With the results of the first-round of France’s snap parliamentary elections, the future possibilities have shrunk dangerously. Either the far-right obtains, in the second and final round to be held on July 7th, an absolute majority in parliament and therefore forms a government to work under its thumb, or either voters who are loyal to democratic, progressist and humanist values join together to prevent that disaster – over and above the irresponsible positions adopted by some politicians who have lost their ethical compass, and strategic direction.
In the first round of voting on June 30th, the far-right Rassemblement National party flattened the existing political landscape. President Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right alliance Ensemble (together) emerged in tatters, and the conservative Les Républicains party was pulverised. Meanwhile the leftwing alliance, the Nouveau Front Populaire (the New Popular Front), has resisted the far-right onslaught, but insufficiently to change the new situation on its own.
During the day of the first round, the reported high turnout rate prompted hope for the Left, but when the results began coming in during the evening that optimism dimmed, and the perspective of the future formation of a government which would provide a radical alternative of social progress vanished. There would be no absolute majority for the leftwing camp, nor for that of Emmanuel Macron.
The mountain that now faces us is all the higher, and the fight ahead is more necessary than ever. The path towards an inevitable victory for the Rassemblement National (RN), and which has for too long been followed by those who wrongly believe they have nothing to lose from it, preferring it to the eventuality of a government of the Left and Greens, must be blocked.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In these crepuscular days between the two rounds of voting, in face of the threat of seeing democracy die after nightfall, there is only one battle that must now be fought, namely that of preventing the RN from gaining power by voting this coming Sunday for whichever candidate is in a position to win against their far-right opponent.
Not one vote must go missing in this combat against fascism. In face of the looming peril, it is our duty to face the dangers in order of priority, and by doing so reply to a simple and terrible question: are we prepared to allow the far-right to preside over the destiny of our lives?
To hold back the tidal wave released by Macron’s condemnable decision to dissolve parliament at a time when the French far-right was in vigorous form, the leaders of the leftwing and Green parties, allied within the NFP, have all, and without exception, called upon their candidates to systematically stand down in constituencies where another contender has a better chance of beating the RN candidate.
These are what are called “triangular” situations. The second round consists of electing a candidate from among those who failed to garner more than 50% of votes cast in the first round (and who attracted a number of votes that represents at least 12.5% of the registered electorate in the constituency). The mathematical logic of the high turnout meant that in more than 300 constituencies there were a top-three group of candidates to emerge, representing the far-right, the mainstream Left and Right or centre-right. It is in these so-called “triangulars” that the leftwing alliance called on its candidates to stand down if they are the least likely of the three to win against the far-right.
And that can hurt. For example, that now means voters must on Sunday choose Macron’s former prime minister Élisabeth Borne (who oversaw the deeply unpopular pension reforms, and the hardening of the immigration law) in order to beat the RN in her Normandy constituency. Similarly, they must on Sunday choose Guillaume Kasbarian, (junior minister responsible for the hardening of legislation against squatters) to beat the RN in his Chartres constituency, and also hardline interior minister Gérald Darmanin to beat the RN in Darmanin’s constituency in north-east France. In those three cases, the leftwing candidate has stepped down after coming third on June 30th.
But other elements of the so-called “republican arc” (a term describing the political forces that espouse the democratic values of France’s republican constitution), notably from the centre-right and Right, have adopted ambiguous, and even undignified positions on such tactical voting to prevent the victory of an RN candidate, particularly those who have placed the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party on the same level as the far-right, and who refuse to back a vote for an LFI candidate.
It is not difficult, however, to have a clear vision on the issue. In a constituency centred on the north-east town of Amiens, the far-right RN candidate, Nathalie Ribeiro-Billet, came top in the first round last Sunday with close to 41% of votes cast. In second position was the outgoing Member of Parliament, François Ruffin, a dissident member of the LFI party (which this week he announced he will leave), with just less than 34% of votes cast. In third position was Albane Branlant from Macron’s Renaissance party, with just under 23%. Immediately after the results were announced, Branlant, who had little chance of beating the FN in the second round, announced she was standing down in the hope that her electorate, or at least a sufficient part of it, would transfer their votes to Ruffin to prevent the RN candidate from winning. “I make a difference between political opponents and enemies of the [French] republic,” she said.
