Anti-mass migration French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has increasingly attracted young voters and two first-time voters explain why she appeals to them.
The two 18-year-olds are casting their first vote for a French president and both Sacha T. and Baptiste L. are casting their ballots for Marine Le Pen. The pair are part of a growing trend of French youth rejecting the traditional parties of France feeling like neither the socialists or the conservative republicans speak to them Liberation reports.
Sacha T., a second-year student of history and political science, says that he comes from a traditional family who are,”far right on anything that is a social subject,” and was involved in the pro-traditional family movement La Manif Pour Tous, who recently slammed globalist candidate Emmanuel Macron as being “anti-family.”
A vote for Le Pen will also, “benefit us from a security point of view. What is happening at the moment: the refugee crisis and the attacks,” he said. When asked about how he felt supporting the Front National, who have been called “racist” and “anti-semitic” by the French establishment, Sacha said the party is neither racist nor anti-semitic.
For Sacha, a vote for Le Pen is a vote for, “sovereign government and fiscal, monetary, agricultural, economic and immigration independence.”
Baptiste L. was formerly a supporter of conservative Republican candidate Francois Fillon, who following a number of scandals during the campaign, was unable to make it past the first round. The philosophy student said that his choice of Le Pen was mostly a vote against Macron and his globalist policies.
“On all matters of sovereignty or identity, there I particularly join with her program,” he said noting that he was less sure about her economic policies. “We have a will to remain France, and therefore a desire for identity or nationalism.”
The 18-year-old is also not convinced of the official polling saying that he has seen several polls showing the candidates much closer to each other. While he currently supports Le Pen, Baptiste said that he likes her ally Nicolas Dupont-Aignan even more and said his long-term plan was to help the Gaullist politician who he sees as a “true sovereigntist.”
In France and across Europe more and more young people are flocking to populist patriotic parties and movements. Acros, Europe the hipster-right Identitarian youth movement, which was formed in France, has rapidly grown in France, Austria and Germany. The group have staged several large-scale protests in Vienna, Berlin and Paris against mass migration and Islamisation.
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