#France Unbowed

[not-your-lawyer]

Good English-language article for folks.

We don’t need another major world power to have right-wing ideologues in office.

If you hear something that is the collective sigh of relief of every sigle decent french person

[zvaigzdelasas]

Covering an entire classroom wall in a Tunisian synagogue in Belleville, an immigrant haven on the slopes of northeastern Paris, are the names of 1,100 Jewish children who were arrested by French police, deported to Auschwitz and killed by the Nazis during World War II.[...]

Despite this dark history, some Jews in Belleville are doing the once unthinkable and voting in France’s National Assembly election for the far-right National Rally party, which is leading in polls for Sunday’s runoff.

One of the party’s founders, Pierre Bousquet, was a French fighter in Hitler’s Waffen-SS. Another, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the party from its birth in 1972 until 2011, dismissed Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” of history.[...]

It’s also a measure of how much the French left has enraged Jewish voters with its ferocious attacks on Israel and Zionism as it tries to build support among French Muslims, a substantially larger group of voters.[...]

Judith Benchetrit said she’d voted for the National Rally in the first round — and asked whether anyone else had watched a harrowing TV documentary the night before about the Oct. 7 attack.

It was her deep loathing of the far-left France Unbowed movement and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, that led her to back the far right.

Mélenchon “campaigns on Palestine, so now he’s got all the Palestinians and every Arab in France behind him,” said Benchetrit, who is 32 and unemployed.

The National Rally has recast itself as an ally of Jews and Israel. If the party wins a majority in the assembly, its leader, Jordan Bardella, could become prime minister, putting France under the far right’s control for the first time since the fall of the Vichy regime that collaborated with the German occupation from 1940 to 1944.[...]

Sonia Lelloum, a daughter of Tunisian Jewish immigrants, said she’d resisted the temptation to vote for the National Rally in previous elections because of its Nazi ties. This time, she said, she went ahead and did it because she likes the party’s crusade against immigration.[...]

Most worrisome to [some] is the constant confounding of Israel, Zionism and Jews.[...]

One of the most stunning illustrations of the new opening to the far right came last month when the renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, 88, an icon to many Jews in France, told French television that if forced to choose between the National Rally and the country’s largest left-wing party, France Unbowed, he would pick the National Rally.

6 Jul 24

[the-bibrarian]

Paris, yesterday (03/23/23). This is an excerpt from a video by journalist Amar Taoualit posted on twitter

This is what they’re doing to a peaceful, registered-with-the-proper-authorities march.

You can hear protesters shouting “children! there are children!” and “that’s my grandfather! my grandfather is on the ground!”

I think some families felt safe going because traditionally, union-backed, “registered” marches are peaceful and the riot police waits until they officially end, when only the more radical protesters are left, to attack. Not saying that is fine, but there was a tacit agreement for peace during the first hours of a protest. (That’s exactly what happened in Lyon yesterday, and there were also a few kids among protesters. It ended up being fine but it made me very anxious to see them, and it looks like I was right to worry.)

Things turned extremely violent in the night. I don’t feel like chronicling it, but suffice to say there were more that 900 fires in Paris. I don’t know what to think of the overwhelming silence from international media on the subject.

Anyway, I know that in principle we should all be able to protest and the police shouldn’t attack, and we’re supposed to be a democracy and we shouldn’t bow down to wanna-be autocrats that want to suppress our voices, etc.

La réalité c’est que pour quelques temps en tout cas, il faut laisser nos enfants à la maison, et que si vous êtes âgé, malade (asthmatique !), déjà blessé, personne handicapée, etc. il vaut peut-être mieux passer votre tour pour ces manifs-là. Il y a d’autres façons d’agir.

Notamment, je suis sûre que les syndicats ont besoin d’aide logistique et d’argent, et LFI, dont les députés sont sur le terrain, sur les piquets de grève, a certainement toujours besoin de plus de militants (j’ai pas ma carte chez eux pour être claire, mais je pense que c’est le parti qui soutient le plus sincèrement le mouvement).

