The Marine Le Pen Ban: Don't Courts Prove Once Again that Politicization Comes from the Left and that the Right Is Justified in Opposing Their Respective Judiciaries?

The US should sanction France for anti-democratic practices since the main political opponent (once again like in 2017) has just been barred from running for the next presidential election @elonmusk @ChrisRuddyNMX @Jason_Jorjani @RealCandaceO @DavidSacks @chamath @pegobry_en… pic.twitter.com/4h1sGrUIxM

— sebastien laye (@SebastienLaye) March 31, 2025

Over at X, Sébastien Laye reacts to the news regarding the Marine Le Pen ban from public office, calling upon Donald Trump to use Washington's economic weapons against his country:

The US should sanction France for anti-democratic practices since the main political opponent (once again like in 2017) has just been barred from running for the next presidential election

@elonmusk

@ChrisRuddyNMX

@Jason_Jorjani

@RealCandaceO

@DavidSacks

@chamath

@pegobry_en

@breakth3rules

@loic_rousselle

@EvaVlaar

In France, indeed, these judgments have not only targeted members of the "far right", but members of the traditional, or institutional, right as well.  As Sébastien Laye points out in the French version of his tweet, three other politicians that judges have targeted in the past eight years are favored 2017 presidential candidate François Fillon (his surprising embezzlement investigation in the middle of the 2017 presidential election allowed Emmanuel Macron to win the Élysée palace), party honcho Patrick Balkany, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy. By the oddest of coincidences, all three are members of Les Républicains, once one of two mainstay parties in the French Republic.

Demandons des sanctions internationales contre la France qui DEGAGE systématiquement via les juges toute opposition depuis F.Fillon

What is ironic, and what few in the power structure seem to notice, is that for decades they have dismissed or demonized le Front National as being brainless paranoids for denying the democratic aspect of this country central to Western Civilization (« tous pourris » — all of 'em rotten to the core). What does the judge's decision do but confirm — and not just to le Rassemblement National's members — that there was truth in what Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter have been saying all these years? (Merci pour l'InstaLien, Sarah…)

On a general note, in recent years, there have been a flurry of rightist governments around the planet who have picked a fight against the countries' respective supreme courts. They include nations as various as Poland, Hungary, Israel, Brazil, and, needless to say, the United States. In MSM media, both in America and abroad, the rightist governments are invariably presented as undemocratic (and indeed, dangerous and deranged) rightists going against democracy and against civilization itself, politicizing what should be a neutral position, and demonizing innocent people (judges of all stripes) who are simply doing their jobs.

As seen recently in Romania, as well as in Brasilia, it turns out that, generally speaking, the situation is exactly the opposite: the politicization came, in the past, from the left, and what the right is doing is restoring, or trying to restore, the status quo of the judicial branch as a neutral and impartial arbiter.

Related: Having said all that, Americans must still come to terms with the fact that Marine Le Pen is far from a conservative in U.S. terms ("the French Donald Trump") and with a fundamental misunderstanding — The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

Marine Le Pen in France, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Imran Khan in Pakistan, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Donald Trump in America, Calin Georgescu in Romania

The criminal prosecution of every populist challenger is a dagger in the heart of the credibility of democracy. https://t.co/YVKtAXODoq

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) March 31, 2025