John Mullen has been engaged in political activism in Paris since the 1980s. Here’s what he has to say about the current political state of France.
Marij: In June last year, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament prematurely and called new elections for the end of June. What was the reason?
John Mullen: He called elections at the shortest notice possible, because he was convinced that the Left would not unite, and that, because of the two-round election system, he would be able to present his own party as the only alternative to Marine Le Pen’s, and regain a solid parliamentary majority. His plan failed.
M: Why was the RN able to gain so many votes so quickly?
JM: The fascists got nearly nine million votes in the legislative elections of June this year. This is fewer than the 13 million they got in the second round of the presidential election of 2022, but far more than the four million they got in the legislative elections that year. They also got fifty more members of Parliament than they had previously. The main reason is the collapse in support of the traditional right wing and left-wing parties of government. However, the lack of a permanent, national mass movement against fascism has certainly helped the far right tremendously.
M: How did the other parties react?
JM: The terrifying results of the fascists in the first round of the elections led to a historic anti fascist mobilization between the two rounds. This was the most dynamic left election campaign for fifty years. The result was that, whereas everybody expected the fascists to have more Members of Parliament than any other group, they actually came third. First place, and therefore the largest group of members of parliament, went to the left electoral alliance, which took the name “New Popular Front”.
M: The RN had been “restructured” in a process that took several years. What were the main steps?
JM: The name of the party was changed from “National Front” to “National Rally”. A series of members were expelled for expressing too openly antisemitism or fascist sympathies. These included the founder of the party, Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who could not refrain from making “jokes” about the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. The organization also stopped calling for street demonstrations, because they were moments when open Nazi supporters might show themselves.
M: Did this change the character of the party?
JM: No. The core of the RN leadership is fascist. They still use the flame logo taken from Mussolini.They still aim at banning Muslim headscarves in all public places, banning immigrants from social housing, allowing impunity for racist police murderers. They try to hide their links with open fascists. However, recently it has been shown that they have close links with the women’s group “Nemesis” who specialize in turning up to feminist demonstrations with placards claiming that all rapists are immigrants. A study this year shows that at least 80 of the RN candidates for the June elections had been involved in openly racist or antisemitic activity. One of them wrote, “distinguishing between races is common sense and is useful in a certain number of debates”.
When openly antisemitic Jean Marie Le Pen died recently, Marine Le Pen declared she would never forgive herself for having expelled him from the party. Other RN leaders explained that she had been obliged to do so because of the damage he was doing to their image. None of them claimed he had been expelled because the party’s ideology had fundamentally changed.
Since the RN is very much an unprincipled and opportunistic party, they frequently change their discourse. Right now, they are confident they have a solid voter base among the poorer parts of society, so they are concentrating on slogans like “avoiding chaos” (by refusing to oppose the right-wing government’s austerity budget), while insisting that Macron’s racist measures do not go far enough.
M: Are there any hopeful signs of activity against the RN?
JM: The historic mobilization last year, when hundreds of thousands of people moved into action in order to stop the fascists becoming the government, in a situation where opinion polls said this was the most likely outcome, was obviously extremely encouraging. Tens of thousands of people joined radical Left groups for the first time, in particular the France Insoumise (France in Revolt). Since the National Rally has put elections at the center of its strategy, persuading voters that these people are fascists and have nothing to offer working people is extremely important.
Nevertheless, there are considerable limitations on antifascism in France. It is extremely common on the Left either to believe that Macron is a fascist anyway, and therefore specific campaigning against the National Rally is not necessary, or to very much underestimate the importance of stopping the National Rally from building their party structures. In many hundreds of towns, the National Rally has almost no local structure. Building this is their priority, and stopping them building it should be ours. However, most left organizations consider that proposing an alternative left program will be sufficient to marginalize the fascists. This is a mistake, and vigorous debate is necessary. There are regularly local initiatives against fascist meetings or activity, but a national campaign is needed.
M: We are on the brink of new elections in Germany—the bourgeois parties are acting as stooges for the AfD in the election campaign. What can we learn from the French experience?
JM: [That] established right wing parties will always prefer the fascists over the radical left. Macron argued for years he was the only alternative to the far right, before changing his discourse to proclaim that he was the only alternative to “the two extremes”. Then he refused to allow the Left to form a government although they had the biggest parliamentary group, and he strengthened the fascists immeasurably by appointing hard racist ministers, and treating the far right National Rally as a respectable mainstream party.
This article first appeared in German on the Sozialismus von Unten website.
