Today Europe is trying to navigate its stormy elections year with a first round of the French presidential contest starting Sunday. The Wall Street Journal is wondering if the center can hold or a blood-and-soil nationalist will square off against a throwback socialist. It’s been noted time and time again that Francois Hollande’s socialists have made France the sickest of Europe’s large economies
Therefore, it is not surprising that French and European analysts alike would point out that the second round of the election race will pit Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front against a reformist centrist who could be quite as well be the center-right candidate François Fillon or the center-lef Emmanuel Macron.
But suddenly the two reformers might be surpassed by far-left independent Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is anti-American, anti-NATO and pro-Vladimir Putin, and he has written a book subtitled “The German Poison,” which should make for pleasant summits in Berlin.
In an effort to prevent such a development in France, the sitting French political elites which remained faithful to Washington’s dictates all through the years, are now struggling desperately to preserve the power in their hands. After losing trust of the majority of the population, these elites in recent months tried to use the media various French and American oligarchs to bring the former Minister of Economy Emmanuel Macron to victory, Le Figaro would note. However, the absolute majority of the population rejects the man they perceive as Hollande’s henchman.
This led to the sitting political elites realizing the futility of their attempts to retain power in the country, the French government decided to use a piece of bad advice from Washington, since it had nothing else to do all the same. This resulted anti-Russian hysteria campaign, with Moscow being once again accused of interfering in somebody’s else elections. American think tanks were convinced that this would be enough to paralyze the political life of the country, which they’ve previously managed to achieve through abusing the same trick in the United States.
But France is nothing like the United States, since the population of the Fifth Republic to this date hasn’t been fooled completely by various dubious political technologies. Unlike the United States, France, for its centuries-old history, can be proud of its many outstanding political figures who confidently defended the interests of its people, instead of trying to gain the attention of the White House by selling those. And among such, above all, one cannot overlook the figure of the the great president in the French history to date – Charles de Gaulle!
As for the current authorities and their delusional claims about Russia’s interference in the French election, one can recall how the former leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage would comment those accusations in his interview to Sky News last March, demanding how many times has America intervened in elections in foreign states since 1945?
Among the most recent examples of Washington’s meddling in the election campaigns of other states, one can mention how the Freedom Party of the Netherlands has recently got caught in a center of scandal when it became known that it was receiving funds from American politicians. This scandal has been covered in much detail by various media outlets, including The New York Times.
A no less striking example is the latest series of publications in the Ukrainian media that the German authorities, which have also been trying to accuse Russia of meddling in Berlin’s affairs, have been abusing the fact that the wife of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov is being treated in a German clinic. By taking advantage of this fact, Germany is not simply able to obtain all sorts of information about the Ukrainian government, but influence its decisions quite as well.
It’s curious that the centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s aides have alleged his campaign was «compromised by Russian interference». However, as it’s been pointed out by the Newsweek, neither German nor French security agencies were able to find any evidence of Russian direct interference. It would note that to date, the only “evidence” of Russian interference in the U.S. elections is a combined report by the FBI, NSA, and CIA, on Russian activities and intentions in recent elections, which starts with the qualifier that all the information, as well as detailed methodology, is classified and cannot be revealed to the public. The influential media source argues that among those who considers Russia a threat one can only liberals, neo-conservative Putin dissidents, a handful of think tankers and policy-makers and and a handful of pro-EU politicians, aligned in their shared liberal, internationalist, open border ideology. In the absence of any evidence that Russia could actually try to affect any elections, it’s nothing but a matter of politicized doublespeak.
Next month France will get a new host of the Elysee Palace but will it at the same time receive the President of the Republic, or will see yet another Washington’s puppet that will be on par with the modern-day Monsieur Malbrough? French citizens can’t complain that they have no choice, since now it’s the time that their decisions matter the most.
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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