Les députés LFI Louis Boyard (au centre) et Carlos Martens Bilongo (à droite), dans une manifestation le 20 mars. Photo de @teamroscoes (merci !!)

La député LFI Mathilde Panot au piquet de grève des éboueurs de Vitry-sur-Seine le 16 mars (photo de son twitter)

^ these are pictures of lawmakers from the leftist France Unbowed party participating in protests.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — The Jewish French-Moroccan journalist Ruth Elkrief — who has delivered TV news in France for over 30 years — found herself at the center of the story when she was placed under police protection in December.

Elkrief received the security detail after an online attack from the far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Mélenchon charged her with hatred against Muslims after she challenged one of his colleagues during an on-air interview about the Israel-Hamas war.

“Ruth Elkrief. Manipulator. If we don’t insult Muslims, this fanatic is outraged,” Mélenchon said of the journalist, adding that she “reduces all political life to her contempt for Muslims.”

Mélenchon, leader of the far-left party La France Insoumise, known as LFI or, in English, France Unbowed, posted his comments moments after Elkrief conducted a heated interview with LFI lawmaker Manuel Bompard on her TV channel, La Chaîne Info, on Dec. 3. Elkrief asked Bompard about his party’s refusal to condemn Hamas and its characterization of the militants as “resistance fighters” after their Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. She also asked about the party leaders’ decision to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide,” and whether this language might provoke civil unrest in France.

In response, Bompard referenced warnings from the United Nations that the Palestinian people were at risk of genocide without a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Elkrief in turn quoted the French historian Vincent Duclert, who has said of Gaza’s high death toll, “Even a frightening humanitarian situation is not enough to qualify as genocide.”

Elkrief, who says she “came out” as Jewish to her viewers after Oct. 7, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she merely did her job of debating an interviewee and dismissed Mélenchon’s accusation of Islamophobia. According to Elkrief, she was challenging the positions of France’s far-left political class — not French Muslims, whom she does not believe to be well represented by LFI even though nearly 70% of them voted for the party in the 2022 national elections.

“Most French Muslims don’t support Hamas and they don’t support all these catastrophes,” she said. “They can of course fight for a Palestinian state — and I agree with that — but they are not agreeing with Hamas and terrorism.”

Nonetheless, Mélenchon’s charge prompted a wave of threats against the Jewish journalist and raised an alarm for French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. Darminin said he decided to provide police protection because Mélenchon “put a target on the back of Ruth Elkrief, who already faced many threats as a journalist [and] was just doing her job.”

The government was on high alert for domestic attacks responding to the Israel-Hamas war. Mélenchon’s statement came the day after a knife-wielding man killed a German tourist and injured two others near the Eiffel Tower, telling police he was angry about the fate of Gaza and “so many Muslims dying in Afghanistan and in Palestine.”

While it’s typical for domestic attacks to increase in France during conflicts in Israel and the Palestinian territories, a recent surge in antisemitism has been especially pronounced. Darmanin reported over 1,500 antisemitic incidents in the six weeks after Oct. 7 — a three-fold increase from the total documented in all of 2022 — including desecrated Jewish graves and the stabbing of a Jewish woman in Lyon whose door was marked with a swastika.

Whether or not Mélenchon planned for an antisemitic backlash against Elkrief, his choice of language on X was loaded, according to Dorian Bell, a professor researching France’s history of race and antisemitism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“To accuse a Jewish member of the media of ‘manipulation’ arguably draws on long-standing antisemitic tropes about Jewish control of the media,” Bell told JTA.

Mélenchon’s words landed in the middle of a polarizing fallout from the Israel-Hamas War in France, home to one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe (about 5 million) and the world’s third-largest Jewish community after Israel and the United States (about 500,000).

French authorities met the wave of antisemitic incidents with a crackdown on pro-Palestinian rallies. Darminin attempted to impose a blanket ban on demonstrations denouncing Israel’s military campaign, which he declared “likely to generate disturbances to public order.” Although the ban was overturned, local authorities can still block protests on a case-by-case basis, prompting an outcry from some French citizens who accuse the government of suppressing free expression in support of Palestinians.

