I interviewed Marine Le Pen twice. The first time was in 2015, shortly after the horrific terror attacks on the “Charlie Hebdo” newspaper, and the Jewish supermarket “HyperCacher”. Back then she was a European Parliament member and we met at her very small office in Strasbourg. Her schedule was very light. My request for an interview was accepted almost immediately and we spent more than two hours talking.

The second interview was completely different. It was in 2017, the first day of Le Pen’s official presidential campaign. This time we met in her very large and very impressive office in Paris. The headquarters was full of people and advisors, the schedule was tight. Le Pen was as welcoming as ever, smiling patiently while I was breaking my teeth with basic French. Other than her smile one more thing stayed the same, her message. 2017's Le Pen, same as 2015's, and 2012's all emphasized the dangers of uncontrollable immigration, the loss of the “True French identity”, a harsh language against radical Islam, and generally the need to “make France great again”.

In 2012 she received 17.9% of the votes coming in third. Five years later she managed to go through to the second round, eventually receiving 33.9% of the votes. Yesterday, in the second round of the 2022 elections, Le Pen secured 41.5%. She is no longer an anecdote, she is no longer an outcast, or on the fringe of French politics. Marine Le Pen, and her views, are a big part of the French political system, and of the French way of life.

I was there in 2017, I felt a sense of urgency with many French voters that felt they have to vote in order to “save the republic”. I am there now too. In 2022, this sense of urgency to keep Le Pen out of the Élysée Palace has massively decreased. She’s seen by many as a legitimate contender, one that you might not approve of or not agree with, but legitimate nonetheless.

This got me thinking. Could a politician still be considered an extremist if so many people are backing him? When we refer to politicians like Le Pen as *far*-right, who are we comparing her to?

The traditional way of looking at politics is to imagine a linear horizontal line. There’s the far-left and far-right on each side, there’s the moderate-left and moderate-right, and there’s the center. In the US, there are the Democrats on the left and the Republicans on the right. The UK has the Conservatories on the right and Labour on the left. Two large moderate parties to accommodate most of the electorate. If you are more right-winged than the party on the right you’re far-right, and if you’re more left-leaning than the party to the left you’re far left.

The problem is that this is not how politics works today, and France was one of the first countries to show us that. The presidential election of 2017 was the first in French history in which both traditional parties, The Republicans and Socialists did not reach the second round. This time, in 2022, both parties didn’t even reach the 5% threshold during the first round and have to pay for their campaign without using public funds.

French politics is no longer structured in the traditional way. The parties once considered anchors on the horizontal line are no longer relevant. One may claim that with these traditional parties losing power, the whole traditional structure collapses.

So, is Marine Le Pen really far-right? The answer is not unequivocal. Sky News and the Berlin Social Science Centre’s Manifesto Project compared her with other politicians around the world. When questioned “how right-leaning is a specific leader?” and on a scale of -50 to +50, Boris Johnson got a +6, Donald Trump got +33. Le Pen was +2.

Some of Le Pen’s economic agenda was more left-leaning than Macron’s. Actually, according to the data, it is more left-winged than Biden’s.

The places where Le Pen is completely in the far-right zone are those of the French society and immigration. Her views regarding religion, specifically Islam. She wants to ban traditional religious clothing in the public domain. But in other aspects, for example, even her anti-European views are often shared by the far-left too and couldn’t, on their own, label her as being far-right.

That, in my opinion, is exactly what makes the discussion surrounding Le Pen, and other similar politicians, superficial and distorted. We are often trying to label them in definitions of old politics, in structures that no longer exist.

Le Pen might be a radical, she might be a populist and extremist in her views. She has plans that include a complete change in the way French politics works and has been working for the past decades. Labeling her as simply far-right is missing a big part of her views, missing a big part of her electorate, and the issues that these millions of people care about.

Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that politics is not a linear straight line but a horseshoe. The French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye created this theory, the Horsehoe Theory of politics. It looks something like this:

This theory is controversial, but I do think we should look at it in the context of the French elections. In traditional politics, it’s hard to shift between right and left. The British parliament, for example, is built in a way where there are two disconnected sections on both sides. In order to move from the coalition to the opposition one actually need to physically cross the aisle with all eyes pointed at him. It’s also true for voters. In a linear political structure, it’s harder to move from one section to the other.

It’s not the same for a horseshoe. When the lines are curved, when the far-right and far-left are closer together, both politicians and voters could more easily shift from one agenda to another. Political agenda becomes more fluid and less defined. One wouldn’t need to cross the gap in the middle with everyone staring, he could simply move along the circle and reach his ideological destination.

Le Pen’s success in the French elections, although finishing as the runner-up, clearly teaches us that old politics is gone. It reminds me of the geographical terms the “Middle-East” or the “Far-East”; Both are terms coined by Europeans that compared regions of the world based on what they saw as the center, their own location.

Could an agenda with 13.5 million French supporters, 42% of the electorate, be shrugged off as being extremist? Hardly. Politics have changed, and the way we look at it should change accordingly.