Brexit, Donald Trump and, just maybe, Marine Le Pen. The tidal wave of populist outrage coursing through the West has found an unsurprising cheerleader in France's Le Pen, the increasingly popular leader of the country's far-right National Front. In the aftermath of the US presidential election, Le Pen thinks she could write the next chapter in a global revolt against the status quo, reports The Chicago Tribune.
France's presidential election is less than six months away. Once confined to the political fringe - a poster girl for Europe's radical right - Le Pen is clearly preparing for a boost from Trump's tail wind. She may get it. In regional elections in December, a month after the terrorist attacks across Paris, she won nearly 30 percent of voters in the first round. And that was before Brexit, the July attack in Nice, the drama over the Calais migrant camp and, now, the US election - all of which have played to her advantage.
As in Britain and the United States, a fierce anti-immigrant rhetoric has swept through a France still reeling from terrorist violence. It is largely directed at the historic wave of migration that has brought more than 1 million people from the Middle East and Africa to Europe in the past two years. Thousands of them ended up in camps on the northern coast of France, and when two newcomers took part in the Islamic State-orchestrated attacks on Paris last November, the migrants came to represent a national-security threat - and an entire religion - portrayed as a threat to the French way of life.
Since the Paris attacks, a palpable Islamophobia has emerged in France. Over the summer, there was the uproar over the "burkini" swimsuit, and now, after the closure of the Calais migrant camp, there is widespread anxiety over the other camps that have emerged across the country - including three within Paris. Prominent French intellectuals have now normalized the idea of a Muslim "invasion," and even François Hollande, the Socialist president, has said that France has "a problem with Islam." As it was in the Brexit campaign and the US election, the theme of a national identity under siege is already the centerpiece of France's search for its next president.
And no one screams louder about national identity than Le Pen, who has promised to make France "great again" in the same nostalgic appeal that Trump successfully pitched to US voters. "We, too, are keen on winning back our freedom," she said in September. "We want a France that is the master of its own laws and currency and the guardian of its borders."
Le Pen was probably the first foreign politician to herald Trump's victory, tweeting her congratulations before a winner had been officially announced. Then, hours later, she took to the stage at her party's headquarters outside Paris, presenting herself as the torch bearer of a long-brewing international mission to disrupt the established order.
She warned political leaders - inside and outside France - to watch their backs. "The political and media elites that were heavily chastised this morning can no longer ignore it," she proclaimed Wednesday, smiling for the cameras.
"The French referendum in 2005, the Greek one in 2015, the recent electoral successes of patriots in different European countries, the massive vote by the British in favour of Brexit and now Donald Trump - all are democratic choices that bury the old order and steppingstones to building tomorrow's world," she said.
But could she win? Most analysts still say there is little chance that the National Front could emerge on top in France's 2017 elections - despite the staggering unpopularity of Hollande.
For one, Le Pen and her populist platform will not be the only option for voters on the right, who could also support Alain Juppé, the grandfatherly mayor of Bordeaux, or Nicolas Sarkozy, the "bling bling" former French president with the supermodel wife and a penchant for Islamophobia that has come to rival Le Pen's.
For another, despite Le Pen's best efforts to improve its image, the National Front - which shares much of the nationalism, protectionism and pro-Russian sensibilities of the Trump campaign - has an unfortunate history of anti-Semitism that many voters have a hard time overlooking, even after their leader's recent attempts to "de-demonize" the party.
"I believe that she's played this well," said Francis Kalifat, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, the country's largest Jewish advocacy organization. "But in reality, nothing has changed. It remains a xenophobic party and a party that we share no values with."