Marine Le Pen’s surprise supporters

AUBERVILLIERS, France — A man clutches a bag filled with cigarettes, hawking his illicit merchandise outside a kebab shop on a nondescript street in the center of Aubervilliers, a town on the outskirts of Paris — “Marlboro, Malboro! Camel, Camel!”

Around him, elderly bearded men, veiled women and youths in their teens or early twenties, mostly male, fill the streets. The young men congregate at intersections or walk in packs, spreading out across the sidewalks. Almost all are dressed in the latest sportswear; designer trainers are ubiquitous.

The famous ring road that circles the French capital — aptly named le périphérique, or the “periphery” — functions like the ancient borders of The Pale, the government-controlled section of land England carved out in Ireland in the late Middle Ages. Suburbs, or banlieues like Aubervilliers, that lie just “beyond the pale” of the périphérique are cut off from metropolitan Paris, a 30 minute subway ride away.

Here, the city’s elegant Art Deco architecture has been replaced with identikit high rises. In place of fashionable bistros and bars, the streets are filled with stalls selling everything from shoes to towels for a few euros. A siren blares. A school sits off the town’s main drag, Avenue de la République. It’s enmeshed in wire and steel.

Aubervilliers, like many other banlieues, has a depressed economy and a majority immigrant and predominantly Muslim population. More than a quarter of its inhabitants are from non-EU countries — mostly from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.

“If she wins, it will be a good thing. The left and right are all bastards. They promise things and they don’t deliver. Let’s vote for Le Pen and see what happens.” — Aubervilliers resident

In late 2005, Aubervilliers was one of the sites of mass demonstrations among banlieue residents against the French state. Sparked by the death of two young boys hiding from police in Clichy-sous-Bois, the protests quickly spread across neighboring towns. France declared a state of national emergency as fires raged. Some 9,000 cars were destroyed, and public buildings and businesses were defaced during the weeks-long riots.

The rioters were largely French-born young Muslims, generally the children of North African immigrants, who face bleak job prospects and feel alienated from French society.

Christened an “intifada” by some, the riots gave succor to France’s far-right National Front party, whose then leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, declared they vindicated his long-standing anti-immigration and anti-Muslim statements.

In recent years, a series of terrorist attacks — most notably the mass killing of concert-goers at the Bataclan theatre in Paris in November 2015 that marked the worst attack on French soil since World War II — has strained relations between France’s Muslim community and wider French society further. The only beneficiary has been the country’s far-right party, which has capitalized on fear and mistrust.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie and currently on trial on charges of hate speech for comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France, is expected to come in first or second in the first round of the French elections scheduled in April.

A vocal Donald Trump supporter, Le Pen even has a chance of following in the tycoon’s footsteps and clinching the presidency. One would think that the country’s five million Muslims would be unanimous in opposing her; but to many residents of the banlieues, Le Pen is simply another politician — no better or worse than any other candidate, and just as likely to disappoint.

* * *

Three young men lean against a railing at the road corner, just a few yards from an Islamic bookshop. All are Muslim, they say. One, who wears a bright, reflective jacket, is a driver and mechanic.

“I’m not against Le Pen,” he tells me. “If she wins, it will be a good thing. The left and right are all bastards. They promise things and they don’t deliver. Let’s vote for Le Pen and see what happens. It won’t change anything for us.”

For citizens of France who live as outsiders, the system is beyond repair — so why not Le Pen? | Richard Bouhet/AFP via Getty Images

He was unconcerned by the Le Pen family’s polemical comments about people like him. Le Pen may not be “pro-Muslim” but “she won’t be able to do anything,” he says. “There are too many of us.”

“We have a saying in France,” he adds. “When it’s Ramadan [the annual Muslim month of fasting that commemorates the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad] the French economy slows, and when Ramadan ends it starts up again. And you can see it: during that month the streets are empty.”