France’s Jews and Muslims have both experienced a painful recent history, including institutionalized discrimination against Muslim immigrants and Islamic terrorist attacks that targeted a Jewish school in 2012 and a Jewish supermarket in 2015. The reverberations of the Israel-Hamas war in France have further shaped a perception, solidifying for decades, that the country’s antisemitism and Islamophobia can be collapsed into a Jewish-Muslim conflict.

Michel Wieviorka, a Jewish French sociologist who studies violence and terrorism, told JTA there is no evidence that antisemitic incidents are predominantly driven by French Muslims. In fact, most of the perpetrators behind the recent spike in incidents — particularly non-violent ones, such as property damage and graffiti — are unknown. Between Oct. 7 and Nov. 15, 1,518 reports of antisemitic acts resulted in 571 arrests, Darmanin announced in November.

“Nobody knows exactly who is acting,” said Wieviorka. “Many people believe that most of these acts come from people with immigrant origins, but they can also come from the extreme right. For instance, I know some cases of destroyed graves in Jewish cemeteries — these attacks usually come from the extreme right, not from Muslims or Arabs.”

For Elkrief, Oct. 7 marked a turning point both personally and professionally. The 63-year-old journalist was born in Meknes, Morocco, and moved to France with her family when she was a teenager. (A remaining synagogue in Meknes bears her family name.) She started her long career at the French desk of the Associated Press in 1984. She spent 14 years at TF1, the oldest TV channel in France, helped found two news channels — LCI in 1993 and BFM TV in 2005 — and has hosted an LCI show about French politics since 2021.

She is also the great-niece of Chalom Messas, who was Morocco’s chief rabbi in the 1960s and 1970s until immigrating to Israel in 1978, when he became the chief Sephardic rabbi of Jerusalem. Elkrief is part of France’s small Liberal Jewish community and maintains Jewish traditions, keeping kosher at home and gathering the family for Shabbat evenings — including her two daughters and a newborn granddaughter. (Liberal Judaism in France is most similar to Reform Judaism in the United States.)

In all her years on air, Elkrief never spoke about her Jewish identity on TV before Oct. 7. She felt obliged to keep a “poker face” about her private life until the Hamas attacks, when she was moved to share more — fueled by her fear of rising antisemitism and enabled by her recent position as a commentator.

“I could explain where I was coming from and how much I was anxious about antisemitism in France after the 7th of October,” said Elkrief. “I called it my ‘coming out.’ I’ve since had some opportunities to speak about the conflict as a French editorialist, but also as a French Jew, for the first time in my life.”

On Oct. 9, Elkrief told her viewers that she was born in Morocco and lived there until early 1974, when she was 13. Her parents, both descended from generations of Moroccan Jews, feared regional tensions in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel fended off attacks from Arab countries. They went to France because they believed their children would have a safer life there.

“When I came at that time, I couldn’t imagine that there would be antisemitism in France,” Elkrief told JTA.

Worried about antisemitism gaining currency in French politics, Elkrief has criticized far-left factions heavily on her show. In addition to her dispute with Bompard, she blasted LFI for boycotting a march against antisemitism in November.

France’s traditional left, which encompasses socialist and communist parties, has nearly collapsed and left the more radical, controversy-dogged LFI in power, said Wieviorka. Meanwhile, the far-right National Rally — including anti-immigration leader Marine Le Pen, whose father and predecessor is a convicted Holocaust revisionist — has escaped the same censure for antisemitism during Israel’s war on Gaza, largely by proclaiming support for Israel.

“My idea is that they hate Arabs, Islam and migrants so much that they consider they have to be fighting on the other side,” said Wieviorka.

Bell cautioned against focusing exclusively on what is often described as the “new antisemitism” on the far left. The “old antisemitism” on the far-right never went away, he argued, but has only been masked by pro-Israel sentiment. Indeed, Bell said that historically antisemitic tropes — particularly those depicting an invasion of Jews too different or unassimilable to become truly French — have merely been recycled by the far-right to stigmatize Muslim immigrants.

