Human rights activists everywhere would have known too that the age of “resistance” had suddenly become a much more gruelling, if desperate, one. Indeed, with Le Pen’s win, all the articles about the “death of the west” after Trump’s election would have made one great leap towards becoming true.
China would have made the best of an impending unravelling of euro-Atlantic structures. In Beijing, Xi Jinping would have soon enough repeated words he’d said in January and which deserved more attention than they got media: about China being ready to “guide” a “new world order”. And Steve Bannon would be waxing lyrical about a “global Tea Party movement” and the salvaging of the west’s “Christian identity” in the face of “Islamic fascism”.
If Le Pen had won, Trump would have tweeted: “HUGE! AMAZING!” Just as Trump has recently relished the prospect of meeting with tyrants from Pyongyang to the Philippines, he would now have a new-found illiberal friend in the Elysée palace. Despite his armada of hackers, and despite all the eagerness he’s shown towards Le Pen by hosting her in the Kremlin during the French campaign, Putin was left scrambling for attention when he called for “the end of mutual mistrust”.Ġ0:26 EU anthem ‘Ode to Joy’ plays at Macron’s victory rally – video Russian state-controlled media would have gone wild with satisfaction over the defeat of Macron, which they’d described days before the vote as “a classic psychopath with bulging eyes”. In Moscow, Vladimir Putin would have hailed the beginning of a new era with the redrawing of Europe’s political map – a “civilisational” Russian victory over western values. And soon enough, she would have spoken of a French withdrawal from Nato’s integrated structures (which she’d called “a threat to national independence”), as well as a roll-back on sanctions against Russia.
#Joy of victory march free
Le Pen’s victory speech would have been all about the advent of a “European alliance of free and sovereign nations” set to replace the EU.
Proponents of an insurrectionary “patriotic spring”, those who had held a summit with Le Pen in Koblenz just hours after Trump took office in January, would have glowed in the belief that their plan was unfolding brilliantly. To grasp it fully, imagine for a moment what would have happened if Marine Le Pen had won.Īcross Europe, populist xenophobes would have popped champagne bottles. That’s why the choice of the Ode for Joy at such a solemn moment was an immense symbol. But the most important take-away is that Macron won with a strong pro-European message of hope and reform at a time when the very word Europe has become almost a synonym for despondency.
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