French government prepared coup if Le Pen won presidential election
By
Alex Lantier
19 May 2017
According to an extraordinary report published yesterday in L’Obs magazine, top members of France’s Socialist Party (PS) government prepared to launch a coup d’état if Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN) won the May 7 presidential run-off.
The purpose of the coup was not to keep Le Pen from taking office. Rather, it was designed to crush left-wing protests against Le Pen’s victory, impose martial law, and install Le Pen in power in an enforced alliance with a PS-led government.
“No one dared imagine what would happen the day after the run-off if Marine Le Pen won. A social explosion could be expected,” wrote L’Obs. It explained, “The strategists who conceived this plan B supposed that after the National Front victory, the country would be on the verge of chaos: state of shock, Republican demonstrations, but above all extreme violence, especially coming from the ultra left.”
“The plan was never written down black on white, but everything was really ready,” L’Obs wrote. “Its execution was so precisely planned that a handful of members of the government, chiefs of staff, and top state officials can still describe it from memory, step by step. … To be sure of the details, L’Obs verified its report with three different sources in the outgoing government and in institutions of the state.”
The plan reportedly entailed launching massive police operations to put France on lockdown, and a PS power grab set into motion by a refusal of Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to step down. A top state official involved in the plan told L’Obs, “The country would have been totally shut down. The government would have had only one priority:…