France’s Presidential Election Splinters the Country’s Culturati<br />"I think that equating Le Pen and Macron and standing under a ‘Without Me May 7’ banner, hoping<br />that other people are going to stop the National Front is totally irresponsible." But many on the left and right also see Mr. Macron as a continuation of the policies of President François Hollande and his Socialist government, which, for different reasons, they want to reject.<br />Sudhir Hazareesingh said that A lot of people don’t recognize themselves in either of these candidates,<br />Pascal Bruckner said that For French people, money and capitalism is a kind of curse,<br />Zeev Sternhell, the Polish-born, left-leaning Israeli political scientist<br />and author of "Neither Left Nor Right," a controversial book on the rise of fascism in France in the 1930s, said Mr. Macron’s leftist critics find his economic policies closer to the right than to the left.<br />"We’re not on the verge of falling into Nazism or fascism at all." Some see a deep French discomfort about money as part of the left’s —<br />and right’s — disdain for Mr. Macron, who was an investment banker and later became economy minister under Mr. Hollande.