In the end, the calls by party leaders for worst-placed candidates, like Branlant, to stand down were adhered to by almost all leftwing candidates, and to a lesser degree those in the Macron camp. When the deadline arrived, at 6pm on Tuesday this week, for the formal notifications at prefectures of the candidates who are standing next Sunday, the situation was as follows: in the 306 constituencies where first-round voting had created “triangular” contests for the second round, 221 candidates had stood down.
A French Republic under threat
There was nothing to be expected of the leaders of the Macron camp, responsible for the catastrophe now upon us and the implosion of their movement. In the real world, given the extent of the moral and political ruination, Emmanuel Macron, who has led France as if he was the manager of a small business, would have been told long ago to quit his job. As Mediapart has amply catalogued, the responsibility of the French president in the current impasse is immense. By adopting the language and policies of the RN, he has placed it at the heart of the system, and increased the size of its electorate in record time: in the first round last Sunday, the far-right and its hardline conservative allies garnered 10.6 million votes, compared to 4.2 million votes in the first round of the last parliamentary elections in 2022.
A large number of leftwing supporters allowed Macron a comfortable victory when they voted for him in the second-round playoffs between him and Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022, in the name of the fight against fascism. It was a similar story in 2002, when Jacques Chirac faced Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in that year’s presidential election final round, (when Chirac garnered more than 82% of votes cast). The mobilisation of the leftwing electorate was in order to keep the far-right out, with no expectations of compensation, and instead keeping in mind the struggle ahead to limit the damage and to prepare the future.
It must be remembered by the Gaullists, the democrats, the republicans, humanists, and all those who find themselves at home in the principles of equality, solidarity and fraternity which are at the heart of French history, that from the 1789 French Revolution to the National Resistance Council established during the Second World War occupation of France (and along the way, the Dreyfuss Affair and the anti-fascist mobilisations of the 1930s), France has only been able to save and rebuild itself but through alliances of compromise, by overcoming disagreements without abandoning principles. In a joint open letter entitled “Ensure the defeat of the far-right on July 7th”, many dozens of very diverse associations, along with labour unions, write of next Sunday’s vote: “What is at stake on Sunday radically surpasses what divides us. It is not a question of Right or Left. It is a more essential question that will be played out, namely that of the possibility for us all to live together.”
The enemies of equality
In such dark times, when the threat of the far-right taking power has never been so strong since the Nazi occupation of France, it should be understood that not all things are comparable: the RN is not a political party like any other. Its accession to power would not be simply an aggravation of the conservative policies already in place. It would symbolise the victory of the enemies of equality, and in that sense constitute a tipping point, with the establishment of a political regime that is in total severance with the manner in which France has built itself since 1789.
Originally created by former wartime collaborators and neo fascists, the RN – the re-named Front National – is a party whose ideological matrix is the inequality of human beings. Despite two decades during which it has attempted to clean up its image and appear as if a “normal” party, the policy of “national preference” remains at the heart of its programme, along with the process of prioritising citizens according to their origins.
The compass of equality is in danger. We prefer to defend it against those who harm and betray it than allow it to definitively disappear.
“Save freedom, freedom will save the rest.” That statement by Victor Hugo in Choses vues (Things seen) underlines the importance of defending our fundamental rights which are the guarantor, if they are safe, and even if a little chipped at the edges, of the possibility to mobilise, to demonstrate, to question – in short, to express our democratic vitality.
In the case of a brutal eclipse, as a consequence of the anti-constitutional programme of the RN, we would lose all of the space for protest. The critical mind, inherent to the profession of journalism, would have no place. The counter-powers would be suffocated without the certainty of one day returning. Instead of being able to take to the street to demonstrate, we would be left only with resistance. It is better to be standing up in the combat against the dynamic of fascistization than to fight state fascism on one’s knees.
The substantial difference between the far-right and the rest of the political landscape was clear to the majority of the electorate in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential elections, but is no longer as perceptible today. In digging its ideological saps, the RN has benefited from the indulgence of elites and an amplification in the media, on top of the political confusion of Macronism and the policies of Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande, whose legislation betrayed the working-class sections of the population, and who promoted the stripping of French nationality from those convicted of terrorist offences. The cultural battle was lost. It is dizzying that French billionaire Vincent Bolloré could have placed his TV channels, radio and press titles at the service of the RN in such a short time.
