What is happening with France? Are we in danger of this also?

[DFW]

18. The French left has always been fractured

The Communists were a major force up to Mitterand's election in 1981, and the main national union, the CGT is still heavily weighted toward them. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and the high-living Stalinist PCF boss Marchais lost a lot of his influence, they faded, but similar-sounding groups have popped up. The PS (Socialist Party) nearly did themselves in during the start of Mitterand's first term, when they went around nationalizing some large private industry and searching departing passengers' pockets at airports. The wealth tax was tightened, and made to kick in at 3 million francs, or a little under $500,000. The economy tanked, people and businesses started leaving France, and Mitterand did a quick 180°. His finance minister, a staunch socialist, nevertheless exempted art from the wealth tax. You see, his dad was an art dealer.

The French far right never used to be a factor, and people used to laugh at Le Pen's father as an extremist crackpot. But the left never united or compromised, and made a total mess when in power. The OP noted that Hollande never even bothered to run for a second term. He had blown it, and he knew it. The center, never much a definable entity in France in the first place, is making its last gasp with Macron, and not getting very far. Mild punishments for attacks by extremist Islamists have only played into the hands of the far right ("see? You need US!" ), whose hate of them is undisguised, and ever more widely shared.

The latest stand of the wealth tax that I could find was the following: Entre 1,3 et 2,57 millions d'euros inclus de valeur nette taxable : 0,7% Entre 2,57 et 5 millions d'euros inclus de valeur nette taxable : 1% Entre 5 et 10 millions d'euros inclus de valeur nette taxable : 1,25% Au-delà de 10 millions d'euros de valeur nette taxable : 1,5%. That means that between €1.3 million and €2.57 million of "net taxable value," it is 0.7%, from €2.57 million to €5 million, it goes up to 1%, between €5 million and €10 million, it is 1.25%, and above that, it is 1.5%. Needless to say, plenty of French of moderate wealth have found a way to declare much of their wealth as "art," and many others have simply moved to neighboring countries. Taxing people in a country with taxes as high as they are in France was never going to sit well with people who busted their asses to amass a modest fortune like that. "We didn't get you bad enough the first time, so we are coming to get you again." In a country with far too many bureaucrats that enjoy even more privileges than their German counterparts, that doesn't sit well--except with the bureaucrats, of course. France has far too many of them, and they produce nothing except paperwork. They, too, are rich fertilizer for the far right.

The left is still made up of a number of factions who all know they are right and everyone else is wrong, and never compromise. Macron, who could have picked up on this and presented a real united, appealing center, incorporating the more moderate factions of the French Left, instead saw a threat in Marine Le Pen (not entirely wrong), and apparently thinks his best shot is to sponge up her voters instead of those of a weak, fractured left. This gamble, so far, anyway, appears not to be working, and instead of solidifying support for him, seems to be driving French voters to the extremes.

If this trend continues, keeping in mind France's one-two election system (everybody runs in the first round, and two weeks later there is a runoff between the top two cndidates), Le Pen will end up as France's first modern far right president. Macron is actually not a bad guy, is the first French president since Giscard to be fluent in English, and is definitely an internationalist. But he hasn't found the magic solution to make France run smoothly. Of course, no one else since Napoléon I has done that, either, so it's not like he is the first to stumble. Giscard came close to being the first, but he stumbled, too, making way for Miterrand, who, of course, stumbled.