cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4484610
A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty Monday in an embezzlement case and followed up the verdict with a sentence barring her immediately from running for office for five years. Le Pen abruptly left the Paris courtroom before hearing how long she will be banned from running for public office.
Le Pen and 24 other officials from her National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants deny wrongdoing.
The biggest concern for Le Pen was that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office preventing her from running for president in 2027 – a scenario she had described as a “political death.”
The Constitutional Council ruled Friday, in a separate case, that imposing the punishment immediately was constitutional.
It’s not that simple. I’m from Spain and the case with our own far-right party is different. They’ve lost momentum gradually, through multiple figureheads leaving or being kicked out, with the main guy still standing, but the scandals and the lack of actual policies proposed have definitely hurt them. The problem is that those who vote for them are exactly the ones who used to vote for the traditionally ‘moderate’ conservative party. Same as in France. So it’s just a constant voter dance between the two parties. The actual number of right-wing voters hasn’t changed much.
One can only hope that disenfranchisement as you call it (I call it chronic planned distraction) will eventually lead to some form of working-class rebellion, as it tends to happen historically.
But this will definitely hurt the European far-right. Le Pen was one of their main bastions and believe it or not, those types are not so easily replaceable. People lose interest quickly and they’ll tire of the ‘this was all a politically motivated complot’ rhetoric. I’ve seen the same happen in my country. In fact, the right lost the last general election because they were so sure they were going to win, their campaign sucked.