Not exactly an endorsement of fascists, but still pretty damning:
Wow. I can't believe someone as smart as you is actually falling for the FN's blatantly hypocritical posturing. This trick is as old as the hills, for God's sake. Reactionaries who don't give a sh*t about the "common man" disguise themselves as populists because that's the only way they can ever gain any political influence. That's the exact same tactics the clericalo-fascist French far-right of the 1930s used. Except that if you actually look at the FN's economic program, there is absolutely nothing about strengthening the Welfare State, or reviving the health and education systems, or to improve the economic conditions of working families. Actually, they have absolutely no idea what to do in that regard. Their only plan to create jobs consists in kicking immigrants out (because yeah, it's well know DEY R TAKING R JOBZ). And yeah sure, they want to get rid of EU - if you actually think that's a good idea, I'm glad you can't vote in a European country.
Now, I know that the blatant fakeness of the FN's populism might be a bit harder to spot for foreigners who only know French politics from the outside. But since you are actually lecturing me about what the FN really is, forgive me if I roll my eyes.
I'm not trying to "lecture" anyone, yes, I understand the history of much of the European far-right, and nothing in that post responding to you meant to sugar coat anything about Front National. And yes, I can hardly wait for the deluge of holier than thou Hashemite posts which I've inevitably made myself a huge blinking red target for. But all I meant to suggest there is that Hollande is yet another self defeating soft-center-leftist in a long line of self defeating soft-center-leftists around the world, and were I some sort of hypothetical french voter that I quite clearly am not, there is a part of me that would be quite tempted to do the political equivalent of prank-pulling the fire alarm and vote for Le Pen against Hollande in the hope that something might come out of it, in the understanding that she would probably have her hands tied for the most part in terms of domestic policy anyway.
