Left and far-right parties united to collapse his government - just three months after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron

Moment of big opportunity and high risk for Marine Le Pen

The president is a lonely, tragic figure whose strange personality has inflicted chaos and carnage on French politics.

“He is the great seducer, he wants to seduce everyone,” said another member of the inner circle. “But much of France has a personal, violent hatred for him … he is too young, too handsome and too bright for many French — and it is in our DNA to want to decapitate our leader.”

“He is very kind, and the closer I get to him the more impressed I am by him,” one of his inner circle told me. But “he hardly has any friends, none of them are older and probably 80 percent of them are male; he surrounds himself with advisers who are all young men and all of whom are fascinated by him.”

He somehow seems a bit less than human, a little too perfect, like a humanoid robot that gets the human part a little bit wrong — a concept known in robotics and computer animation as the “uncanny valley,” for the unease and even revulsion it elicits in a viewer.

According to early estimates by polling institute IFOP, the leftwing alliance is on course to have between 180 and 215 MPs in the 577-seat parliament, ahead of the Macron’s liberals with 150-180, and the National Rally and its allies with 120-150 seats.

Originally called the National Front, the party was founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the political arm of New Order, whose members believed democracy was doomed to fail. It included former Nazi soldiers, Vichy regime collaborators and former members of a terrorist organization that carried out attacks to prevent Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule.

France must not turn its back on its history. Until now, the far right has come to power only in the turmoil of military defeat and foreign occupation in 1940. We are not willing to resign ourselves to a new defeat, that of the values which, since 1789, have been the basis of France’s political settlement and its national solidarity.

On Sunday, we call on our fellow citizens in every constituency to vote to ensure the defeat of the RN candidate.

French voters, like voters across the wealthy world, are in a sour mood and directing their ire against the politicians currently in power, be they on the right, the left or the center.

Like almost every other wealthy nation, France experienced a burst of inflation as the world economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic – in fact, if you use comparable measures, prices in France have risen by roughly the same amount as prices in the United States. But also as in America, inflation has declined rapidly without a jump in unemployment, and the current state of the economy looks quite good by historical standards.

And on economic policy the RN has basically campaigned against Macron from the left. It has promised to lower the retirement age for many workers while cutting the value-added tax – basically a sales tax – on energy. How would it pay for these measures? By cutting benefits to immigrants.

In case you’re wondering: No, the numbers don’t work. But setting math aside, the RN has, in effect, staked out a position in favor of big government and generous social benefits, but essentially only for people with the right ethnic background.

The contrast with Trumpism should be obvious.

MAGA shares the French right's hostility to immigrants and general xenophobia. But Donald Trump, far more than Macron, really was a president of the rich, cutting taxes on corporations and the affluent while attempting unsuccessfully to slash health benefits for millions.

And if Trump is returned to office, there's no reason to think that he wouldn't do even more to benefit the rich at the expense of average Americans. Notably, he has floated the idea of replacing income taxes with tariffs ' that is, taxes on imports. As with the RN's ideas, the math wouldn't work; but any attempt along these lines would cause big price increases for the great majority of American workers while delivering big income gains to the 1%.

So yes, the French right is bad, and its rise is alarming. But the MAGA movement is worse, because it combines the European right's ugliness with stunning hypocrisy and contempt for its supporters.

PARIS (Reuters) -Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) will not win a majority of seats in next Sunday's parliamentary run-off election, according to a poll on Wednesday, suggesting efforts by French mainstream parties to block the far right might work.

The RN and its allies would get just 190 to 220 seats, according to the poll, while the centre-right Republicans (LR) would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group.

Mr. Macron did not have to call an election just weeks before the Paris Olympics, even though the National Rally trounced him in European parliamentary elections. It is a measure of the desperate straits of France today that a meager victory for Mr. Macron would now be defined as keeping the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, from an absolute majority in the National Assembly, even if the price of that is ungovernable chaos.