After a political career spent on the right-wing fringe of French politics, Marine Le Pen has adopted a new strategy for her failing presidential campaign: embracing the Left. She is not alone among so-called nationalists in doing so, and the phenomenon is not limited to France.
Le Pen’s political situation is a difficult one: The other right-wing candidate in the race, Éric Zemmour, may have made a bigger impression on American rightists than he has on French voters, but he is still drawing away enough of the far-right vote to undercut Le Pen, who is expected to make the second round of the election and then lose to incumbent Emmanuel Macron by double digits. Failing to find allies to her right, she is seeking them to her left, offering to appoint socialists to high government offices if she is elected president. One might be tempted to denounce her as a Vichy conservative if not for the fact that she is the scion of a dynasty of literal Vichy conservatives.
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