And even if this narrative now primarily targets Muslims, Jews are not free from the conspiratorial discourse, said Bell. He pointed out that while members of the National Rally may not explicitly attack Jews, they sometimes use euphemisms for Jewish “elites” whom they blame for engineering mass migration, in a French version of the “great replacement�� theory that has fueled violence around the world.

“When Marine Le Pen talks about ‘cosmopolitan nomads’ who are encouraging migration and destroying European nations, she has a tendency to mention Jewish French political figures — Jacques Attali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,” said Bell. “I don’t think that’s an accident.”

Elkrief and Mélenchon have one thing in common: They are both among the estimated 836,000 Moroccan immigrants in France. (Mélenchon, 72, was born in Tangier and lived there until he was 12.) Elkrief said she is a strong believer in the “Republic,” which in France denotes an idea that there are only equal individuals in the public sphere, no minorities or ethnic groups. The country’s principle of “laïcité,” loosely and imprecisely translated as “secularism,” enshrines in French law the state’s neutrality between religions and confines religious symbols and practices to the private sphere — a pillar that Elkrief believes can protect France from discrimination against both Jews and Muslims.

“I don’t want to be defined by my religion, and I don’t want other French people to be defined by their religion,” said Elkrief. “I believe in the French Republic staying a space of debate, where religion is a private question.”

[troythecatfish]

Jean-Luc Melenchon, a key figure in the leftist coalition known as the New People's Front, has affirmed his commitment to recognise the State of Palestine following his coalition's success in the recent French parliamentary elections.

The New People's Front, a coalition composed of four left-wing parties, emerged as the dominant political force with 178 seats in the second round of voting. The largest party within this coalition, France Unbowed, is led by Melenchon himself.

Source: Mintpress

[collapsedsquid]

French President Emmanuel Macron ruled out naming a prime minister from the leftist New Popular Front alliance and will instead start a new round of consultations on Tuesday with parties to try to form a new government, Macron's office said. Realising a government led by the New Popular Front (NFP) would immediately face a no-confidence vote in parliament from all other parties, Macron will confer with party heads and political leaders, the statement said on Monday. The NFP is a broad alliance of parties ranging from the moderate Socialists to Jean-Luc Melenchon's far-left France Unbowed. [...] No grouping emerged from the snap election earlier this summer with a majority, with the vote evenly split between the New Popular Front, Macron's centrist bloc and the far-right National Rally. [...] Leaders from France's far-right National Rally said earlier on Monday their party will block any prime ministerial candidate from the New Popular Front, narrowing Macron's options to resolve the stalemate. Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the political tag team that runs the National Rally, met with Macron on Monday. After their one-hour meeting, Bardella said the NFP was a "danger" for the country.

With the vote evenly split, surely macron's party can simply join with the NPF to form a government and simply ignore the National Rally if he wants to, I'm not sure if there's some complication with the french political system or if the author is being intentionally stupid here.

[thebusylilbee]

OH THANK FUCKING GOD

[wingedalpacacupcake]

French deputies protect mobilised students from France's Sciences Po dur...

[athena5898]

(PrR) (Al Mayadeen) - Left-wing French MP Alma Dufour said that there have been two assassination attempts on Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise political party [Unbowed France] by the French far-right and the Israeli regime

Dufour also said that they regularly receive death threats from Zionists and the French far-right.

Read more here: https://en.mdn.tv/8BHf

[eretzyisrael]

By CANAAN LIDOR

Prominent French Jews lament the electoral success of a political bloc that features a far-left party widely regarded as antisemitic in the country’s parliamentary elections.

This reaction is in response to news that the New Popular Front, which includes the Socialist Party and the France Unbowed far-left party, or LFI, garnered the highest share of the vote in today’s final round, with 175 to 205 seats according to a preliminary count, followed by the Ensemble! party of President Emmanuel Macron (150 to 175) and then the far-right National Rally (115-150).

Moshe Sebbag, a rabbi for the Synagogue de la Victoire, tells The Times of Israel that “it seems France has no future for Jews.” He advises young French Jews to leave for Israel.

