,” said Pascal Praud, one of Bolloré’s star anchors, on the tycoon’s flagship broadcaster CNews. He went on to mock Ciotti’s critics within Les Républicains, claiming their rejection of an alliance with Le Pen proved they are “out of touch, lacking in courage, with no future, and clearly unable to understand anything, least of all their voters”.

Meanwhile, on the Bolloré-owned radio station Europe 1, the head of conservative newspaper Le Figaro lambasted the “unfathomable outpouring of anti-Ciotti sentiment”, ridiculing the recent electoral record of “the old barons” of the right. Either Les Républicains team up with the National Rally, Alexis Brézet added, or they are doomed to vanish.

In the run-up to the snap polls, Europe 1 has been told to make space for another of Bolloré’s star television anchors, Cyril Hanouna, who has actively sought to sponsor a wider alliance of rightwing parties on his popular talk show “Touche pas à mon poste”.

On June 13, with Ciotti in his studio along with representatives of the National Rally and rival far-right outfit Reconquête, Hanouna pulled out his phone to call the RN’s new poster boy Jordan Bardella, handing the handset over to his Reconquête guest – Sarah Knafo – and urging her to plead with Bardella for an alliance.

‘A personal victory for Bolloré’

A newly elected European lawmaker, Knafo is the partner of Reconquête founder Eric Zemmour, the former CNews pundit whose presidential run in 2022 enjoyed wide support among Bolloré’s media.

While Zemmour’s Elysée Palace bid eventually foundered, his unrivalled media exposure ensured the far right’s preferred topics – immigration, crime and the perceived threat from Islam – dominated the political conversation. It also furthered blurred the line between mainstream conservatives and the far right, providing fertile terrain for the “union des droites” (alliance of right-wing factions) that has long been Bolloré’s pet project.

“Uniting the French right and carrying it to power has always been Bolloré’s principal aim,” says Alexis Lévrier, a historian of the media who teaches at the Université de Reims Champagne Ardennes.

“That means breaking down the barriers that have long kept the mainstream right and the far right apart – and finding dependable lieutenants, like Eric Ciotti, to bridge the divide,” he adds.

While Ciotti’s alliance with Le Pen is resisted by virtually all heavyweights in his LR party, voter surveys suggest the move may still pay off.

Pollsters say Le Pen’s party, backed by Ciotti and a handful of his followers, is poised to win the largest share of votes in the legislative elections scheduled for June 30 and the following Sunday, possibly even clinching an absolute majority of seats in France’s lower house of parliament, which wields greater powers than the Senate.

The latter outcome would lead to France’s first far-right government since the Nazi-allied Vichy Regime – capping an extraordinary turnaround for an extremist party that was co-founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, a Vichy supporter and convicted anti-Semite.

“Bolloré is no personal fan of the Le Pen family brand, but he has recently warmed to the party,” says Lévrier. “In Bardella, whom Le Pen has named as her choice for PM, the National Rally has found a candidate that Bolloré can support.”

He adds: “In every respect, the far right’s likely victory in the upcoming vote would be a personal victory for Bolloré, a vindication of what his media empire was designed to achieve.”

The French Murdoch

A deeply conservative Catholic from Brittany, in western France, Bolloré has emerged as France’s most successful corporate raider, cobbling together a transport, media and advertising empire that stretches across Europe and Africa. Over the past decade, he has gradually expanded his media assets in France to include television channels, a radio station, prominent magazines, France’s leading publisher, its biggest travel retail chain and, most recently, its best-known Sunday paper.

Far from painless, the takeovers have followed a well-honed strategy, says Alexandra Colineau of the media advocacy group Un Bout des Médias.

“The strategy is to buy established titles and empty their newsrooms, moving in like a hermit crab in an empty shell,” she explains. “The shell’s previously acquired credibility is then exploited to advance a radically different agenda.”

After acquiring news channel iTélé, part of the Canal+ group, the Breton tycoon provoked a record strike of 31 days in 2016, got rid of most of the staff and turned it into a conservative platform that critics have dubbed “France’s Fox News”. CNews is now France’s most popular news channel – though its many critics say “opinion channel” is a more accurate description.

The takeover of the Journal du dimanche (JDD) led to an even longer staff walkout last year, triggered by Bolloré’s appointment of a controversial editor-in-chief whose previous tenure at arch-conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelle included a conviction for racist hate speech over cartoons depicting a Black MP as a slave in chains.

The billionaire’s aggressive expansion into media has prompted comparisons with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose myriad news outlets in Australia, Britain and the United States have fundamentally altered the media and political landscapes of those countries.

In both cases, Lévrier pointed to a clear intent to push the debate in a socially conservative direction, pulling strings from behind the scenes while shunning the limelight.

“Murdoch is clearly Bolloré’s model,” he says. “They both have vast and diversified media conglomerates. And they both aim to win elections without ever running for office.”

During the JDD standoff last year, historian David Colon, who has written a book about Murdoch’s media empire, pointed to parallels between the tycoons’ respective holdings, highlighting the impact of synergies between television, radio and print.

“When it comes to media concentration, the key factor is not the number of titles you own or the size of their readership, but rather the diversity of the mediums,” he explained. “It’s this cross-ownership that allows you to set the agenda and rapidly influence public debate.”

In Bolloré’s case, the scale of his assets and their ideological slant have created an unprecedented situation for France, adds Lévrier.

“Never before has so much influence been concentrated in the hands of one man,” he says. “And never before has such influence been used to promote such an extreme agenda.”

The French Fox News

Since 2022, Bolloré has twice appeared before parliamentary committees investigating the unprecedented concentration in France’s media landscape. On both occasions he struck a faux-naïf tone as he belittled his assets and denied any political motive.

“I have no power to appoint people to these channels,” he told a Senate panel when quizzed about his role in the many resignations and high-profile firings that rattled the Canal+ media group following his takeover in 2015. He added: “Some journalists have left, others have returned. It’s like the ocean tide, back home in Brittany.”

