So why have Freepers been so supportive of LePen all these years? People around here have painted quite a different picture of her.
If she's no better than Macron, then the French were screwed coming and going to begin with. If they're now out there rioting for bigger, better socialism, then they're really screwed.
IMO, LePen is “better” than Macron in some areas. She does at least clearly see the threat of large scale Muslim immigration, and the loss of French “identity”, and is decidedly not a globalist. But, those, and many other parts of LePen’s “nationalist” agenda that are positives, in my and most likely many other FReeper’s views, are not necessarily anti-socialist. Now, I will say that when you get down to the basics that might revive the French economy, her proposals to ease the tax burden on small businesses are promising. The problem, though, is that she also opposes privatization of many portions of the French economy that could be privatized, and she is generally a supporter of the public sector. Economically, all considered, Ms. LePen is to the left of Macron.
This article gives a brief summary:
https://www.ft.com/content/fb0ac974-2909-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7
Little of LePen’s economic program, outside of immigration curtailment, looks like a bright future to me, particularly given the present state of affairs... Socialism almost always catches up with a country, sooner or later, as it has with France, and then climbing out of it is VERY difficult.
Add to that, there are only a few areas where France is industrially competitive, and they certainly have nothing like the US energy sector to drive them forward.
So, you may be correct. The French people are “screwed”. IMO, mostly they’ve done it to themselves. At least that’s how I see it.