Analysis: Loss is victory for far-right in France's election

PARIS (AP) — The far-right has gone mainstream in France.

That’s the headline from the landmark showing by Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election. The fierce nationalist didn’t win Sunday. But she edged another step closer — snatching a victory of sorts from her defeat to reelected President Emmanuel Macron.

With 41.5% of the vote, unprecedented for her, Le Pen's anti-foreigner, anti-system politics of disgruntlement are now more entrenched than ever in the psyche, thinking and political landscape of France.

Since the Le Pen dynasty — first her dad, Jean-Marie, and now Marine, his daughter — first started contesting presidential elections in 1974, never have so many French voters bought into their doctrine that multicultural and multiracial France, a country with the words “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” inscribed on its public buildings, would be richer, safer and somehow more French if it was less open to foreigners and the outside world.

Had she become France’s first woman president, her plan for fighting Islamic terrorism would have included stripping part of France’s population – women who are Muslims – of some of their liberty. She wanted to ban them from wearing headscarves in public – hardly very equal or fraternal. Same goes for her proposals to move French citizens to the front of lines for jobs, benefits and housing.

For headscarf-wearing voter Yasmina Aksas, Le Pen's defeat wasn't a celebration moment — not with such strong backing for her and ideas that “used to be limited to militant far-right groups” becoming increasingly acceptable in polite company.

“It’s still 40% of people voting for Le Pen," the 19-year-old law student said. "It’s not a victory.”

Internationally, Le Pen wanted to start diluting France’s relationships with the European...