“But people my age, who are 50, 60, we’ve made our life here and we fear for the future of our children,” he says. His assessment is not due solely to the left-wing bloc’s success, but to the mainstreaming of antisemitism in general in France, he says.

“The left is once again kidnapped by the infamous Melenchon. Divisive language. Hate of the republic on the lips. Around him right now are some incarnations of the new antisemitism. A chilling moment. A stain: Continue to fight against these people,” French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy writes on X.

Jean-Luc Melenchon is the leader of LFI, and in a 2017 speech called French Jews “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He is on record in an earlier speech as celebrating anti-Israel protesters days after some of them stormed a synagogue, condemning in that speech only French Jews who demonstrated to show solidarity with Israel.

“Melenchon’s victory is a terrible signal of impunity sent to the anti-Jewish Islamo-Faschists,” writes French-Jewish journalist Yohann Taieb on X.

The elections do not necessarily affect Macron’s presidency, but may make it more difficult to pass legislation and some executive actions.

[plethoraworldatlas]

In cities and towns across France on Saturday, more than 100,000 people answered the call from the left-wing political party La France Insoumise for mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron's selection of a right-wing prime minister.

The demonstrations came two months after the left coalition won more seats than Macron's centrist coalition or the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in the National Assembly and two days after the president announced that Michel Barnier, the right-wing former Brexit negotiator for the European Union, would lead the government.

The selection was made after negotiations between Macron and RN leader Marine Le Pen, leading protesters on Saturday to accuse the president of a "denial of democracy."

"Expressing one's vote will be useless as long as Macron is in power," a protester named Manon Bonijol toldAl Jazeera.

A poll released on Friday by Elabe showed that 74% of French people believed Macron had disregarded the results of July's snap parliamentary elections, and 55% said the election had been "stolen."

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed, also accused Macron of "stealing the election" in a speech at the demonstration in Paris on Saturday.

"Democracy is not just the art of accepting you have won but the humility to accept you have lost," Mélenchon told protesters. "I call you for what will be a long battle."

He added that "the French people are in rebellion. They have entered into revolution."

Macron's centrist coalition won about 160 assembly seats out of 577 in July, compared to the left coalition's 180. The RN won about 140.

Barnier's Les Républicains (LR) party won fewer than 50 parliamentary seats. French presidents have generally named prime ministers, who oversee domestic policy, from the party with the most seats in the National Assembly.

Barnier signaled on Friday that he would largely defend Macron's pro-business policies and could unveil stricter anti-immigration reforms. Macron has enraged French workers and the left with policies including a retirement age hike last year.

[allthegeopolitics]

PARIS, France - Thousands of protesters took to the streets across France on Saturday, responding to a call from a far-left party leader who criticized as a “power grab” the president's appointment of a conservative new prime minister, Michel Barnier.

The protests directly challenged French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to bypass a prime minister from the far-left bloc following a deeply dividing —and divided — legislative election result in July. Authorities did not record a huge turnout nationwide.

The left, particularly the France Unbowed party, views Barnier’s conservative background as rejecting the electorate’s will, further intensifying the EU’s second economy’s already charged political atmosphere. Saturday's demonstrators denounced Barnier’s appointment as denying democracy, echoing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s fiery rhetoric from recent days.

In Paris, protesters gathered at Place de la Bastille and tensions ran high as police prepared for potential clashes. Some carried placards reading “Where is my vote?” [...]

Continue Reading.

[zvaigzdelasas]

French President Emmanuel Macron has named Michel Barnier as prime minister almost two months after France's snap elections ended in political deadlock.[...]

A veteran of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party, he has had a long political career and filled various senior posts, both in France and within the EU.[...]

It has taken President Macron 60 days to make up his mind on choosing a prime minister, having called a "political truce" during the Paris Olympics

But Mr Barnier will need all his political skills to navigate the coming weeks, with the centre-left Socialists already planning to challenge his appointment with a vote of confidence.[...]

His nomination has already caused discontent within the New Popular Front (NFP), whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by the president.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical France Unbowed (LFI) - the biggest of the four parties that make up the NFP - said the election had been "stolen from the French people".