Colineau blames a lax legal framework, the bulk of which dates back to 1986, for allowing the likes of Bolloré to concentrate media resources and dictate their will. Her association has come up with a series of proposals designed to ensure journalists have their say on the appointment of editors, but she bemoans a lack of political support.

Media watchdogs also lament a failure to crack down on Bolloré’s media outlets – CNews in particular – over their disregard for public broadcasting rules.

The “French Fox News” has positioned itself as a straight-talking alternative to mainstream media stifled by political correctness, claiming to serve the French public what it really wants. Critics, however, say the channel has repeatedly violated the terms of a licensing agreement that applies to France’s free-to-air news networks, requiring them to provide balanced coverage.

“CNews provides very little actual news and hardly any investigation, which is more expensive to produce,” says Colineau. “It is primarily an opinion channel with a heavy right-wing bias.”

Between them, CNews and its sister channel C8, which hosts Hanouna’s talk show, have received a staggering 44 admonishments from France’s media regulator Arcom. To date, they are the only French channels to have been fined by Arcom – including for inciting racial hatred after Zemmour branded child migrants “thieves, murderers and rapists”.

Earlier this year, the Conseil d’ État, France’s highest civil administration, gave Arcom a six-month deadline to come up with more coercive measures to ensure the likes of CNews respect the rules.

“There are signs that politicians and the authorities are finally waking up to the threat posed by Bolloré’s media,” says Lévrier, noting that CNews’ broadcasting licence is up for renewal later this year.

“I think Bolloré is aware that a number of safeguards could be reinforced in the coming months,” he adds. “In the meantime, his outlets have doubled down on their right-wing rhetoric. They’re no longer even trying to pretend their coverage is balanced.”

In a frantic, three-week election campaign, Bolloré’s pundits have stepped up their attacks against the left-wing New Popular Front, which has emerged as the far right’s main opponent in the upcoming polls. Some have labelled the left the “anti-France” and the “party of foreigners”, echoing the rhetoric used by the anti-Semitic nationalist right that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Within days of its launch, Hanouna’s new radio programme on Europe 1 has already been put on formal notice by Arcom over its blatantly biased coverage of the campaign and its “virulent” criticism of the left.

Two of Bolloré’s pundits known for their pro-Kremlin views have gone a step further, running for parliament under a joint RN-LR banner.

“Even by the standards of Bolloré’s channels, the radicalism is unprecedented,” says Lévrier, describing the upheaval that has swept French politics in recent weeks as “history accelerated”.

“The Bolloré camp is engaged in a race, a sprint against democratic checks on the media,” says Lévrier. “If it wins that race, we can forget about those safeguards.”

This article was originally published on France24.

French Parliamentary Elections: Exit Polls Predict Far-Right Party Winning First Round

In wake of his looming defeat, French President Macron called for a ‘democratic and republican alliance’ against the RN, while La Pen told supporters that Macron’s Centrist Ensemble has been almost wiped out.

New Delhi: Early projections suggest that the far-right Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) has won most votes in the first round of the parliamentary elections in France, getting way ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s Centrist Ensemble.

Exit polls showed that the RN led by La Pen was going to win around 34 per cent of the vote in the first round of the parliamentary elections reported DW.

Macron’s centrist bloc is also expected to trail behind the left-wing NFP, which is set to win the most number of seats after the RN.

While the RN is expected to win 240-270 seats, the NPF could win 180-200 seats and the centrist bloc 60-90 seats, being pushed to the third position, reported DW.

A political party needs 289 seats for an absolute majority in the French parliament. Going by the exit poll predictions, it is possible that the RN could look to ally with smaller parties and the Conservative Republican Party, which is expected to win 30-50 seats.

The final results are to be decided in a runoff round in July 7.

The Key Poll Issues in France’s Upcoming Presidential Election

As President Emmanuel Macron faces off far-Right’s Marine Le-Pen, the French election assumes the significance of being regarded as Europe’s most defining election in recent times.

The second round of the French Presidential elections will be held on Sunday, April 24. Regarded as one of Europe’s most defining elections, the face-off between the two candidates – incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and his adversary Marine Le-Pen – is a crucial one, not only for the country, but also for the European Union.

Elections 2022: Business not as usual

This election is different in ways more than one.

First, it has shown that France’s main political parties, the mainstream Right, the Republicans, and the Socialist Left, which have dominated French politics for over half a century, are today a dying breed. A trend that started in 2017 with Macron’s position of “neither Left nor Right” has created an ecosystem wherein France’s traditional political parties have lost their very raison d’être.

President Macron’s policies largely resemble the mainstream Right’s core priorities like increasing the retirement age to 65 years, prioritising economic reforms and incentivising foreign investments.

By usurping the traditional Right’s position on the political spectrum and taking the “centre” stage, Emmanuel Macron has at once made the moderate Left and Right parties redundant and ceded space to radical parties like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s extreme Left party, La France Insoumise, and Eric Zemmour’s newly founded extreme right party Reconquête and Marine Le Pen’s extreme-right party, Rassemblement National.

Also read: French Election: Can President Macron Tide Over the Threat Posed by Left-Wing Vote?

While Mélenchon and Zemmour were eliminated in the first round earlier this month, it is worth noting that the former’s supporters will determine the fate of the two final candidates this weekend. A high abstention of disenchanted voters, both young and old alike, will be the hallmark of this election.

Second, there is a sharp uptick in the ideological overtone.

In resonance with the global rise of populism, the race to the Elysée, could be seen as a competition between two very diverse universes. Macron, often criticised as the “President of the rich”, is considered the choice of the elites, and Le Pen of the common people.

French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election, and French far-right Rassemblement National party presidential candidate Marine Le Pen sit prior to taking part in a French presidential election debate, in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, France April 20, 2022. Photo: Reuters.