Despite the terror attacks and the National Front’s resurgence, life has not become harder for Muslims over the past few years, he said. “Look, we have no problems — the Christians are our brothers.” He pauses. “With the Jews … things are little more complicated.”

What’s clear is the French state is against Muslims, he continues, and goes on to cite conspiracy theories, including a European plot to create a “new Eldorado with Israel as its capital.”

It’s almost prayer time at the mosque around the corner, a plain, run-down building with a blue door. A sign announcing its opening and closing hours is written in both French and Arabic.

A man in his mid-thirties leaves the building as I arrive. Samba is a delivery driver from the Ivory Coast, and he wears a black puffy jacket and a beanie hat. He has been in France since the early 2000s.

“I will surprise you,” he says. “I cannot vote, but if I could, I would maybe vote for Le Pen. The other politicians lack coherence. At least she is honest. And anyway, once she is in the system, she won’t be able to do anything too bad.”

“People just don’t understand Islam,” he adds. “And if [Le Pen] gets into power, it would allow us to better explain Islam, because we will become more visible. Islam is so simple and we have many intellectuals who can explain it properly. Real Muslims must speak on behalf of Muslims.”

Samba is equally strident about debunking the type of conspiracy theories that are common among young men in Aubervilliers. “They are nonsense,” he says.

And the French system of laïcité, the enforced secularism that lies at the heart of French government? “It just has to be implemented equally; right now it singles out Islam a lot,” he said. “And it doesn’t work effectively.”

The prevailing consensus of ambivalence — and even guarded optimism — toward the National Front among the community its leader most openly despises would shock most pollsters.

“Look, I don’t defend Islam and all Muslim people on principle,” he says. “If I see a Muslim spitting in the street, I’m not going to defend him. But the problem is people see that and say it’s all Muslims.”

* * *

The neighboring banlieue of Pantin is a short walk away. It’s one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe and also boasts a high Muslim population. A flag advocating “solidarité” with Palestine hangs from a balcony above a kebab shop. Advertising at a bus stop urges residents to vote in the upcoming presidential elections: “The right to vote: a superpower,” it reads.

Here, I meet Jamal, a man in his late sixties with a thinning grey beard. Le Pen’s political platform does not appear to elicit great concern from him either.

“If Le Pen exists, there is a reason for it,” he tells me. “And that is that 30 percent of French people agree with her. I don’t judge her supporters. We are seeing the same thing in Germany. As long as she remains within the limits of the law, I don’t care.”

Most people on the left secretly agree with her, he figures. “They just don’t say it.”

Life, he goes on, has become harder for French Muslims in recent years. “Islam is now blamed for all that is wrong,” he says. “Many of the people who carry out these atrocities are not real Muslims. We have a problem of language. They call these terrorists Salafists, but I am a Salafist, and that just means that I follow the teachings of the Prophet. Nothing more. It’s like being Christian and being a Jesuit.”

Aubervilliers burned in 2005 during mass demonstrations among banlieue residents against the French state | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

“Many of these things should be about personal choice,” he adds. “If a 15-year old girl wants to wear a miniskirt, that is her choice. So why can’t a 15-year old girl wear a hijab? Politics has nothing to do with it. And politicians won’t change anything anyway.”

* * *

It is perhaps not surprising the banlieues contain a wide range of European Islam. Some young French-born Muslims disaffected with life in France are most receptive to misleading information they find on the internet; others, foreign-born like Samba, hold a more nuanced view; others still, older like Jamal, adhere to a more personal, less political understanding of their faith.

But the prevailing consensus of ambivalence — and even guarded optimism — toward the National Front among the community its leader most openly despises would shock most pollsters.

Across the world, voters are electing populists to “drain the swamp” and punish the “elites.” In the Parisian banlieues, the prevailing attitude is that it hardly matters which politician is elected, because they’re convinced it won’t make any difference to their lives.

For these people, citizens of France who live as outsiders, the system is beyond repair.

David Patrikarakos is a contributing writer at POLITICO.