These days, there is one overriding issue on the minds of the French. It isn’t “Brexit.”
Nor is it whether France will copy Britain and “Frexit” the European Union. Pas du tout.
What is fixating the French is whether their national soccer team will beat Portugal in the final of the Euro 2016 championship tournament. Raucous celebrations for France’s semifinal win over Germany went on most of Thursday night outside the Paris apartment where I’m staying.
The national team, with its “Black, Blanc, Beur” (black, white and Arab) faces is often extolled as the symbol of French unity, although charges of racism bubbled over this year’s choice of team players.
Yet even a French soccer triumph won’t disguise the growing divisions in French society, which the impact of the British vote is exacerbating. Those delirious days when the French victory in the 1998 World Cup created an illusion of racial harmony seem eons away.
Brexit has energized the far-right populist National Front party of Marine Le Pen, who calls herself Madame “Frexit” and wants France to leave the European Union. Her party won 28 percent of the vote in last year’s regional elections, and she is widely expected to make it to the runoff round of the presidential ballot next year.
Le Pen’s followers have been hit by globalization and the hollowing out of industry, although she offers little to help them, since their situation wouldn’t be improved by a Frexit. But voters respond to her denunciations of the EU policies that enabled the 2015 surge of Arab and Afghan immigrants into Europe, even though hardly any of them came to France.
She knows her voters’ real concern is France’s urban or suburban slums, known as banlieues, filled with legal Muslim immigrants from former French colonies in Africa who have trouble assimilating.
In the wake of last year’s terrorist attacks on Paris, many Frenchmen fear the banlieues could harbor jihadists. This widespread failure of assimilation is a politically fraught issue and rarely addressed directly by politicians, in a country that prides itself on the firm -- but ill-founded -- belief that every citizen of the republic is equal. Because it is swept under the rug, the issue is easy for populists to manipulate.
The question is how far Le Pen can ride the public’s fears.
Most pundits here doubt she can win the presidency or that France will leave Europe. “For France, Europe is more important than for the British,” explains Sylvie Kauffman, the editorial director and former editor-in-chief of Le Monde. While island Britain has always been wary of the continent, France regarded a united Europe as a vehicle for French power.
Indeed, polls have shown that the French had second thoughts after Brexit on the issue of Europe. While a Pew Research poll done in April and May showed 61 percent held unfavorable views toward Europe, French polls taken after the British vote show that 55 percent reject the idea of a referendum and 61 percent want to stay in the EU.
However, the populists’ success has skewered French politics rightward and undercut centrist parties in ways that may sound somewhat familiar to Americans.
The current president, socialist Francois Hollande, has historically dismal ratings and is considered unlikely to win re-election.
But the center-right Republican -- I kid you not -- party is riven by competition between a realist and a populist candidate, who will fight it out in the first open French presidential primary in November.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to overcome his nasty reputation for past failures by appealing to a hard-line Republican base and adopting Le Pen-style populism. He is running on an anti-immigration program that endorses the traditional values of “eternal France.” Like an American politician we know, he is also a fan of strongman Vladimir Putin. One can imagine the threesome of Donald Trump, Putin, and Sarkozy standing arm in arm.
On the other hand, former President and elder statesman Alain Juppe is running as the voice of reason who represents the wisdom of age and experience and can calm the upheavals in the country. He thinks he can win by playing the anti-populist card. “Populism is seduction,” he told the Financial Times, “hence it is lying.”
“People are sensible,” Juppe also said. “Indignation is not a method for governing.”
Imagine anyone being that blunt with Trump.
If Juppe gets the nomination, most pundits believe he can beat Le Pen in the final round. That would be an amazing example of the supposedly excitable French providing a calming example to the supposedly phlegmatic Brits who went nuts over Brexit. It would also provide a breather for Britain, since Juppe clearly wants to find a way to keep the British at least halfway in Europe.
But whether France is prepared to be sensible will only be revealed months from now. There are even some scenarios that give Le Pen a slim chance of victory because of several minor candidates who can siphon off votes from favorites.
Meantime, we can watch to see whether a French soccer triumph brings the country together in a surge of racial harmony and good feelings -- or whether a defeat gives another boost to the populist trend.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. -- Ed.