On several occasions, she has unsparingly lashed out at him of favouring big businesses and has drummed up the populist rhetoric to fan the frustrations of people who felt let down by his 2017 economic reforms.

A good example is the Yellow Vest protests that started in November 2018 as a response to the unpopular fuel tax that the government introduced as a measure to finance the country’s transition to a green economy. Apparently, this was a way to plug the deficit that tax cuts for big businesses had engendered.

Rural parts of France that rely on cars due to the lack of well-developed public transport systems were most affected by this decision. Protests erupted in every part of the country bringing normal life to a standstill. Disenchanted workers, truck drivers and later students joined the protests to force the government to roll back the decision. This chapter of the Macron presidency will play an important role in the voting pattern this weekend.

In addition, President Macron’s infamous “Jupiterian” model of governance characterised by his distant and elitist approach has only deepened the ideological cleavage and made it a determining aspect of this election.

Third, the elections are taking place under the looming shadow of the global Covid pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia conflict. France was one of the European countries that was worst hit by the pandemic. The crisis brought to light the weaknesses of the health infrastructure in the country that resulted in a large number of deaths. The Ukrainian crisis is expected to also have an impact on the economic as well as geopolitical aspects.

Macron or Le Pen?

President Macron’s five-year tenure is a chequered one. While there have been some important gains, it has also had to weather grave challenges.

With a landslide victory in 2017, Emmanuel Macron took over the reins from his predecessor, the socialist leader, Francois Hollande, with the promise of important economic reforms aimed at reducing the rate of unemployment, reforming the labour market, and putting the country on the fast track to economic growth.

At the end of his five-year term, Macron can claim to have fulfilled his election promises – France’s GDP is at 7%, unemployment has reduced to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008, and according to the EY Consulting’s Attractive Index, France is today, Europe’s most attractive country for foreign investments.

The President’s detractors have a different story to tell. Labeled as a pro-business President, the Macron Reforms of 2017 have had an adverse impact on the security and quality of jobs. The reforms have made it easy for companies to dismiss their employees and have also set the limit for damages that they can claim.

In addition, it is left to individual tribunals to decide on the damages awarded, which may vary widely. Currently, companies offer low-security jobs – part-time and temporary contracts – and while this trend has contributed considerably to reducing the unemployment rate, it has ushered in a high level of insecurity. According to Insee (The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies), in 2020, 3.3 million people, translating to roughly 12.4% of employment, were engaged in low-security jobs.

Macron’s critics also lament the waning of the quality of jobs. Job-seekers now have to content themselves with openings in low-value-added commercial jobs in small businesses and micro-enterprises.

France’s trade balance remains a major preoccupation of the government. The country posted a trade deficit of 65.2 billion USD in 2020.

On the foreign policy front, President Macron has had many successes, but has also had to face numerous challenges. The President has played a vital role to bring France back to the global centre stage and to be recognised once again as an important global actor.

However, the AUKUS debacle which left France out in the cold, created a major diplomatic row with the United States, the UK and Australia. The other major challenge was the termination of Operation Barkhane in Mali. The intervention of Russia’s Wagner group has created tensions between France and Russia; recently, the former claimed that the company had staged the so-called “French atrocity” in Mali.

At the European level, France has assumed the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. A strong defender of the bloc, Macron believes in the unity of the EU and has had a firm policy of solidarity vis-à-vis Ukraine. France has accepted almost 40,000 Ukrainian refugees to date.

As was evident in the final debate on April 21 between the two contenders, Marine Le Pen failed to project herself as the next President of the Republic. Apart from reminding voters of the rising costs of living, of the existential threat that immigration poses to France and the promise of a referendum, she was unable to present a clear and coherent strategy with regard to important issues like post-pandemic economic revival and crucial foreign policy priorities.

A Eurosceptic to the core, Marine Le Pen would like France to quit the EU. As mentioned earlier, this election is being fought against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis which has brought Europe closer. At a time like this, the idea of Frexit is not a saleable one.

Her close association with the Russians during the 2017 elections has also surfaced and loomed large in her adversary’s offensive. The issue of the Muslim headscarf and matters related to immigration pale against the security priorities that the Ukrainian crisis has placed at Europe’s doorstep.

What lies ahead?

It is quite evident that President Emmanuel Macron will win the second round. Soon after the debate on Thursday, the opinion polls showed Macron at 55 % as opposed to Le Pen at 45%. Sunday’s election will also witness a very high rate of abstention, a phenomenon, that is reminiscent of the 2017 election.

The other important point to note is that France has a challenge before it. The far-right has consolidated its position and with every election, they have managed to move closer to the cherished goal of winning the race to the Élysée.

Shivali Lawale is the director of Symbiosis School of International Studies.

French Election: Can President Macron Tide Over the Threat Posed by Left-Wing Vote?

Far-right Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron will face off in the second round on April 24.

After the first round of the 2017 presidential election in France, economist Thomas Piketty suggested that while there were four candidates with very close scores at the head of the field (Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon), in reality, France was divided into three political camps: a socialist and more-or-less Eurosceptic left, a pro-European and liberal centre and right, and a nationalist far-right. The results of the first round for this year’s presidential election suggest he was right.

Despite a poor campaign, centrist President Macron has emerged in the first place, with 27.8% of the vote – three points up on 2017 and better than final opinion polls predicted.

Macron hoped that a late entry into the official campaign, leaving six weeks of playing the president-candidate, would allow him to use his management of the pandemic as a platform and focus on the electorate’s key concerns – the cost of living and pensions reform.

French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election, meets with supporters during his first campaign day trip after coming first in the first round of the 2022 French presidential election, in Carvin, France, on April 11, 2022. Photo: Reuters.

The Ukrainian war got in the way, with Macron focusing too much on being president and not enough on being the candidate. A brief burst of rallying around the flag saw him surge past 30% before dropping back to a predicted score, around 26%. Every vote above that on Sunday will have been seen as a bonus.

