The World’s New Ideological Fault Line Runs Through France Presidential election is likely to pit nationalist Le Pen against globalist Macron By Greg Ip

Posted By on March 30th, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worlds-new-ideological-fault-line-runs-through-france-1490806802

PARIS—In France as in most of the West, politics has long been dominated by a left wing and a right wing party. This year an earthquake is in the making: If current polls are borne out, neither the left-wing Socialists nor right-wing Republicans will make it past the first round of the presidential election in April.

Instead, two parties that have never held power will proceed to May’s runoff. And both agree their contest isn’t over traditional issues of right and left, such as taxes and spending. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, says it’s between “globalists and patriots” or, as supporters of Emmanuel Macron, leader of the upstart En Marche (“Forward”) put it, “open and closed.”

That makes the French election the starkest and most consequential contest yet in the world’s ideological divide between nationalism and globalism.

 The nationalists who led the British vote to leave the European Union and put Donald Trump in the White House operate within established conservative parties and thus co-exist uneasily with traditional free traders. The National Front arose outside the mainstream and espouses a more uncompromising, coherent rejection of economic, geopolitical and cultural integration. Ms. Le Pen wants to take France out of the EU and the euro, which could precipitate the collapse of both.France makes a singularly appropriate battlefield over nationalism. The modern nation state can be traced to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when France, putting national interest ahead of religion, sided with Germany’s protestant princes to contain the power of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. Three centuries later it switched places, choosing, with Germany, to subordinate sovereignty to an ever closer European Union. CONTINUE AT SITE
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