This is an extract from Why Fascism Is on the Rise in France: From Macron to Le Pen, now available from Verso Books.
The far-right vote has risen steadily in every French election since 2012, reaching 41.5 percent in the runoff of the 2022 presidential contest. This is no isolated phenomenon.
The traditional right has become extremist; civil liberties have been curtailed in the name of the fight against terrorism; more and more demonstrations have been banned in the last ten years and all dissent increasingly criminalized; Islamophobic laws and decrees have been accompanied by media campaigns targeting Muslims; and a mass reactionary movement has developed against equal rights and educational programs promoting gender equality.
In today’s France, migrants are systematically hunted down and bludgeoned by the police (on the orders of successive governments), when they are not kidnapped, beaten up, and left for dead by violent mobs. Observers count an increasing number of physical attacks by far-right groups against members of ethnic minorities and activists involved in social movements.
An ever-wider array of publications across all platforms — from online articles to videos, podcasts, books, and so on — promote a conspiratorial racism (the “great replacement” theory) and calls for the establishment of an authoritarian government able to strike back against minorities and the Left (“the party of foreigners”). There is constant public harassment of Muslims and anti-racist, feminist, and LGBTQ activists.
All this is rounded off by the intensification of repressive policing of working-class neighborhoods and the structural impunity of police violence. Fascism is announcing its arrival — not as…
Auteur: Ugo Palheta
