Macron, Harris, Trudeau: What can we learn from the French elections?

The political centre is collapsing. The left in France recently pulled victory from the jaws of defeat against the far-right National Rally (RN) despite huge pressure for the left to strategically support the discredited centre of the “macronie.”

 

Macron called a snap election when the RN made gains in the European parliament. The RN is a direct descendant of the explicitly fascist National Front of the Le Pen family. They have tried to reinvent themselves as a less openly fascist electoral choice, but they were formed from French Algierian colonial settlers and WWII Nazi collaborators. 

 

Weeks later a protest by the Algerian delegation to the Olympics in Paris exposed this history. They threw roses into the River Seine to commemorate those killed in a Paris protest for Algerian independence in 1961 where 300 people were killed. Many of their bodies were thrown into the same river that Olympic delegations were now travelling in a false show of global harmony. The uprising and battle by the ordinary people of Algeria was a key moment that fuelled the growth of a new revolutionary left in France in the 1960s. At the same time, it also lead to the far right opposition to Algerian independence. 

 

Some claim the RN is a “new workers party” because it challenges the neo-liberal, pro-boss politics of Macron. Others see it as just another capitalist party. In reality, it is a party based in the middle class that is trying to build a mass audience among workers by redirecting legitimate anger over the status quo towards the politics of hate. And it has grown from 50,000 to 100,000 members this year. 

 

Challenge from the French Left 

 

The RN were successfully challenged by a coalition of the left, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP, named after the “Popular Front” that confronted fascist forces in France in the 30s).

 

This New Popular Front alliance brought together NDP-type socialists, Greens, Communists and France Insoumise (France Unbowed), the anti-neo-liberal party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The pressure for the coalition came mainly from below, with youth, immigrants and workers demanding their leaders come together to fight the RN.

 

From the start the alliance was based on unity around the vote. This meant leaving aside the most important struggles outside of elections that can really challenge the growth of the far right. It reflected the desperation to find a short-term solution at the ballot box, since the RN was largely projected to win.

 

In the lead up to the second round of voting the NFP withdrew from contested ridiings where they were behind the centre “macronists,”  in order to concentrate the anti-RN vote. This was many more races than the centre “macronists” were willing to cede to the left: they did not heed the same call to withdraw in favour of the NFP to defeat RN candidates. The NPF ceded 29% of races while the “macronie” only ceded 24%. After a second round of voting, it was the NFP that carried the day with the largest share of seats. 

 

Any electoral pact around strategic voting between the left and centre only gave the RN ammunition to paint the left as allies of Macron and therefore the fascist right as the only alternative for real change to the status quo. In many run-offs, the call to vote for the centre instead of the left to stop the right resulted in a record local vote for the fascists.

 

In the US, Bernie Sanders echoes the same wrong conclusion that will cripple the fight against Trump: “It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France” who “despite profound political differences came together to soundly defeat right wing extremism.” 

 

By “coming together” and withdrawing their candidates the NFP lined up behind politicians who support assaults on both workers and migrants, and have undercut the fight against the ongoing fascist threat in the long term.  

 

A gamble by the left

 

In the second round of voting, in less than 48 hours, 224 candidates withdrew from the second vote, with 306 three-way run-offs projected (out of 577 seats). The NFP won 180 seats, followed by the Macronists at 168. The fascist RN won only 143 seats. However, the RN nearly doubled the 88 MPs they had in the previous assembly.

 

This was a dangerous gamble by the NFP. The fact they won nonetheless is a huge vindication of the movements on the ground, which in the lead-up to the two rounds of voting were able to vastly outnumber any RN rallies and also mobilize vast numbers in the streets against attacks on immigrants, women, and trans people. This was the “Popular Front” from below, and these mobilizations, not the electoral manoeuvres are really the ones who pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. 

 

The Macron government had already been rocked by protest in France. They presided over the raising of the state pension age from 62 to 64, following massive and multiple protests in early 2023, with fires set across Paris. But despite the incredible movement of millions to defend pensions, this was not enough to stop the rise of the far right, which feeds on scapegoating and the ability to deflect working class anger towards it. 

 

In fact, far right support saw an increase during this very same period of the pension uprising, in the absence of an equally large challenge to the politics of hate.

 

Despite this, the rise of the RN has also met huge opposition within France, with hundreds of thousands in the streets. For now, the RN is unable to mobilize their  supporters of far-right hate in the street on the same scale as their opponents, and so while the growth in the fascist vote should not be underestimated, their inability to out-mobilize the left must be maintained. 

 

A vote can be soft support for the far right, not a hardened allegiance to their full politics of organized violence against progressive values. The real battle is won outside of elections. And that battle can only be won on the basis of a direct confrontation with what is fuelling the right and far right, whether attacks on trans people or immigrants.

 

So far the NFP’s propaganda has been all about the RN’s pro-boss and anti-worker policies, but has shied away from confronting the racism that is really allowing them to grow. There are differences within the alliance, with Mélenchon and “France Unbowed” supporting Palestine resistance, but with the politics of the NDP-like Socialist Party predominating, which has fuelled arguments to put aside “divisive” issues like Palestine and opposition to genocide.