Instead of coming from the the alliance that came first on 7 July, he complained that the prime minister would be "a member of a party that came last", referring to the Republicans.

"This is now essentially a Macron-Le Pen government," said Mr Mélenchon, referring to the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN).

He then called for people to join a left-wing protest against Mr Macron's decision planned for Saturday.

To survive a vote of confidence, Mr Barnier will need to persuade 289 MPs in the 577-seat National Assembly to back his government.

Marine Le Pen has made clear her party will not take part in his administration, but she said he at least appeared to meet National Rally's initial requirement, as someone who "respected different political forces".[...]

A recent opinion poll suggested that 51% of French voters thought the president should resign.

5 Sep 24

[beardedmrbean]

French President Emmanuel Macron said that French schools are being threatened by the "scourge of antisemitism" after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped.

According to French media, the girl told police she had been in a park in Courbevoie, north-west of Paris, with a friend last Saturday when three boys - two aged 13 and one aged 12 - approached her. At least one was known to her.

The victim said the boys dragged her away to an isolated location before hurling antisemitic abuse at her and raping her. The incident has been described by French police as a hate crime. The boys were arrested on Monday and two of them were charged with gang rape, antisemitic insults and violence, and issuing death threats. French media also reported that one of the attackers threatened to kill the girl if she went to the police.

Mr Macron talked about the Courbevoie attack during a Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday, where he meets with the members of his government.

He asked the Minister of Education, Nicole Belloubet, to ensure that over the next few days schools hold a dialogue on the topics of racism and hatred of Jews to prevent "hateful speech with serious consequences" from "infiltrating" classrooms.

Ms Belloubet later wrote on X: "There is no limit to horror... Rape, antisemitism: every part of this crime is revolting."

Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia said he was "horrified".

"Justice must firmly punish the perpetrators of this despicable act. No one can be excused from this unprecedented antisemitic surge," Mr Korsia wrote on X.

A January 2024 report by the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said there had been a 284% increase of antisemitic acts in France between 2022 and 2023.

It also said that nearly 13% of such acts last year took place in schools. A significant spike was reported in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attacks against communities in Israel.

France is in the middle of a heated election campaign after President Macron called a snap parliamentary election two weeks ago, and politicians from all sides were quick to weigh in.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, denounced "anti-Semitic racism".

Marine Le Pen, the president of the far-right National Rally (RN), urged voters to keep in mind the "stigmatisation of Jews by the far left" when they go to the polls later this month.

Her protegee, Jordan Bardella, said if elected he would "fight the antisemitism that has been plaguing France since 7 October".

[mariacallous]

The far right’s historically high score in the first round of the French legislative elections was reflected in the alarmed headlines of major international media outlets. An “earthquake”, a “staggering collapse” authored by Emmanuel Macron’s “arrogance and disdain for his fellow citizens” were among the reactions. But despite the imminence of the potential catastrophe now facing France – the far right has never been as close to power since the collaborationist Vichy regime – many in the political centre still struggle with the idea of uniting to keep National Rally (RN) out.

Macron irresponsibly conflated the far right and the left during the campaign, claiming that the “two extremes” (right and left) would lead to “civil war”. His rhetoric falsely equated the hateful far right with a coalition of parties on the left (the New Popular Front, NFP) that aspires to equality and social justice. He even adopted the talking points of the far right to attack the left’s “immigrationist” programme.

Macron eventually called for a “broad democratic and republican coalition” in the second round to unite to block “the imminent danger of an absolute majority for the RN”. But it took time for even heavyweights in his party to heed him. Many have refused to withdraw, selfishly risking the election of RN candidates to parliament.

For Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the national assembly, blocking the RN was not enough of a reason to vote for France Unbowed (LFI), the leading party on the left. Finance minister Bruno Le Maire agreed, opposing the RN unless it meant voting for LFI.

