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marmar

(76,985 posts)
Fri Jan 9, 2015, 10:18 AM Jan 2015

Hebdo Fallout: Greater Odds of Frexit (France euro exit) as Marine Le Pen’s Star Rises


Hebdo Fallout: Greater Odds of Frexit as Marine Le Pen’s Star Rises
Posted on January 9, 2015 by Yves Smith


The odds of France leaving the Eurozone, or Frexit, have just gone from a tail risk to plausible thanks to the boost the Hedbo shootings have given to the leader of France’s far right party, the National Front, and its leader, Marine Le Pen. Opinion polls indicate that that she would win the first round of a presidential ballot were elections held now.

As political scientists have found, a depression or prolonged depression tends to move political sympathies to the right. The murders in Paris playing straight into National Front themes: anti-immigration, anti-minorities, pro-law and order. But Marine Le Pen’s campaign has also gotten support from the far left for her anti-globalization, anti-fat-cat, anti-Eurozone stance, since the only way to get out of the austerity hairshirt appears to be to abandon the Eurozone entirely. If the French professional left, like our homegrown Vichy Left, took those issues seriously, they would not be seeing defections to Le Pen’s style of rancid populism.

In the wake of the Paris killings, Marine Le Pen has called for a referendum to reinstate capital punishment, which was eliminated in 1981. This alone would put France on a collision course with the European Union, which forbids it. As Aljazeera noted, “A referendum on capital punishment, however, would amount to a stealth fast-track mechanism for achieving the party’s EU-phobic goal. That’s not a proposal Hollande is likely to entertain any time soon.” ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/hebdo-fallout-greater-odds-frexit-marine-le-pens-star-rises.html



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