It is not the crowd of the big days on this Saturday, April 16 in the demonstrations against the far right. Professional and student unions (CGT, FAGE, UNEF, Syndicat de la magistrature, etc.) and numerous associations and collectives (Human Rights League, Greenpeace France, Osez le féminisme!, SOS-Racisme, among others) called for mobilization to block the far right in around thirty cities in France, eight days before the second round of the presidential election between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
If the nearly 22,800 demonstrators – 150,000 according to the organizers – came everywhere in France to express their opposition to the candidate of the National Rally (RN), the course of action to be taken in the second round of April 24 is far from reaching a consensus. Vote Emmanuel Macron, vote white or abstain, all the demonstrators have not yet made their choice and are not on the same wavelength. Many are also keen to express their opposition to the president-candidate.
In Paris, the tone was set even before the procession of 9,200 demonstrators set off between Place de la Nation and Place de la République. Just behind the head square, a procession of young people chants “Le Pen, Macron, get out! ». A slogan reminiscent of those heard this week in several French universities, notably at La Sorbonne, but which the organizers of the mobilization do not share, for whom the two candidates cannot be put on the same level. “That does not mean that we are conciliatory with Emmanuel Macron, who bears a large part of the responsibility in this situation of despair”, assures Benoit Teste, secretary general of the FSU. He is stopped by a man with a yellow vest who passes: “But you too are part of the system!” »
“And the planet in all this? »
“It’s a problem, this division, regrets Béatrice, who parades behind the banner Do not touch my friend. With Macron, at least, we are in a democracy. Fascism, we know when it is there, we do not know when it leaves. » Among the oldest, the memory of April 21, 2002 – and the accession of Jean-Marie Le Pen to the second round of the presidential election against Jacques Chirac, which had provoked a major protest movement throughout the country – remains in the heads . Michèle, a septuagenarian, remembers it with nostalgia. “Twenty years ago, we were a human tide”she sighs, showing her incomprehension in the face of the divisions that are expressed two decades later: “We just see that no one is happy. »
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