Leaving dystopia behind
There is no longer time to lament this habituation and the tests of strength that were lost. We have just two days to get out of this dystopia into which we have been unwillingly plunged, an Orwellian inversion of values in which peace is war, freedom is slavery, force is ignorance, and truth is disinformation. It is urgent to see clearly, before it is too late. Our role, as journalists, is to help eyes to open wide, and to give back a sense to words in face of those spreading fake news.
In this world with no scruples, the unemployed are considered responsible for unemployment, gender minorities for homophobia and transphobia, women for sexism, and victims of police violence for the injuries they receive. In a terrifying reversal, the far-right is made out to be anti-racist and the Left is presented as anti-Semitic.
And it is perhaps here that one of the stickiest traps of the election campaign was laid. Not by Marine Le Pen, nor by RN party chairman Jordan Bardella. It was Emmanuel Macron who took charge of it on his own. It is a manipulation that consists of placing the far-right and the Left, notably the radical-left LFI party, on the same level (whereas “extremes” exist only in the heads of those who invent them in order to divide and attempt, in vain, to collect votes).
That LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and some of his acolytes have been repeatedly provocative, with their invectives and sectarianism, is a fact. That the LFI, which stands for progressist and humanist values enshrined in the French constitution, be likened to a pack of extremists is a historical nonsense that is all the more dangerous at a moment when the RN is completing the deceptive “de-demonization” of its image.
That it is still possible that questions are to be asked about some within the party’s ranks on the issue of anti-Semitism is also true, but it is a lie to accuse the party, as a whole, of anti-Semitism. That is all the more intolerable when the far-right, intrinsically anti-Semitic as illustrated by some of its candidates in the current election, is now presenting itself as philo-Semitic in order to better stigmatise Muslims.
Exploited by its opponents, the faults of the Left have given the far-right a certificate of respectability at the worst time in history. They have also given the better-off white classes a pretext to reject a project for transforming society, for promoting equality, and social and environmental justice.
At this hour, to those candidates who have not withdrawn in favour of another who can beat the RN, to those media who have already begun compromising themselves, to those French citizens who ‘don’t see the problem’, we want to say this: shame on you, whether on the Left or on the Right, you who feel sheltered in your comfortable environment, because you are white, old, binary and wealthy. What are you prepared to do for women, non-whites, foreigners, immigrants, Muslims, the poor and those who come under the umbrella term LGBTQIA+, all of who face immediate danger?
The story is not about you, nor your bank account, but our future and our common heritage. That of France, as it has constructed itself for more than 200 years, multi-cultural, rich in its differences and memory. That of France which, following the Second World War and the humiliation of the collaborationist Vichy regime, was able to hold up its head by creating a social state which guaranteed, to the poorest and to the wealthiest, security, education, and health.
There is no longer time to convince the convinced. But we are tempted to remind those who are still hesitant about the fact that, given the scores of the leftwing NFP alliance in the first round of the parliamentary elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has no chance of being appointed as prime minister – unlike Jordan Bardella.
The question therefore is to know whether you are prepared to renounce the principles of our country by handing over power to a party that is racist and anti-social, aggressive towards minorities, anti-ecologist and pro-Kremlin, and which would destroy our public services, wipe out our public freedoms, and reduce the status of France in the world. The question, otherwise put, is to know what you are ready to do to block the path of the RN.
One must not fool oneself, the horizon will remain clouded whatever the outcome. Emmanuel Macron and his predecessors have broken the country. The numbers of supporters of the RN are greater than ever. The alternance of the parties of the Left and the ecologists is for another time. Even if the danger of fascism is momentarily avoided, the prospect of a coalition that is as wide as it is limp can only be despairing and raise fears for the future. But civil society will meet the challenge. We will have the space to rebuild and resist, with two priorities: to fight against racism and for dignified lives.
As of Monday morning it will be time to mobilise, to mend and to make progress with isues of rights. We will not have a short memory. It will be time to do away with those who placed us at the cliff edge. There will be everything to do, but we will have our hands free.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse