Voters are turning on the incumbents. That’s true in the U.S. and it’s true in Europe.

And the revolution that has already seen fundamental electoral change sweeping across Europe has come to France.

In France, where the same inept governments, corrupt arrangements, and hollow rhetoric have been the order of the day for a generation, voters took on Macron’s liberal centrists and first-round voting backed Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally. It’s not the end of the process, but it’s another political earthquake. Le Pen’s party had close calls before, but this one is looking like the closest of them al so far.

Previously fear of the ‘right-wing’ coming to power had united the other parties, but no one is going to side with a Left led by Communists and their political allies. Besides all of the smears hurled at Le Pen apply to the Left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon who actually is an antisemite, a dangerous extremist, and is soft on Putin.

But the French are pretty clear about why they’re voting for the National Rally. They’re tired of crime, violence and terrorism. They’re sick of a system that puts migrants first, that panders to Islam and to the Eurocrats. Whether or not anything will change even if the National Rally is able to form a government may be open to question, but the voters have had it. Even people who wouldn’t otherwise have voted for NR are doing it.

David said that everyone in his synagogue was voting for National Rally, as were many other religious Jew he knew. Many of his leftist Jewish friends were either voting for right parties of not voting at all.

David pointed to mass immigration and the consequent changes in French society and Islamist antisemitism as the major concern driving the drastic political shifts he had seen among his friends. David lives in an area heavily populated with immigrants, many from Mali, Senegal, or Afghanistan.

He explained that the area had become riddled with drugs and crime, and were not safe for native French or girls.

“I am a leftist, usually I vote for the left,” said David. “I’m the most leftist of all my friends.”

“I don’t know Jews who are voting for the leftists,” said David. “Most of the Jews I know are voting for [Reconquête leader Éric] Zemmour or [National Rally President] Jordan Bardella.”

Moving from the Left to the right is a dramatic change for some French Jews, who David said had been left with a difficult choice — But difficult or not, based on what David said his friends have made the choice all the same.

It may be anecdotal, but it is happening.

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