 

Between the two votes, The Marche des Solidarités anti-racist group said: “We need a response that goes beyond petitions and calls for votes. What we need is unity against racism and fascism, unity between anti-racists, those who fight for Palestine and against French colonialism in New Caledonia, between those who rose up a year ago against police violence and the millions of workers who fought against the attack on pensions. To drive the fascists out of our neighbourhoods, do not let them prosper in this breeding ground of despair and atomisation created by the powerful. Let’s build what blocks the way to fascism, to Le Pen and Bardella.” 

 

On Bastille Day, July 14, thousands heeded this call by marching against fascism, colonialism and racism. 

 

But will the new NPF government bow instead to managing capitalism, and call on workers to avoid strikes and protests and just trust them to govern? If they do, it will only undermine the very support that got them there and cause despair over their inability to solve the cost-of-living crisis and drive people to the scapegoating solutions of the right.

 

The centre and right work together

 

The Macron government is connected with the anti-immigrant border closure policies that legitimize fascist ideas. In the two weeks leading up to the election, Macron spent most of his time not attacking the RN, but denouncing the New Popular Front’s programme as “totally immigrationist”. The same day he tried to attract transphobes by commenting that some NPF policies were “grotesque, like the fact that you’ll be able to just go down to the town hall and change your sex.” 

 

There is evidence that the Macron entourage was hob-nobbing with the RN leaderrship in the lead-up to the elections. Now, the “macronie” are calling for everyone to rally around them to maintain a balance of power in the new government against the left. So the bait and trap that was set for the left before the election continues. 

 

There is no guarantee that some or all of Macron’s coalition wouldn’t join a government with the RN to maintain some power. But whether or not they do, they were never an ally to the left, but in fact always an enabler to the RN with their politics of scapegoating.

 

Suggesting that the “macronie” is an alternative to the far-right plants the seed to either kill the NFP or strengthen the most conservative elements within it, and they will undermine the real anti-fascist forces that can be built outside of elections. At this point, the RN may not have yet won but Macron is gaining control of the situation and the NPF may have already lost ground. Next time, the RN can present itself as “anti-establishment,” the only force that is truly against the status quo of the system. And the “macronie” can present themselves as the only credible alternative to the RN. 

 

This is the bitter lesson: despite the desperation people feel to keep fascists out with a vote, the reality is that the centre, center right, and centre left all help the growth of anti-immigrant, anti-trans and other ideas that the far-right feeds on.

 

But the protests of July 14 show that the side of anti-fascism is not weak. Fascism is also not growing on the back of a defeated working class, as the pension fight shows. It just takes more than that to stop head-on the attempts by the right to drive class anger in their direction. The key is confronting hate and scapegoating through struggle, solidarity, self-defence and organization outside of elections.

 

How to stop the right at home

 

Like in France, the openings for fascism here come from mainstream capitalist politicians – not only Pollievere and Doug Ford, but also Trudeau and Eby. 

 

Like Macron, Trudeau has presided over the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and has fueled the climate crisis. His government has done nothing to create or defend affordable housing, public healthcare, or education. In British Columbia, the NDP government lead by David Eby has also failed to deliver affordable housing, has not implemented effective rent-control, refuses to move to a safer supply in the deadly opioid crisis, sent the racist RCMP to attack land defenders in Wet’suwet’en. and has passively supported the genocide in Palestine. Their policies have driven racialized people disproportionately into poverty and desperation. At the same time these policies help legitimize the arguments of the far right that lead to racialized people and migrants being targeted as the problem.

 

During the pandemic we’ve seen the rise of the forces of the far right and a hardening of Pollievre’s entourage, which met with the organizers of the “Freedom Convoy” occupation of Ottawa in 2022, and continues to flirt with far-right scapegoating. 

 

Macron was never a block to the fascists in France but neither is Kamala Harris a real block to Trump. And Trudeau is not a block to Poilievre and the even more far right forces that wait in his wings. It is under Eby’s watch in BC that the formally fringe part of the far-right BC Conservatives went from wining less than 2% of the vote in the last election to polling neck and neck with the BC NDP.

 

The millions of people who showed in France that they want a clear choice against the politics of hate show the way, and we need to mobilize that here, in streets and workplaces and schools. And not just on bread-and-butter issues, but on Palestine, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant racism, Indigenous sovereignty, and trans rights.

 

The Tories are the ones that are gaining from justifiable anger at Trudeau and the crisis working class people are facing. Every recent by-election shows this. And “F*CK Trudeau” should be a slogan of the left, not of the “Freedom Convoy” and their fascist friends. Any Liberal leader that might replace Trudeau will be no more an alternative to Pollievre than Justin is.

 

When the Liberals are under attack for policies that drive down living standards, we should kick them when they’re down, not try to save them. And build movements that can stop the growth of fascists here before they can get anywhere near their size in France.