In France, the far-right National Rally party — rooted in antisemitism and racism — won a record number of votes Sunday in the first round of legislative elections and could win an absolute parliamentary majority in the July 7 runoff election.
France appears poised to join six European Union countries with a hard-right party in government: Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic.
There’s a hunger for far-right leadership in Europe that could reach our shores in November...if we’re not careful.
Warning signs are ahead for Democrats after President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate against Donald Trump on Thursday. His debate performance has shaken core Democratic voters who now say that age has diminished his cognitive abilities. A USA Today/Suffolk University Poll after the debate found that 41 percent of Democrats want the party to replace Biden as its presidential nominee.
However, according to Reuters, Democratic Party leaders have, so far, dismissed calls to replace 81-year-old Biden with a younger candidate and plan instead to focus campaign messaging on the danger of re-electing Trump.
That strategy is a gamble: We already know that Trump is dangerous, yet he’s running neck-and-neck with Biden in national polls and Trump is swaying a larger share of Black voters to his camp.
We know what to expect from a second Trump administration if the far-right wave continues. His four-year presidential reign showed that he was a danger to Black people.
On the campaign trail, he talks a lot about battling crime in urban cities, which is a racist dog whistle for empowering police departments to use excessive force in Black communities. He told TIME magazine that FBI and state data showing a national reduction in violent crime is fake. Trump said he would send National Guard troops to high-crime cities and would award grants to cities that adopt law enforcement methods like stop-and-frisk that civil rights groups say involve racial profiling.
A Trump second administration would champion an agenda to end so-called antiwhite racism, which includes eliminating diversity and racial equality programs. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country, and that can’t be allowed either,” the MAGA leader said.
French voters still have an opportunity at the ballot box to prevent the far-right from winning an absolute parliamentary majority in the second-round runoffs. France’s current prime minister, Gabriel Attal, warned that “the extreme right is at the doors of power,” adding that “not one vote should go to the National Rally. France does not deserve that,” according to the Associated Press.
Likewise, stopping that wave from landing on our shores is still possible ahead of the Democratic Party convention in August. That might require party leaders to support the call for Biden to step aside and allow a younger generation of Democrats to take the helm.