OPINION:
France is following the siren song of liberalism down an authoritarian path. On Monday, government prosecutors barred Marine Le Pen, the leading 2027 presidential candidate, from running for office.
Ms. Le Pen and her National Rally party became serious threats to the establishment when their message of curbing the unchecked flow of legal and illegal immigration captured public support. Ms. Le Pen topped the list of election contenders by 17% in an IFOP poll released last week. Unfortunately for her, the other competitors hold the reins of power.
As President Trump discovered in his presidential bid, leftists will stop at nothing to retain control. In New York, Democrats enacted a special law temporarily lifting the statute of limitations to levy preposterous and stale felony charges related to the classification of a legal expense in his business records. He narrowly escaped the Big House by winning the White House.
Far-left French prosecutors have cribbed from the same playbook. They charged Ms. Le Pen with a series of inscrutable campaign finance violations related to the intermingling of funds for staffers who split their duties between campaign work for the National Rally in Paris and official legislative work for members of the European Parliament in Brussels.
This is apparently a common practice, and the contracts in question were in place before Ms. Le Pen took charge. Such defenses fell on deaf ears because the judiciary wanted to eliminate the National Rally for ideological reasons and said so. In June, the Magistrates Union called on “all judges and magistrates, as well as all those involved in judicial activity, to mobilize against the far-right’s rise to power.”
Dutifully obeying orders, the presiding judge, Benedicte de Perthuis, sentenced Ms. Le Pen to two years in prison, followed by two years under house arrest. She has also been banned from standing for election over the next five years.
“She wasn’t the initiator of the system, but … she played a central role. She disrupted public order and the democratic process. It wasn’t personal enrichment, but partisan enrichment, that’s for sure,” the magistrate opined from the bench.
Despite the ruling, Ms. Le Pen said in a press conference that she wasn’t backing down: “In matters as serious as these, the masks fall. … The system dropped a nuclear bomb because we are about to win. We will not let this happen, and we will defend the right of the French people to vote for whomever they wish.”
It’s no coincidence that what’s happening in Paris has also happened in other European capitals. Popular political parties and candidates opposed to mass migration were excluded from the process in Germany and Romania.
Vice President J.D. Vance warned of the EU’s undemocratic leanings at the Munich Security Conference in February. He was pilloried by Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, who said the vice president needs to “turn off his TV set” because he has been misrepresenting Europe.
Mr. Vance was right to oppose the counterfeit moralizing of European leaders spouting platitudes about “saving democracy.” Ms. Le Pen’s treatment confirms the depths of the continent’s spiritual decline. Once a great ally of the United States, France has rejected free speech and free elections, for now. With legal appeals, hope remains.
Perhaps, as in the United States, the crude attempt to erase the opposition will open the public’s eyes.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.