PHaving had the first relief of being still there, alive and even strengthened in the National Assembly, the left is groggy by the exceptional progress of the National Rally (RN): 89 deputies elected by majority vote almost everywhere in France, except in very large cities and their suburbs.
The left sees the historical places of its establishment disputed. The North, the East, but also Picardy, Normandy and now the red South, the Centre, which was a land of resistance. Even Carmaux! The republican front marked a principle. He was efficient. He couldn’t be self-sufficient for long.
The Republican front has collapsed for lack of being relayed by an alternative understood as such by these French people who now do not vote RN only because “everything has been tried, except that”. Nor is the Le Pen vote amnesiac. One does not vote far right without knowing the history of this party and its xenophobic foundation.
France is on a political break
We must look a reality in the face: Marine Le Pen and, after her, the candidates of the RN, win the support of a sometimes majority part of the people. The Nupes wants to be a “popular ecological and social union”. But it is on the ecology and the social that it is misunderstood, even defeated, in a part of popular France. It is necessary to understand the bases which are not circumstances.
On the social, the discourse of the RN is a charge against “assistantship”, encompassing the poorest and migrants. It is an outlet, an explanation and a solution for this world which works and does not manage. The proliferation of conditional aid enrages these households who earn a little more than twice the minimum wage.
No personalized housing aid (APL), no grant for children, no access to social housing… Even aid for thermal insulation is drastically subject to income conditions. Faced with the fear of the “fiscal bowl” of the richest, social rights have been conditioned and public services weakened. Result: a France in political rupture.
The popular world, the foundation of the Nupes equality project
On ecology, the speech of the RN makes a turn. He no longer denies global warming and makes the “big factory move” the center of his analysis and, therefore, of his answers. He mocks those who carry an alternative to the reign of commodities and overconsumption.
The RN is the defender of those who need their car, bleed to buy their pavilion, relax around a barbecue and dream of a jacuzzi. For them, ecology is synonymous with wind turbines, oil tanks to be changed at great expense, cars condemned while still running. The misunderstanding is total.
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