The messaging from Macron’s Ensemble coalition has been mixed: the party announced that candidates would tactically withdraw from constituency races “in favour of candidates capable of defeating the National Rally and with whom we share the values of the Republic”. The statement’s ambiguity, apparently aimed at LFI, left the definition of republican values open to interpretation.

Over the past two years, LFI has faced constant criticism. The party’s clear stance against Islamophobia, in a context where hostility towards Muslims in France is normalised, is often maliciously characterised as a shameless bid to attract Muslim votes. Recently, accusations of antisemitism have intensified due to LFI’s strong support for protecting Palestinian lives in Gaza; the nomination of Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian refugee, for the European elections; and some members’ refusal to label Hamas a terrorist group.

Like any form of racism, antisemitism is historically and structurally ingrained in France. It has found expression far too often (as have Islamophobia, sexism and transphobia) and LFI must continue to address and combat the antisemitism that persists within its ranks.

But the exclusionof an entire segment of the population is not part of LFI’s programme. According to a new report by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, “the majority of antisemitism is manifested among citizens on the right or far right”.

LFI, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a staunch critic of Macron, issued a clear directive ahead of the second round: “Nowhere will we allow the RN to prevail. Our stance is unequivocal: no votes, no seats for the RN.” LFI candidates withdrew from races where the RN posed a threat, including against Gérald Darmanin, the rightwing interior minister, who by contrast said he would abstain rather than give LFI his vote in a two-way contest with the RN.

Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, eventually came out with an explicit call on voters to block the RN even if that meant voting for LFI. While many candidates in Macron’s camp have withdrawn from races featuring LFI candidates, some have refused to do so, even at the risk of letting the RN win.

Yet every day brings new examples of the horror the country is plunging into and which an RN victory would exacerbate. Since the dissolution of parliament on 9 June, there has been an increase in racist and homophobic incidents. A Black woman insulted on camera by her white neighbours said the election had opened the floodgates to a climate of intolerance towards people of migrant heritage. A motorist who said he was an RN voter is alleged to have racially insulted and hit a school bus driver after a parking dispute in Val-de-Marne. Racist leaflets demanding that authorities “stop the Blacks” were distributed to residents of a small town in the Yvelines region of northern France. A bakery in Avignon that had hired a Black employee was targeted in an arson attack and daubed with racist graffiti. In Calais, there has been a spate of violent incidents against migrants. I could go on.

This is a foretaste of the kind of atmosphere the National Rally would make mainstream. According to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, the normalisation of racism is rising alongside support for the far right. That is hardly surprising when you consider that Mediapart and Libération have investigated RN candidates and have not had to dig far to find examples of the crudest forms of racism – including antiziganism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, conspiracy theories and Nazi nostalgia – fuelling their social media feeds.

Marine Le Pen has managed to rebrand her party, but maintains strong ties with groups and builds allyship with European parties that are less cautious about hiding their extremism. She tries to distance herself from the legacy of the party co-founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, with former Nazi collaborationists. He has long been accused of torturing civilians while serving as a paratrooper during the Algerian revolution and was convicted on charges of minimising the Holocaust.

But Le Pen’s party not only pursues a hardline anti-immigrant policy. It aims to create different categories of French nationals, stripping dual citizens of rights.

This is what the RN represents at its core and why it must be prevented from prevailing next Sunday. Stopping the far right takes courage and moral clarity: politicians need to put their individual interests aside in the interest of everyone. We cannot waver on our principles, and risk pushing France into a situation from which it will not recover. For those who are privileged, failing to do everything in their power to block the RN may seem acceptable. But they need to think about those millions whose lives are at risk.

“We’ll argue later” has become the motto of the leftwing parties that have coalesced against the far right. This should be applicable to everyone across the political spectrum who is capable of defeating the far right. The priority must be to make sure this party never crosses the threshold of power.

[collapsedsquid]

Macron has made strenuous efforts to isolate the radical left France Unbowed (LFI), which won the most seats of the four in the winning coalition. In a sinister divide-and-rule move, he appealed to three of the four left-wing parties — the Socialists, Greens and Communists — to break the political paralysis. He did not invite the LFI. 

Melenchon's party more left wing than the communists I guess