Less is more

By contrast, the general view is that Le Pen ran a good campaign – not the best, but good – by focusing less on the far-right aspects of her programme and instead posing as the candidate speaking for the economically hard-pressed, struggling to make ends meet.

This also meant, paradoxically, making less of an effort to look like a president in waiting and putting her pro-Putin past (and present?) to one side by simply refusing to address it. Local and low-key were the watchwords and they have worked, lifting her from 21% in 2017 to 23.15% now. But the score is nevertheless a disappointment.

Le Pen’s cause has benefited enormously from the presence of the other far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour. His outspoken campaign helped her seem more moderate, even though she isn’t. But Zemmour’s low score of barely 7% suggests that Le Pen might not pick up as many votes from his departure from the race as she might have hoped.

Even throwing in the 2% of the vote garnered by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (another far-right candidate) and part of the vote for the mainstream right’s Valérie Pécresse suggests Le Pen will come up short again in the second round.

The death of the French right?

Pécresse’s tailspin has been a key subplot of the election. When she won the nomination for the mainstream right-wing Les Républicains last December, she was touted as a significant threat to Macron, but her campaign tanked. In the end, she sunk as low as to drop below the 5% vote threshold at which candidates get half their election expenses reimbursed by the state.

Also read: France’s Far Right Is Setting the Agenda Because the Mainstream Allows It To

On reflection, that Pécresse came away with just 4.8% isn’t so much of a surprise. Les Républicains is still a party full of heavyweights who are still household names, but most are throwbacks to the Nicolas Sarkozy years and votes these days are routinely lost to the parties led by Macron and Le Pen in both local and national elections.

The votes still in play

The award for the best performance goes to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing La France Insoumise candidate who hauled himself past Pécresse and Zemmour to 21.95% (19.9% in 2017), despite hovering around 12-14% for much of the campaign. There was even a point late on Sunday evening when he very nearly closed the gap with Le Pen.

This is a remarkable achievement, suggesting the French left is not dead. Mélenchon remains divisive, but while he is not naturally a man to bring together the various factions of the left under his leadership, he has rallied their voters.

The big question now is whether his voters will turn out to vote for Macron. Other left-wing candidates Anne Hidalgo and the Green party’s Yannick Jadot have asked theirs to do so, but Mélenchon has not followed suit. As in 2017, Mélenchon has not declared himself for Macron, but instead flipped the question around. “Not a single vote for her” is the line.

This is why everything is still in play for the second round. The old certainty of republican discipline to block the far-right seems less sure. Many left-wing voters find Macron unpalatable at best. Turnout therefore becomes a key pressure point in the two weeks ahead. There may not be a concern that many left-wing votes would go to Le Pen, but Mélenchon’s position means that Macron will have to give those voters a reason to turn out for him rather than stay at home.

By the same token, however, Mélenchon has little to gain, even in the general election that follows in June, from being the man who made Le Pen president. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

On to the second round

Now Macron and Le Pen will face off in the second round on April 24. Le Pen’s team has planned a very different itinerary compared to 2017. Less frenetic, fewer personal appearances, a period of rest before the head-to-head election with Macron.

The president’s handlers, meanwhile, will be hoping that without the noise of the first-round campaign, he can make his programme audible and intelligible, while reining in his alarming tendency to put his foot in his mouth. The margins are too tight for Macron to go, in his vocabulary, pissing anyone else off.

Paul Smith is an associate professor in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Nottingham.

Note: This article first appeared on The Conversation. Read the original piece here.

Ambivalent Voters May Just Be Saving Democracy

Ambivalence among voters is reason to think about how democracy is working for us as a community. To keep democracy alive we need to be sceptical about the exercise of power and keep it in check.

Voters might be quite rational in refusing to give the green light to those who wield power and benefit from the status quo. Credit: Mats Edenius/Flickr, CC BY-NC

The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about “democracy” as we know it.

Though much of the reporting of last year’s US presidential race focused on the “angry” American voter, it has been observed that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as “ambivalent”.

In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, observers also reflected that a shared “ambivalence” about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.

And in France, people explained the record low turnout in June’s parliamentary elections by pointing to the “ambivalent base”. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s election, the new president had “yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better”.

This French voter isn’t easily won over. Credit: radiowood/Flickr

These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere on the rise, and that these are anxious times politically.

If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.

A wilful, rational response

We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But it’s a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both “yes” and “no” about a person or an object at the same time.

Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who coined the term in 1910, wrote:

In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.

Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.

We needn’t be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common “inner experience”. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlet’s soliloquy:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…

The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take.

Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.

Is this a dangerous development?

When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want.

In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos.

The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in people’s minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters came out in numbers to elect someone like Duterte.

As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their country’s democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy.

The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty.

Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) “off the hook”.

Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman noted, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and “mere opinion”, the more the opposite is likely to occur.

Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.

Those in positions of power often view ambivalence on the streets as socially toxic or threatening. Credit: jprwpics/Flickr

Ambivalence can be a check on power

Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of “the people” as both the source and guardians of power.

Consider the way Ernesto Laclau sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance.

While the collective identity of “the people” claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of “the other”.

If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of “the people”? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?

Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society don’t lead to its destruction.

The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by “experts” in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.

Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly warned that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order.

Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change.

Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.

No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians.

The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to people’s desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as “true” representatives of “the people”, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.

Rodrigo Duterte poses with the Philippines military and boxer and senator Manny Pacquiao in 2017. Credit: Rene Lumawag/Republic of the Philippines Presidential Communications Office

A chance to rethink the status quo

Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay.

The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who “should know better”, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.

A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it – even embrace it – as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.

Kenneth Weisbrode likened ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:

… a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.

If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.

This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo.

It could even be seen as one of democracy’s internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive.

Bauman wrote:

The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.

Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.

If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent “the people”? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.

