There's something disturbing about recent stories about the ideological kinship between Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump's chief strategist, and Marine Le Pen, the nationalist candidate running for French president. Isn't nationalism supposed to travel badly across borders? Isn't international solidarity the exclusive province of leftists crying "Workers of the world, unite!"? And aren't anti-elite nationalist populists fighting a rootless, globalist elite that has grown fat on the borderless movement of capital?
Finding the French roots of both Bannon's and Le Pen's ideology is a matter of connecting the dots. Bannon has reportedly expressed admiration for the ideas of Charles Maurras, an ideologist of the Nazi-collaborating Vichy regime in France who pitted the "legal state" — embodied by governments and laws — against a "real state" defined by the people.
Marion Marechal Le Pen, niece of Marine and one of the leading figures in the National Front party, also admired this notion in a speech to French Action — a nationalist group of which Maurras was once a member. Bannon has also cited a French novel, "Camp of the Saints" by Jean Raspail, of which Marine Le Pen is also a longtime fan. The 1973 novel, which is often described as racist, describes "third world" immigrants taking over Europe after Western politicians prove too weak to stop them.