> I think it would be more productive to try to understand why Le Pen and Zemmour poll so high rather than dismissing them and especially the people who vote fo

> I think it would be more productive to try to understand why Le Pen and Zemmour poll so high rather than dismissing them and especially the people who vote for them as "xenophobe", "racist", etc. I am not dismissing them. This is just a statement of fact: they use latent xenophobia, phoney patriotism, and general anxiety as a weapon. They are nationalists and xenophobes. Which is why their only presence in a runoff guarantees that the other candidate gets elected. Until now at least: as you point out the difference gets smaller every time. > As someone who lives in the UK, this is what happened for years here to people labelled "Euroseptics" who supported Brexit. As a French Londoner since 2013, this hits very close to home. I am not dismissing them, and I do not think I underestimate the threat they represent. This is why whoever ends up facing them would need to be utterly corrupt for me not to vote for them. This is also why I despair reading French media these days, a they do not seem to realise what they are doing.