Adele Webb is a PhD researcher is Department of Government and International Relations/Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Brief Suggests Russia Used Facebook to Spy on Macron’s Campaign

About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to spy on Macron’s friends and campaign officials as he sought to defeat far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen.

French President Emmanuel Macron listens to speeches after a mass to pay tribute to French priest Father Jacques Hamel one year after he was killed by Islamist militants in an attack in the church, in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, France, July 26, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Charly Triballeau/Pool

San Francisco: Russian intelligence agents attempted to spy on French President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign earlier this year by creating phony Facebook personas, according to a US congressman and two other people briefed on the effort.

About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to conduct surveillance on Macron campaign officials and others close to the centrist former financier as he sought to defeat far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and other opponents in the two-round election, the sources said. Macron won in a landslide in May.

Facebook said in April it had taken action against fake accounts that were spreading misinformation about the French election. But the effort to infiltrate the social networks of Macron officials has not previously been reported.

Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the French election by hacking and leaking emails and documents. US intelligence agencies told Reuters in May that hackers with connections to the Russian government were involved, but they did not have conclusive evidence that the Kremlin ordered the hacking.

Facebook confirmed to Reuters that it had detected spying accounts in France and deactivated them. It credited a combination of improved automated detection and stepped-up human efforts to find sophisticated attacks.

Company officials briefed congressional committee members and staff, among others, about their findings. People involved in the conversations also said the number of Facebook accounts suspended in France for promoting propaganda or spam – much of it related to the election – had climbed to 70,000, a big jump from the 30,000 account closures the company disclosed in April.

Facebook did not dispute the figure.

Seeking friends of friends

The spying campaign included Russian agents posing as friends of friends of Macron associates and trying to glean personal information from them, according to the US congressman and two others briefed on the matter.

Facebook employees noticed the efforts during the first round of the presidential election and traced them to tools used in the past by Russia’s GRU military intelligence unit, said the people, who spoke on condition they not be named because they were discussing sensitive government and private intelligence.

Facebook told American officials that it did not believe the spies burrowed deep enough to get the targets to download malicious software or give away their login information, which they believe may have been the goal of the operation.

The same GRU unit, dubbed Fancy Bear or APT 28 in the cyber security industry, has been blamed for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential election and many other political targets. The GRU did not respond to a request for comment.

Email accounts belonging to Macron campaign officials were hacked and their contents dumped online in the final days of the runoff between Macron and Le Pen.

French law enforcement and intelligence officials have not publicly accused anyone of the campaign attacks.

Mounir Mahjoubi, who was digital director of Macron’s political movement, En Marche, and is now a junior minister for digital issues in his government, told Reuters in May that some security experts blamed the GRU specifically, though they had no proof.

Mahjoubi and En Marche declined to comment.

There are few publicly known examples of sophisticated social media spying efforts. In 2015, Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, warned that hostile powers were using LinkedIn to connect with and try to recruit government workers.

The social media and networking companies themselves rarely comment on such operations when discovered.

Facebook, facing mounting pressure from governments around the world to control “fake news’ and propaganda on the service, took a step toward openness with a report in April on what it termed “information operations.”

The bulk of that document discussed so-called influence operations, which included “amplifier” accounts that spread links to slanted or false news stories in order to influence public opinion.

(Reuters)

What Should Europe Expect From the Macron Government?

France is counting on its new president to bring down unemployment and public debt – will he be able to do it?

French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République en Marche (Republic on the Move), captured a decisive majority on Sunday, June 18, in elections for the National Assembly, France’s lower and more powerful legislative chamber.

The victory caps a remarkable six weeks for Macron, who catapulted to the Elysée Palace after his first-ever campaign for elective office, and for his party, which he created just 14 months ago.

It also follows an impressive first month for the new French president, which has included the now famous white-knuckle handshake with US President Donald Trump, and a meeting at Versailles with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Macron openly criticised his state media outlets Sputnik and Russia Today for being “agents of influence,” and accused them of interfering in this year’s French presidential election.

Now Macron will shift his attention to implementing his economic reform agenda, reviving the Franco-German relationship, and convincing German leaders to pursue deeper integration in the eurozone.

Legislative victory

Just a few weeks ago, many analysts gave Macron’s party little chance of gaining a legislative majority. But Macron once again defied sceptics, with his party claiming one of the biggest legislative landslides in modern French history. Early forecasts project La République en Marche winning 361 out of 577 seats. The record for the most number of seats secured was set in 2002, when Jacques Chirac’s Union for a Popular Movement party won 365 seats.

The mainstream Socialists and Republicans fared dismally, and the parties of the extreme left and extreme right received far fewer votes than they did in the first round of the presidential election on April 23.

The Socialists controlled parliament for the past five years, but they’re now looking to claim just 46 seats. While the National Front expanded its presence from two to as many as eight seats, that total is far fewer than what some analysts and party insiders were forecasting only recently. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party and the communists together look set to capture 26 seats.

The centre-right Republicans will be the main opposition party, but they also lost seats. They are projected to finish with 126 seats, down from 196.

But with record low voter turnout in this year’s legislative elections, some commentators have suggested that Macron’s popular support is not as deep as his parliamentary majority may indicate.

Macron’s agenda

With a solid parliamentary majority behind him, Macron has a much better chance of implementing his economic platform.

France’s economy faces a range of problems: Unemployment, at nearly 10%, remains stubbornly high. Among young workers, it’s nearly 25%. France also faces slow growth, high levels of public spending, chronic budget deficits, and rising public debt.

Macron has vowed to make French firms more competitive in the global marketplace. He wants to allow businesses to hire and fire more easily, give companies more flexibility and latitude over wages and working hours, trim France’s bloated civil service sector, lower corporate taxes, reduce some pensions, cut public spending, and relax safeguards on the 35-hour working week.

The last three French presidents faced fierce resistance when they tried to change France’s labour and pension laws. National strikes and street protests stymied their efforts.

