2024-01-18 22:36:20
In 2017, on the night of his election as President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron launched from the Louvre pyramid a message to the French who had voted for his rival in the second round, Marine Le Pen: “In the next five years I will do everything possible so that they no longer have reasons to vote for the extremes.”
50 years of the National Front: the extreme right plays at “normalizing” without Le Pen as leader
As Macron heads into his seventh year as head of state, the French extreme right is going through one of the best moments in its recent history. Furthermore, poll after poll, Le Pen reaps the fruits of his normalization strategy (demonization), focused on softening the image of Agrupación Nacional (AN, former National Front) without giving up the central element of its program: ‘national preference’, a concept that the party intends to inscribe in the Constitution and that implies the obligation that French people have priority over foreigners in the allocation of jobs, social assistance and housing. The measure, according to most experts, is unconstitutional because it is explicitly discriminatory.
In this context, the approval of the latest law on immigration, which toughens the conditions of access to social benefits for non-European immigrants – voted for by Macronist deputies, the right and the extreme right – has been celebrated as a “ ideological victory” by Le Pen and her party. Furthermore, the parliamentary sequence that led to the approval of this law underlines the ability of the extreme right to impose its issues.
Ideas that are gaining ground
During its processing, the right managed to eliminate almost all of the measures aimed at the regularization of people who already work on French soil. And the Assembly’s refusal to debate the text blocked any type of public discussion on policies that provide non-European foreigners with ways to regularize their situation, an aspect that has strong support in polls but is often overshadowed in the public debate over measures that associate immigration with crime or social assistance.
“Immigration is not the first concern of the French, it is far behind purchasing power, health or security,” he recalled a few days ago. Brice Dyer, general director of the Ipsos polling institute. “And although in surveys, indeed, the French tell us that they consider that there are too many foreigners, they also tell us that greater integration is necessary.”
In addition to setting the agenda, the polls indicate that the ideas of the extreme right have gained ground in a part of the population, beyond their traditional voters. A survey of Opinionway for the newspaper The Parisian points out that a majority of French people are in favor of the restrictive measures included in the new law. Also, among voters of left-wing parties: 51% of people who voted for progressive candidates in the last presidential elections agree with measures such as replacing universal medical care with access only via emergency services.
These figures, as the political scientist recently pointed out Chloé Morin in Marianne magazine, highlight the difficulties of French progressive parties in addressing the issue, since they consider that any debate on immigration fractures their electorate and ends up strengthening the position of the extreme right. Particularly, among the working class. “A once flourishing political current is unable to speak out when its anti-racism, which carries with it the temptation to open borders, seems to go against the interests of the poorest French… whom they are supposed to defend,” Morin says.
New leaders
This situation translates into the fact that, six months before the European elections, the National Group list is clearly prominent in voting intentions, leading an increasingly broad far-right bloc. A list headed by the new president of the party, Jordan Bardella, to whom Le Pen handed over the baton last year to concentrate on the presidency of the parliamentary group of 88 deputies in the National Assembly.
At 28 years old, Marine Le Pen’s protégé has established his image and popularity to the point of overshadowing his mentor: some of the party members would like him to also take over as a candidate in the next presidential elections in 2027. The recent appointment of Gabriel Attal as prime minister has been interpreted, in part, as a response by Macron to the Bardella popularityespecially in view of the European elections in June.
“Jordan Bardella’s rise is driven by issues, but also by a personal equation, in which one of the ingredients is his youth,” says political scientist Jerôme Fourquet in a recent interview with the diary Free Midday. “In the same way that Emmanuel Macron surfed a very rebellious wave in 2016-2017, with a clear desire to renew political faces, now it seems that he is trying to repeat that operation with Gabriel Attal.”
The latest poll on the elections to the European Parliament next June, prepared by Ipsos y Sopra Steriagives first place to the National Group with 28% of voting intention (an increase of four points compared to the first wave of the survey, carried out in June), well ahead of the Renaissance list, Macron’s party, which It remains at 20%, which widens the distance from 2019 when the extreme right party was already the most voted in the European elections.
More generally, adding the votes of the controversial Éric Zemmour’s party, Reconquista! (6.5%) and the France Standing list (2.5%), the bloc of far-right formations reaches an all-time high of 37%.
The left-wing parties, for their part, remain stable, although fragmented, with 32.5% of voting intentions. In an event in which environmentalists and socialists traditionally obtain better results than Francia Insumisa, the list headed by Raphaël Glucksmann, of the Plaza Pública citizen movement, which goes to the elections supported by the Socialist Party, starts as the first progressive formation with a 10, 5% of voting intentions.
Glass roof
The idea that the far-right party will one day come to power is making its way into the minds of the French. According to the results of the last barometer on the image of Le Pen’s party of the Kantar Public Institute, for the first time more French people think that the National Rally does not represent a danger to democracy (45% compared to 41%). It is also the first time that more citizens consider Jean-Marie Le Pen’s former party as a possible governing party (43%).
“Although the label of an extreme right party remains, the content has been partly neutralized,” analyzes political scientist Gilles Finchelstein in a note from the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “Almost 30% of French people who consider it to be an extreme right-wing party also say that it is not dangerous for democracy. Furthermore, the perception of danger in relation to other parties has also decreased. Before, Francia Insumisa was 10 points below the National Group on that question; today it is five points higher.”
Aware of this continuous growth of the extreme right in all opinion studies, Macron dedicated part of his public intervention last Tuesday to pointing out Le Pen’s party as “the party of lies” and “collective impoverishment.” . “I see that the extreme right is growing throughout Europe thanks to a kind of fascination with disaster, through a weakening of the collective,” added the president.
Against antisemitism
The normalization of the National Group is also visible in the local implementation of the party, something that had never been achieved under the name National Front; in addition to governing several town councils, such as Fréjus or Perpignan. And, on a more symbolic level, Marine Le Pen’s participation in the march against anti-Semitism on November 12 has been interpreted as one of the final elements of the strategy undertaken when she succeeded her father – with multiple convictions for anti-Semitism – at the head of the party.
A few years after Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that the gas chambers of the Holocaust “were a mere detail of history,” his daughter paraded through the streets of Paris in a procession with the rest of the leaders of the main French political formations. (except France Insoumise, which did not participate in the Paris march) and former presidents Sarkozy and Hollande.
If the polls point to a continued advance of the National Rally and, more generally, of the extreme right, experts point out that victory in 2027 is not inevitable. A part of the French affirms its willingness to mobilize to prevent the coming to power of the extreme right, in particular the left-wing voting bloc, which remains the main brake on the coming to power of a candidate from Le Pen’s party.
“The presidential party has just validated the idea that it was necessary to restrict immigration, cutting at the same time the social benefits that the National Group calls ‘pull bombs’ of migratory flows. Anti-Semitism? The National Group has spoken out against it, while the president and France Insoumise were absent. What’s left? It is the essential question that Marine Le Pen’s opponents will have to answer in 2027,” political scientist Chloé Morin reflected a few days ago.
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