How France pivoted to the right
Far-right views have gone mainstream as France gears
up for next year’s presidential election.
BY RYM
MOMTAZ
December 6,
2021 4:00 am
PARIS —
France may be the land of generous social welfare policies and strong labor
protections but anyone tuning in to the early stages of the presidential
campaign would think the country is pretty rightwing.
Candidates
running for president who have promised the toughest lines on immigration and
security have benefited from the biggest momentum in recent weeks, while an
unprecedented third of the electorate says they are planning to vote for a
far-right candidate.
The rise of
Eric Zemmour, a far-right TV pundit who says Islam is an existential threat to
France and has twice been convicted of inciting hatred, is perhaps the most
visible sign of the rightwing wave.
Another is
the turn taken by conservatives from Les Républicains (LR), the party of former
presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. Crowded out on their left by
Macron’s economic liberalism and on their right by the normalization of the
far-right, conservatives have hardened their positions on security and
immigration in an effort to retain a base.
Eric
Ciotti, a hardline conservative who unexpectedly won the first round of the
party’s primary last week, has promised to set up a “French Guantanamo” and
espoused the far-right theory that the French people are being “replaced” by
foreign – Arab, black, Muslim – immigrants.
Valérie
Pécresse, the President of the Paris region, who beat out Ciotti for the LR
nomination on Saturday advocated for the primacy of French law over European
law, and wants to keep those imprisoned for jihadism in jail beyond their
sentences.
In her
victory speech on Saturday, she explicitly called on supporters of far-right
leader Marine Le Pen and Zemmour to join her and asserted that Ciotti would
play a central role in her campaign.
“I say it
to all those tired of unkept promises, exasperated by the powerlessness of
public authorities and tempted by Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour… unlike the
extremes, we are going to turn the Macron page,” Pécresse said.
The polling
success of politicians with more strident views on immigration, security and
identity have made these central issues in the presidential campaign even if
the general French population still ranks purchasing power and environmental
issues as more pressing concerns.
With France
still traumatized by the 2015 islamist terrorist attacks, that success is due
to three factors: perceived French decline, the collapse of the Left, and
higher abstention rates among the youth and left-wing voters.
Decline
Despite a
high standard of living, a permanent seat at the UN Security Council and a
country that remains the number one tourist destination in the world, the
French perception of their own country’s decline is acute.
“Immigration
has emerged as a major concern because the French people are deeply convinced
that France is in decline. They feel their country used to be a big global
power and now is a small one. When a country feels it’s doing well it, it
handles immigration better,” said Gérard Grunberg, a political analyst and researcher.
Zemmour’s
presidential bid announcement video heavily leaned into that perception. Over
ten minutes, he waxed poetic about the good old glory days, with sepia-toned
archival footage of the post-World War II years, tugging at the heartstrings of
France’s storied history and name-checking Jeanne d’Arc, Napoleon and Charles
de Gaulle.
Only 25
percent of French people say France is not in decline, and a majority say they
don’t feel at home like they used to (62 percent); that there are too many
immigrants (64 percent); and that there is a need for a strong leader to
reestablish law and order (79 percent), according to an Ipsos poll.
It is a
pattern French President Emmanuel Macron has struggled to cater to and one that
will weigh on his positioning ahead of his reelection bid.
While
Macron has succeeded in syphoning off the economically liberal-minded right, at
the beginning of his presidency he was accused of being uncomfortable on issues
related to crime and islamism.
He has
gradually toughened his stance on asylum seekers, expulsions of illegal
migrants back to North Africa and increased the budget of law enforcement. He
also appointed a hardline conservative, Gérald Darmanin, as interior minister.
Darmanin once accused Le Pen of having softened when she said that she didn’t
think that Islam was a problem.
Macron’s
challenge will be to burnish his credentials on migration and law and order
while trying to preserve the center left votes that carried him to the
presidency in 2017.
He might be
helped on the latter by the left’s current state.
Disengaged
left
With not a
single candidate able to poll higher than 10 percent, according to POLITICO’s
poll of polls, it’s no surprise that rightwing themes are dominating the
conversation.
Politicians
who would normally advocate for issues like purchasing power and climate action
have ceded space in the public debate. They have been replaced by conservatives
and the far-right who have imposed their preferred themes on cable news and in
talk shows.
“There’s a
right-wing turn of the electoral body — meaning those who vote — because the
youth is much more left-leaning but they have the highest rate of abstention,”
said Antoine Bristielle, director of the opinion observatory at the Jean Jaurès
Foundation. “Left-wing voters are also much less mobilized than right-wing voters
at this stage of the campaign.”
The French
people’s simultaneous support for generous social welfare and hardline on
immigration, identity and security is not contradictory, however, if viewed in
the context of France’s past glory and the way the French state was built.
“There is a
real social pessimism in France… we got used to being in a society with
tremendous protections, afforded by a strong centralized state. But since the
90s and globalization and successive crisis, we’ve had a feeling that our social
and cultural protections are disintegrating and it scares us more than it does
people from more economically liberal countries,” Bristielle said.
That
explains why half of the French people polled after Zemmour announced his
candidacy said they agreed with his statement that they no longer live in a
country they know, and that politicians have hid the extent to which they are
being replaced in their own society.
Yet, only
24 percent thought Zemmour had the attributes of a head of state.
Established
politicians from LR have been trying to capitalize on that by adopting
positions close to his, while highlighting their political credentials and
stature.
“I’m the
only one able to beat President Emmanuel Macron,” Pécresse said after the first
round of her party’s primary, in a reference to her experience in government as
minister under Sarkozy, and her executive experience as president of the
biggest region in France.
She now has
to keep her own party united, in order to have a chance to reach the run-off in
April 2022, but is already under pressure from the hardline wing of LR.
Ciotti,
whose support she will need and who had said prior to the LR primary that he
would vote for Zemmour in case of a run-off between the polemicist and Macron,
put her on notice Sunday by saying she hadn’t sent the “right message” when she
disavowed his proposal for a French Guantanamo.
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