Macron has momentum, however, and his vision of governing from neither the left nor the right still carries some novelty among many French voters. But to implement even half of his ambitious economic agenda, Macron will have to find a way to succeed where his predecessors failed.

Franco-German axis

Reforms at home are a precondition for Macron’s hope for a rejuvenation of the Franco-German relationship. If Macron cannot deliver at home, German leaders will not take his reform proposals for the eurozone seriously.

The economic performance of France and Germany has diverged widely over the past decade. France’s unemployment rate is more than twice as high as its neighbour across the Rhine. Germany is an export powerhouse, whereas French exports have been declining. As a result, Germany increasingly calls the shots today in eurozone governance.

Macron has surrounded himself with top advisers who know Germany well, speak the language, and can explain France and France’s situation to a German audience. He will also try to get German leaders on board for wide-ranging eurozone reform. Among other propositions, Macron has suggested the introduction of a eurozone finance minister and the creation of a common budget for investment and fiscal transfers throughout the bloc, which, he claims, would help stabilise the currency zone and give a lifeline to countries in trouble.

Opposition to these ideas runs high among those in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party (CDU). On the whole, German officials are taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to Macron’s ability to reform France’s ailing economy.

They remain reluctant to implement wide-ranging eurozone reforms. And German officials, such as finance minister Wolfgang Schauble, fiercely resist the idea of the eurozone becoming a permanent transfer union. They also say that Macron’s ideas would require treaty changes, a risky undertaking in today’s political environment.

Instead, German leaders are more likely to pursue smaller though symbolically important initiatives with Macron’s government, such as joint investment projects, the harmonisation of corporate tax rates, closer security and defence cooperation, and moving forward on the digital and energy union fronts.

Tough road to reform

With his legislative victory in hand, Macron now embarks on the tough road to reform. Convincing French voters that his policies will benefit them may turn out to be his toughest political test yet. And it will show the degree to which French citizens have embraced him and his ideas.

Europe needs Macron to succeed. A strong Europe needs a strong Franco-German core, especially in the time of Brexit, Trump, and creeping illiberalism in Hungary, Poland, and other parts of Europe.

German leaders want a strong France. They are wary of being seen as too powerful and assuming all the burdens of leadership, and know from long experience that crises are more effectively dealt with if France and Germany work together.

The road ahead is uncertain, and will be filled with challenges both foreseen and unforeseen. But across France, after many years of incessant talk of French decline and malaise, a new attitude can be seen: one that is hopeful, confident, and optimistic about what the future holds.

Richard Maher, Research Fellow, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Halting Europe’s Populist Wave, Macron Storms Into Runoff to Battle Le Penn

If Emmanuel Macron wins the French presidency, as polls predict, it could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

A Macron win could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

A combination picture shows portraits of the candidates who will run in the second round in the 2017 French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron (L), head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader. Pictures taken March 11, 2017 (R) and February 21, 2017 (L). Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann

Paris: The populist tsunami that slammed into Britain last year, before sweeping across the Atlantic to the US, may have faded on the shores of France on Sunday.

Despite a strong performance from far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of France‘s presidential election, the bigger news was the success of Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist who rode to victory with a counter-intuitive campaign that embraced globalisation, immigration and the European Union.

The polls suggest Macron will beat Le Pen soundly in the second round runoff on May 7. If he does, it could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

Just 39 years old and with only four years of political experience under his belt, Macron represents a generational change and a break from the left-right divide that has defined French politics for over half a century.

He would face formidable challenges as president. Nearly half of French voters opted for candidates on the extreme right and left of the political spectrum. These people are unlikely to embrace Macron’s liberal democratic vision, leaving France a deeply divided nation.

A president Macron could also struggle to cobble together a centrist majority in parliament after legislative elections in June.

But after Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump, his first round victory – which comes after setbacks for far-right politicians in Austria, the Netherlands and Germany in recent months – shows that the political centre is holding in the heart of Europe.

“It looks as though populism is in retreat in Europe,” said Iain Begg of the London School of Economics.

Waving EU flags

Macron was the only candidate among the four frontrunners who embraced the idea of closer European integration during the campaign.

Le Pen and hard-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon were openly hostile, floating the idea of a French exit from the EU. And conservative Francois Fillon, in the Gaullist tradition, spoke mainly about boosting France‘s influence in Europe.

At the post-election party at Porte de Versailles in the south of Paris, Macron supporters waved both French and EU flags. His victory was hailed from Brussels to Berlin on Sunday evening.

“Great for Europe” said German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, who worked with Macron on ideas for reforming the European Union when both were economy ministers.

Central to Macron’s approach to Europe is his belief that France must reform its own economy in order to restore a level of trust with Germany. He wants to pursue a comprehensive deal with Berlin that includes reform of the euro zone and closer cooperation on defence and migration.

Macron travelled to Berlin twice this year, meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in March. His European advisers have said that if he wins the presidency, he will not wait until German elections in September to begin discussing a roadmap for European reform with the German government.

“We will go to them with a list of options,” Sylvie Goulard, a member of the European parliament and adviser to Macron who is seen as a possible foreign minister, told Reuters last month. “Now is the time to ask ourselves what is the right architecture.”

Macron is in favour of transforming Europe’s bailout fund, the ESM, into a full-blown European Monetary Fund, an idea that has supporters in Berlin. He is also in favour of a euro zone budget and finance minister, ideas that are less popular in Merkel’s entourage.

Europe’s economy is recovering after years of sluggish growth, but years of financial turmoil have exposed flaws in the bloc’s architecture that experts believe have left it vulnerable to future shocks.

Many express concern about how highly-indebted countries like Italy will cope when the European Central Bank begins pushing up interest rates and unwinding the bond-buying scheme that has kept borrowing costs artificially low.

“If Macron is elected there is an historic opportunity which may not come around again,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former top official in the German economy ministry.

