A risky gamble has massively backfired for French president Emmanuel Macron.
On June 30, he suffered defeat in the first round of legislative elections at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). After having been trounced by the far-right party in the European elections three weeks ago, Macron called a snap election. His bet was that French voters, fearing an ascendant Far Right, would rally around him, and that winning a new majority would grant him renewed legitimacy.
But with an unusually high turnout of around 67 percent, RN emerged as the clear winner in Sunday’s elections with 33.2 percent of the vote. Macron’s alliance, Ensemble, came a distant third with 21 percent — bested by the left-wing coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), which gained 28.1 percent. A run-off election will take place on July 7 and shape the contours of the new National Assembly, and although Macron will remain president until 2027, RN is projected to win between 230 and 280 of the 577 seats. If the party exceeds these projections and wins 289 seats, Le Pen’s young protégé Jordan Bardella could become prime minister.
By calling snap elections, Macron opened the door for the Far Right to come to power for the first time in France since World War II — and he and French centrism are squarely to blame for RN’s popularity.
Centrism Has Helped Pave the Way for Le Pen and the Far Right
Since he first took office in 2017, Macron has governed with an authoritarian and neoliberal agenda that has explicitly drawn from the Far Right’s program and rhetoric. His tenure has been marked by cuts and austerity; attacks on pensions, welfare, and civil liberties; and harsh repression against protests. He has helmed an anti-worker regime, and increasingly drawn from the Far Right’s racist program and rhetoric, particularly on Islam and immigration. More recently, Macron has cracked down on mobilizations for Palestine.
The centrists’ shimmy to the right has predictably failed at peeling off voters from parties like RN. Instead, the Far Right is stronger than ever — its toxic brand tempered, and its reactionary program more normalized. RN has benefited by capitalizing on hatred for Macron and his extremely unpopular neoliberal policies.
As Nathaniel Flakin described following the disastrous EU elections:
<BLOCKQUOTE>The center’s insistence on policies rejected by their voters (in the name of democracy, no less!) allows the Right to present itself as a reasonable — and sometimes even rebellious — alternative to the capitalist status quo. Many working-class and poor EU citizens are being drawn to right-wing parties who claim to support the “little guy” against an elite and unaccountable EU bureaucracy.
To be clear, the Far Right is no ally to Europe’s workers and oppressed, and over time, RN has abandoned its more populist economic promises in response to French capitalists’ concerns. For example, it has backtracked on its vow to lower the retirement age to 60 and repeal last year’s unpopular pension reforms. In this sense, the far-right party’s economic policies have become more pro-business, in line with those of neoliberal governments of the traditional Right, as well as with the Macron regime itself. Bardella, for his part, has been successfully courting French business leaders in backdoor meetings.
The party also remains a huge threat to those suffering racist oppression in France, and has retained the racism that has long been part of its DNA, encapsulated in the slogan “France for the French.” As revolutionary socialist candidate Elsa Marcel from Révolution Permanente described, in the days leading up to the election
RN stepped up its racist attacks on foreigners, including those with dual citizenship, whom it wants to ban from strategic government posts. It has reiterated its plan to eliminate droit du sol (birthright citizenship) and replace it with droit du sang (the “right of blood,” citizenship based on ethnicity).
The fear of a far-right French regime is legitimate, and the prospect of an RN government is chilling. But closing ranks around neoliberal centrists like Emmanuel Macron in the name of lesser-evilism will only bolster these reactionary forces.
The Working Class Can Stop the Far Right
To stop the Far Right, France needs an independent, working-class alternative, and united mobilizations by workers and the oppressed. Importantly, this means that left and center-left alliances of convenience like the NFP do not pose a solution for France’s crisis. As Marcel explained, this coalition is “an agreement between apparatchiks to save their parliamentary seats,” rather than a front to stop the Far Right.
Indeed, reformist parties on the left like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise have repeatedly made concessions to the center and to the right, and made its programs compatible with the interests of French capitalism and imperialism. During times of class struggle, these parties have channeled mobilizations into electoralism. In this sense, the NFP’s opportunism and moderate policies will not stop the rise of the Far Right, nor attacks from centrists like Macron.
In recent years, France has seen several uprisings, including massive strikes against Macron’s pension bill and mobilizations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Rather than steer these forces into support for reformism or lesser-evil candidates, workers, women, youth, immigrants, and other oppressed groups must organize an independent, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist alternative, and reject the racist, anti-worker political programs that have ushered in the Far Right. Révolution Permanente’s candidates, Anasse Kazib and Elsa Marcel, stood in the election to offer such an alternative. As Marcel describes:
We want to be the voice of all those who oppose the neoliberal counterreforms that are worsening the masses’ living and working conditions. We want to be the voice of queer activists and young people in the poor neighborhoods facing police repression. … It’s impossible to fight the RN alongside people who support police brutality, the criminalization of Palestine solidarity, and new racist laws to take away people’s citizenship.
In France and across Europe, revolutionary socialists can show the way forward in the fight against the Right.
Originally Published: 2024-07-01 20:05:26
Source link
