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Comment by jstoja | Hacker News Reader

A new hope would have been to start having a decline in the far-right votes.

It's not that simple. The Front National is basically the same people than 10 or 20 years ago, under the reign of JM Lepen (the infamous father), but was toned down, made left-wing friendly (taking parts of the left wing ideas), mixed with a masked nationalism (blaming not on ethnicity but on religion and terrorists). Mixed in a lot of fake news and a lot of populism. It was really very confusing for many people with poor education.

On twitter, you could hardly distinguish tweets from the Front National and tweets from the far-left (Melenchon), because of the same vocabulary and many identical ideas (on "oligarchy", "unfair media coverage", and so on).

Yeah totally. I wished for a 20%. Alas time moves quick and I couldn't act to ensure this locally. 35% is still way too high, but the worst is avoided.

The worst isn't avoided - just postponed. Le Pen's father received half the vote she did back in 2002. That means nationalist sentiment has doubled in just 15 years. If things go the way they are (which they will under Macron) we should expect a nationalist landslide in about a decade.

JMLP had a different game to play. Since, MLP spent years softening the FN image. Then wars and terrorism striked. Not long ago it was given that considering the context she would win. My opinion is that the 34% is peak nationalism and people will go back to normal parties.

> normal parties.

The matter is not the parties. It's ideologies. FN is prospering because of the remanent xenophobic culture of France. There is always a reason for hatred, it does not fade so easily

I don't think people are that xenophobic in France. Not like core FN.

Don't get your hopes up. The FN is probably going to get a hefty precentage in the parliamentary elections later this year. It's going to be a mess if FN and Mélenchon's party get around 20% each.

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