“It will be very difficult for Germany not to engage with Macron on serious euro zone reform if he goes about this in the right way, reforming at home first and reassuring the Germans that Europe will not turn into a transfer union.”

Others are sceptical about whether Macron can convince the Germans to do a deal.

Christian Odendahl of the Centre for European Reform points to a lack of “intellectual convergence” between Berlin and Paris on what Europe really needs.

“In Berlin, there isn’t a great sense of urgency. They see this as a marathon, not a sprint. There is a preference for incremental improvements in Europe rather than bold new projects,” he said.

(Reuters)

Security Dominates French Election After Paris Shooting

The killing of a policeman by a suspected ISIS militant pushed national security to the top of French political agenda, with leading candidates clashing over how to keep citizens safe two days before the presidential election.

Police patrol at the Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower after a policeman was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting incident in Paris, France, April 21, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Charles Platiau

The killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist militant pushed national security to the top of the French political agenda on Friday, two days before the presidential election.

With the first round of voting in the two-stage election taking place on Sunday, far-right nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen promised tougher immigration and border controls to beat “Islamist terrorism” if elected.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, who narrowly leads a tight race ahead of Le Pen, said the solutions were not as simple as she suggested, and that there was “no such thing as zero risk”.

Anyone who said otherwise was irresponsible, said Macron, a former economy minister in the government that Le Pen has repeatedly criticised for its security record.

There are four leading candidates in a race that is still too close to call. Sunday’s voting will be followed by a runoff on May 7 between the top two candidates.

The first poll conducted entirely after Thursday’s attack suggested Le Pen had gained some ground on Macron.

While he was still seen winning the first round with 24.5%, his score slipped half a percentage point while Le Pen’s rose by one to 23%.

Conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister, and the far left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon were both down half a percentage point on 19% in the Odoxa poll for the newspaper Le Point.

Francois Fillon, member of the Republicans political party and 2017 presidential election candidate of the French centre-right (R), and Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate, attend the France 2 television special prime-time political show, “15min to Convince” in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, France, April 20, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Martin Bureau/Pool

The attack on the Champs-Elysees boulevard in the very heart of the capital added a new source of unpredictability to an election that will decide the management of France’s 2.2 trillion euro economy, which vies with Britain for the rank of fifth largest in the world.

US President Donald Trump told the Associated Press on Friday he thought the attack will “probably help” Le Pen because she is the candidate who is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Trump told the AP in an interview he was not explicitly endorsing Le Pen but that he believes the attack will affect how French people vote on Sunday.

The outcome could also have a bearing on France’s place in the world and in a European Union still reeling from Britain’s decision to leave. While Macron is ardently pro-EU, Le Pen wants to quit its single currency and potentially hold a referendum on leaving the bloc.

All the candidates are seeking to woo the huge number of undecided – some 31% of those likely to vote, according to an Ipsos poll on Friday.

Fillon also seized on the attack, which was claimed by the militant group ISIS, saying the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be the priority of the next president. “It’s us or them,” he said.

Trump Tweet

Financial markets, though, shrugged off the latest twist in the campaign, with French benchmark bond yields hitting a three-month low.

The Champs-Elysees shooting is the latest in a series of attacks by Islamist militants on France since 2015, in which more than 200 people have been killed. A truck ploughed into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice last year, killing more than 80, while coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris claimed about 130 lives in November 2015. There have also been attacks on a satirical weekly and a kosher store.

However, previous attacks that have taken place shortly before elections, including the November 2015 attacks in Paris ahead of regional polls, and a shooting in a Jewish school before the 2012 presidentials, did not appear to boost the scores of those espousing tougher national security.

An assault on a soldier in February at Paris’s Louvre museum by a man wielding a machete also had no obvious impact on this year’s opinion polls, which have consistently said that voters see unemployment and the trustworthiness of politicians as bigger issues.

Security Forces On Alert

One policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded in Thursday night’s attack.

Investigators are trying to assess whether the gunman had accomplices, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference, adding that the shooter had never shown any signs of radicalisation despite a long police history.

After an emergency meeting of security officials, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces, including elite units, were on alert to back up the 50,000 police earmarked to ensure safety during the election.

“The government is fully mobilised. Nothing must be allowed to impede the fundamental democratic process of our country,” Cazeneuve told reporters. “It falls to us not to give in to fear and intimidation and manipulation, which would play into the hands of the enemy.”

Controls on immigration and national security are cornerstones of Le Pen’s National Front agenda, and on Friday she said she would reinstate border checks and expel foreigners who are on intelligence services’ watch lists.

Macron was quick to respond.

“I’ve heard Madame Le Pen saying again recently that, with her in charge, certain attacks would have been avoided,” he told RTL Radio. “There’s no such thing as zero risk. Anyone who pretends [otherwise] is both irresponsible and deceitful.”

Tight Race

In an Elabe poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, and published on Friday, both Fillon and Melenchon were seen narrowing Macron and Le Pen’s lead.

Should both Macron and Le Pen make it to the second round, he was likely to win the runoff by 65% to 35%, according to the survey for BFM TV and L’Express magazine.

Fillon, who has slowly clawed back some ground lost after a fake jobs scandal, saw his score in the first round rise half a percentage point to 20%.

Melenchon, who would hike taxes on the rich and spend 100 billion euros ($107 billion) of borrowed money on vast housebuilding and renewable energy projects, gained 1.5 points to 19.5% as he built further on the momentum he has generated with strong performances in television debates.

If Melenchon makes it to the runoff, he was projected by the survey to beat either Le Pen or Fillon by comfortable margins, although he was seen losing to Macron by 41% to 59.

(Reuters)

The Kremlin Has Its Watchful Eyes Set on the French Elections

The Kremlin wants to build strong alliances with “pro-Russian” forces in the West. In France’s upcoming election, Putin is placing his bets on two right-wing candidates for president.

