By Jo Nova

Le Pen has weaponized ‘punitive’ environmental policies, and voters seem to like that

In the largest turnout since 1981, French voters chose the “Far Right” National Rally party in a record vote of 33 per cent. It is the first round of voting with the second on July 7th, but The Washington Post is already comparing the potentially “shocking” French election result with the 2016 Brexit win in the UK. The Guardian said the unthinkable has become plausible.

French elections: Why is the rejection of environmentalism a driving force behind France’s far-right vote?

By Matthieu Goar, Le Monde

After long neglecting environmental issues, the far-right party has made the denunciation of allegedly ‘punitive’ environmental policies into its new electoral weapon.

The former presidential candidate railed against “Brussels,” which “forces you, almost overnight, to change your boiler for €15,000,” against the “authoritarian reductions to agricultural land” and against the “heartless European Commission.”

“Don’t they have as their objective the reduction of human activity as a whole?” she asked, before connecting the issue to her obsession with French people’s daily lives, a strategy that […]