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France, like a number of other Western European countries, is governed by a coalition of establishmentarians who are appalled at the popularity of the “far right,” a term that has no significance other than to denote skepticism of mass third-world immigration. For obvious reasons, that skepticism is ever more widely shared, on account of experience, and “far right” parties therefore pose an increasing danger to the European status quo.

France has a relatively venerable “far right” movement, now embodied in the National Rally party that is led by Marine le Pen. Le Pen has been successful at the ballot box, gaining 41.5% of the presidential vote in 2022. She is plausibly regarded as the front-runner in the French presidential election slated for 2027.

Unless, of course, she is barred from running. CNN reports:

French prosecutors have asked for prison time and a five-year ban from politics for far-right leader Marine Le Pen, potentially derailing her bid to become president in 2027.

Le Pen, her National Rally (RN) party and more than 20 of its members are accused of using European Parliament money to pay staff who were in fact working for RN in France, allegations they deny.

The claim is that the National Rally somehow used (“embezzled”) 4.5 million Euros in “European Parliament money” to pay its own staff. I don’t understand how that would work, and have no idea whether the allegation has any merit. Le Pen and her colleagues deny the charge. But it seems that the real purpose of the investigation is to influence the 2027 election:

Speaking to journalists after the hearing, Le Pen claimed this was an attack on democracy and an attempt by the prosecutor to bar her from the political scene: “The only thing that interested the prosecution was ‘Marine Le Pen’… asking once again for her exclusion from political life and to deprive the French… of the ability to vote for whoever they want.”

As described at the link, French politics in recent years have consisted largely of an effort to prevent “far right” immigration skeptics from having any share in government. This has become more difficult after the National Rally trounced Emmanuel Macron’s governing party in the recent European Parliament election and the subsequent French National Assembly election.

I have no knowledge of the merits of the “embezzlement” case that gave France’s establishment the opportunity to bar Marine le Pen from political activity, although I am naturally dubious. But the parallel to the Democratic Party’s attempt to drive Donald Trump out of public life by using corrupt prosecutors to bring a series of frivolous criminal prosecutions is obvious. In France, as in the United States, what the leftist establishment fears most is democracy.