Vladimir Putin, here with French President Hollande has big plans for Europe. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Vladimir Putin seen here with French President Hollande has big plans for Europe. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Ukrainian crisis, from the Maidan protests and the annexation of Crimea to the violent conflict in Donbass, has led to an unprecedented deterioration of relations between Russia and the West. As early as 2014, the West imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions on Russia.

The logic behind these actions was straightforward and clear. Initially, the sanctions targeted higher Russians officials, freezing their assets and restricting their entry to Europe and the US. Later, they were followed by “sectoral” sanctions that aimed to restrict Russian companies” access to western technologies and investment.

The sanctions were meant to undermine Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy among the Russian elite and the general population, and have contributed to the economic crisis in the country.

The West thought that a “tattered economy” in Russia would force Putin to step back from his foreign policy strategies because of domestic discontent. It was naive enough to expect the Kremlin to do nothing but sit and wait.

Russia’s counter-strategy in France

For the last few months, Moscow’s counter strategy has included building political alliances with “pro-Russian” political forces in the West as well as pro-Russian candidates running for top political positions in countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

Russia’s unequivocal support for Donald Trump in the recent US presidential campaign was the first try.

Although I do not believe Russia directly intervened in the US presidential election campaign or that Russian hackers played a decisive role in it, I must admit that Moscow has never so directly interfered in a Western election before.

In the French presidential campaign, which officially started on April 10, the Kremlin has obviously decided to support the candidates from both the right and far-right – Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen.

Both candidates have showed positive attitudes towards Putin and, most importantly, they advocate ending French support for sanctions against Russia.

Francois Fillon, for example, has garnered Moscow’s sympathy by repeatedly claiming that sanctions on Russia have no effect and by pushing the idea of officially recognising Russian jurisdiction over Crimea.

But Marine Le Pen – with her image of being a “Frexit” advocate and her commitment to anti-Americanism and populism – seems to be Putin’s best friend in Old Europe.

Her recent visit to Moscow, a meeting with Vladimir Putin and her talk in the State Duma are clear signals that she remains the Kremlin’s favourite.

And even if, until now, there is no clear evidence of Russian hacking in the French election process, Russian involvement is well documented.

For Marine Le Pen, it includes media promotion and financial support, as well as informal contacts with top Russian officials and businessmen.

French turbulence

What the Kremlin could not have foreseen is the turbulence that has caused in the French election campaign. In particular, as Francois Fillon became engulfed in a corruption scandal, his chance of getting to the second round diminished significantly.

According to polls, Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister who runs on a centrist platform and would be a less helpful candidate for Moscow, could win in the second round against Marine Le Pen.

The Kremlin has clearly taken that into account. Last week, the French polling watchdog warned of news reports coming from Russia with the aim of trying to re-boost Fillon’s campaign.

As for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he seems to be a surprise for the Kremlin. Although he made a few pro-Russia statements, including criticising the new Ukrainian government and stating that he would support leaving the European Union and NATO if elected, Mélenchon’s political and ideological platform has nothing in common with Putin’s regime.

Emancipation, anti-capitalism and the expansion of the social welfare state absolutely contradict the Russian oligarchs’ wild capitalism, corruption and hypocrisy that are key features of Putin’s Russia today.

Remove sanctions, destroy European unity

No doubt, the key goal of any Russian interventionist strategy is to reduce the burden of sanctions. In the long run, the Kremlin also aims to undermine European unity and thus be able to work with a divided Europe.

It’s worth noting that all this is not just the whim of an autocratic leader. The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that further EU enlargement to the East is unacceptable for Moscow and that the Kremlin would be ready to deter this perceived offence by all possible means.

For public opinion in Russia, the shift of previously pro-Russian – or at least neutral – regimes toward the West, together with the NATO’s “open door policy” is seen as a threat to national security.

Without resistance to EU and NATO expansion, many people in Russia believe that the country’s western border would be surrounded by hostile regimes repeatedly demanding deployment of NATO forces.

The Kremlin’s strategy might become successful due to the fact that many people in the EU – and we are not talking about the elites – are, in fact, opposed to the Union’s enlargement, as was shown when Dutch voters rejected a referendum on closer EU links to Ukraine in 2016.

And politicians representing such EU-skeptic groups surfing on the current nationalist wave are potential partners for the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s plans for Russia do not stop at Crimea. Andrew Osborn/Reuters

Vladimir Putin’s plans for Russia do not stop at Crimea. Credit: Andrew Osborn/Reuters

Populism in France would be a win for Russia

The French election can be explored through another perspective as well.

One can argue that any further victory of right-wing populists in Europe will contribute to the legitimisation of the Russian political regime.

Putin’s agenda for his third presidency was built on so-called “conservative shift”, with an emphasis on “traditional values”, increasing the role of religion and the Russian Orthodox Church, and establishing the lower classes as the social base of the regime.

The latter is likely to align Russia ideologically with Brexit supporters, European nationalist parties and probably the French right populist electorate as well. Thus, Russian leaders repeatedly stress political parallels with the West.

In the long run, that would be the way to create a Moscow-based conservative “internationalism”, with the possibility of seeing Vladimir Putin as a symbol of resistance against America if his country’s current relations with the US deteriorates even further.

But wild accusations that Putin could steal the French presidential election are baseless. Any claims that the Kremlin – or any other foreign power – can have a significant impact on the will of French voters are certainly an exaggeration.

To quote Vladimir Putin himself regarding the US presidential campaign: “Is America some kind of banana republic? America is a great power.”

The same comment applies to France. But, depending on who is elected, the next French president could have a very different attitude toward Moscow. And even if Marine Le Pen loses the upcoming election – as she most probably will – her supporters will not disappear overnight.

The Kremlin has no power either to extend or reduce the right-wing electorate in Europe. But the Russian leadership is already engaged in long-term cooperation with politicians who represent this sector of the population.

Andrey Shcherbak is a senior research fellow at the Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.