I hate to break it to everyone who just parrots the labels they read in the corporate press -- far-right extremist or neofascist for Marine Le Pen, progressive independent or independent centrist or progressive centrist for Emmanuel Macron -- but Le Pen's professed economic and foreign policies are practically on all fours with Jean-Luc Mélenchon's on the left: anti-bank, anti-EU, anti-euro, anti-NATO, anti-race-to-the-bottom-free-trade. That's what she spends most of her time talking about, and that's what accounts for her dramatic rise in popularity. If France's media hadn't been taken over by billionaires and conglomerates as thoroughly as it has in the US (although French media is still less concentrated), Mélenchon would be getting a big chunk of Le Pen's coverage (cf. Trump and Bernie in the US), along with a big chunk of her votes (ditto). Unless something really dramatic happens in the coming month, the second and final round of French presidentials will almost certainly be between Le Pen and Macron. Macron is a multimillionaire former investment banker who served under Hollande, whose policies are in line with the dominant neoliberal wing of the Socialist Party (cf. the Democratic Leadership Council and the Democratic National Committee), who signed off on the sale of one of France's flagship industries (Alstom's world-class turbine business) to General Electric, and who favors slashing worker protections even more than Hollande has, to make France more "competitive." It's going to take a lot of propaganda, spin, and slime to make French voters forget that when they cast their votes in April and May (cf. Hillary and Trump in the US).

When Marine took over the National Front from her toxic father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, she purged the party's leadership of its worst racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. Her right-hand man is gay. The party just suspended its local leader in Nice for making Holocaust-denial-like remarks. She's redirected the party's xenophobic focus to illegal immigrants, refugees, and protecting France's secular tradition from Islamic encroachment. On the other hand, she hangs with leaders of bona fide neofascist parties from other European countries and she tries to associate herself with "UKIP's" Brexit victory (which was actually the neoliberal EU's loss) and with Trump's victory (which was actually neoliberal Hillary's loss). Is her relative downplaying of racism and xenophobia merely a tactical pose? If elected, will she do a Trump, abandon every populist, anti-neolib, pro-worker "promise" she ever made, and double down on scapegoating and persecution? It's impossible to say for sure, but my sense is that she's less likely to do that than Trump was. (After all, when the French are pissed they don't just have drum circles in Zuccotti Park. They throw cobblestones and Molotov cocktails at cops, they shut down railway lines, they dump tons of manure on major arterials, and they set things on fire.) As an anti-racist, anti-xenophobe lefty who thinks that the EU has ended up serving as a Trojan horse for global capital, transnational corporations, and billionaires to destroy the social-welfare state, and that NATO has served to make its European members puppets of US hegemony, if I were French, I would vote for Mélenchon in the first round -- thanks to the media, he's polling too low to be a spoiler -- and then hold my nose, cross my fingers, and vote for Le Pen in the second round.

Final thought: Who's more despicable? Someone who's mean to illegal immigrants and refugees once they're in your country (Le Pen)? Or someone who forced the illegal immigrants and refugees to come in the first place by helping destroy their countries of origin (Sarkozy in Libya, Hollande/Macron in Syria)?