The Euroskeptic and nativist National Front just crushed the first round of regional elections in France:

French mainstream politicians have struggled to come up with a response to what one analyst described as the “major hangover” of a historic victory by the Front National in the first round of regional elections.

While the far-right had been predicted to do well, the FN’s record score of almost 28% of the national vote and first place in six of the country’s 13 regions by Sunday night left the traditional parties reeling.

The governing Socialist party came third as expected, but analysts agreed on Monday that the main loser was the centre-right opposition party Les Républicains, led by the former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

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In 2010 the FN scored about 11% of the national vote in the regional elections. Support for the FN has risen steadily since 2011 when Le Pen took control of the party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and set out to shed its racist and xenophobic image.

This is not a surprise.

Germany seems determined to repeat the policies that made its depression the worst in Europe in the 1930s, and now it has the power to enforce on most of the rest of Europe.

What’s more, the European Union has prosecuted further integration in a manner calculated to vitiate any semblance of meaning public input.

The juxtaposition of these two is a petri dish for anti-EU populists, but the populist left remains firmly committed to the European Union, so the only meaning alternative is the bigots, racists, and Fascists.

We will see more of this.