Emmanuel Macron’s nonchalant dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale has plunged our tired country into an extremely compressed electoral campaign, reduced to botched negotiations, caricatured arguments and truncated debates – the exact opposite of what it needed. The panic-stricken immediacy of social media and non-stop controversy channels has prevailed at a time when we should have finally begun to restore the long-term aspect of collective deliberation.
The president’s defeatist decision, on the evening of the June 9 European elections, has confirmed his isolation and his inability to use his remaining three years in office to redefine a policy agenda and reconstitute a majority, in order to tackle the root causes of the very thing he claimed to be fighting, the continuing rise of the Rassemblement National (RN, far-right). This dangerous situation could lead, after the two rounds of France’s snap legislative elections on June 30 and July 7, to the far right seizing power through elections, for the first time, should it obtain an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale – a possibility that no observer has yet ventured to rule out.
The brouhaha of invectives and figures that has stood in for the campaign must not lead us to lose sight of the historic significance of such an event, should it occur. Faced with this dire possibility, Le Monde, whose newsroom is statutorily independent of all powers, cannot avoid the issue, even if its vocation is neither to support a party nor to give voting instructions. This reserve does not prevent us from recalling the values inherited from our 80-year history, which may lead us to identify threats.
Devaluation of the ‘republican front’
As we wrote just before the European elections, the far right’s access to the controlling levers of our democracies constitutes the main political danger facing Western countries. It is further exacerbated by the other perils – wars, climate catastrophes, geopolitical tensions, economic and social upheavals – that are shaking our world.
To ward this off in France, right from the first round of voting, a significant mobilization is important – which many voters have already taken into account, if turnout projections are to be believed. Depending on individual opinions, there appears to be a wide choice of firm republican and sincerely democratic candidates in each constituency: From those of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance, which brings together left-wing parties, to those of the Les Républicains (LR, right) party who have condemned the betrayal of their president, Eric Ciotti, not to mention those candidates of the presidential coalition who have not allowed themselves to be led astray by the false equivalence that Macron’s camp has tried to establish between the NFP and the RN. One criterion should guide choices: A clear commitment, in the event of a three-way run-off in the second round of voting, to step aside in favor of the candidate best placed to beat the far right.
Blocking, yet again? Yes, once again, resolutely. Heedless of the jeers from cynics of all stripes who have been mocking this civic-minded behavior for years. This devaluation of the traditional “republican front” is the flip side of the RN’s mainstreaming, the second flank of the far right’s pincer movement. Reactionary commentators beg to differ, but the limits of the republican field are not determined by gains or losses in the cultural battle between right and left. All genuine democrats, whatever their political stripe, know how to discern them. Those who hope for the worst need all the bad faith in the world to not recognize that there are measures that are inherently incompatible with our Republic.
Classifying citizens is one of them. The announcement by RN president Jordan Bardella that he would exclude dual nationals from certain sensitive professions is an admission of the persistence in the party of an age-old far-right obsession with “false French” people, and a damning revelation of the ideological, anti-Semitic and racist foundations on which the Le Pen brand still stands. The challenge against the right of people born on French soil to obtain French nationality is another major one, as it aims to do away with the 1889 law that is the republican foundation of our nationality code, on which our system of integration is based, and which also includes the methods by which many French people prove their nationality.
Stigmatization based on people’s origins or appearances, the scapegoating of entire categories of the population, and much more. It is striking to note that, as the RN gradually abandons most of the incoherent and impracticable proposals that made up its economic policy platform, its commitments are gradually being reduced to these fundamentals, which are as much a sign of its true nature as many of its candidates’ backgrounds and statements.
In all these fields, as in its relations with foreign powers and with Europe, and in its vision of the evolution of social mores, the RN therefore follows a historical course that runs counter to the one that has borne France since the Revolution. Yielding any power to the RN means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone. All the more so with a family clan, which has become a small business dedicated to its own interests, at the helm.
A triple ‘brutalization’
Can this bleak prospect reunite a solid republican front in the face of voters who, by voting RN, are above all seeking to get rid of the current body of politicians? In any case, it has not dissuaded former officials and essayists drawn with ties to the left from considering that, in their ranking of the present perils, the one posed by the NFP was much greater than that of the far right.
Is this another effect of the panic that characterizes this truncated campaign? Indeed, ahead of the first round of voting, the electoral landscape appears to be suffering from the effects of a triple “brutalization.” From the center, President Macron himself has driven this verbal violence right to the heart of the campaign, notably by declaring that he feared a “civil war” if the RN or the NFP won.
These remarks are staggering coming from a president, and have only extended the way in which he has continuously created tension. To rebuild on the ruins of the French political landscape from which he emerged seven years ago, by starting from its center, would have required humility and constant attention to others. Yet Macron clearly has none of these virtues, and his entourage has never been designed to compensate for his flaws. His narcissism has ultimately exposed him to greater rejection than that which had brought him to power, and has threatened his coalition’s entire central bloc with collapse.
On the left, it is Jean-Luc Mélenchon who is complicating the process of unity. Once again, his unpopularity is linked to his choice of verbal violence and, for several years now, a strategy of permanent confrontation. This has been exacerbated by his sectarian approach to power, which led him to eliminate several of his former close allies, who are now his opponents, from his party La France Insoumise’s nominations as part of the NFP. Moreover, his strategy of making the Israel-Palestine conflict central to the European election campaign, as well as his provocations and ambiguous statements on the subject, has exposed him personally, as well as his party, to accusations of anti-Semitism. Today, members of his party are up in arms about this “instrumentalization,” when it would have been far more convincing to have said a few clear words as early as October 7, 2023 about the massacre, hostage-taking and atrocities committed by Hamas in its terrorist operation.
On the far right, the brutalization was committed in the recent past. It’s ironic that its perpetrator, Eric Zemmour, has now lost his grip on his political strategy, and has been wrung out by the Le Pen clan. It was this former journalist who, beginning with his columns in the newspaper Le Figaro, followed by his show on the television channel CNews and then his presidential campaign, popularized the most nauseatingly racist theories in the public debate. He is the one who helped accustom affluent social classes and older age groups, who have little contact with immigrant populations, to discriminatory diatribes. This verbal violence has enabled Marine Le Pen, like Bardella, to avoid overdoing it today. The words have been spoken, the concepts disseminated. Before he was pushed out of the limelight by his former rival’s resentment, it should not be forgotten that Zemmour was media mogul Vincent Bolloré‘s first protégé. Bolloré now supports Bardella, as part of the mix of commercialism and ideology that has led the communications magnate to put his whole media empire to the far right’s service. This collusion is disastrous for public debate, and all the more reason for us to get mobilized against a far-right rise to power, which would undermine our democracy and dishonor our nation.