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The dissolution of the national assembly announced by Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, June 9th following the European elections radically reshaped the French political landscape. The legislative elections due on June 30th and July 7th could result in a majority, relative or absolute, of seats for the right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) party. Terrified by this prospect, the political and media system is defending itself with all its might.

Since the announcement by the president of the French Republic of the dissolution of the national assembly, following the significant victory of the Rassemblement National in the European elections, which came out on top with just over 31% of the vote, a wave of panic has swept across France. What if the oft-feared prospect of the formation that progressive elites persist in describing as ‘far right’ coming to power were to become a reality?

This is not the first time that the RN has recorded high scores at the ballot box, and that polls have predicted a percentage in the tens. But this time there are several indications that the famous ‘cordon sanitaire’ established in the days of François Mitterrand between the national Right and the rest of the political spectrum is breaking down.

Emmanuel Macron bears a not inconsiderable responsibility for this state of affairs, he who has methodically worked for years to pulverise the traditional parties making up the French Right and Left, to the benefit of a centrist progressivism with vague contours and a protean ideology. Faced with the failure of its policies, the French are going back to their old way and bringing back the divide between Right and Left that has been the signature of French political life for over two centuries now. It is being revived with renewed vigour, this time pitting a far-left that has added every possible woke and immigrationist demand to a classic socialist base, against a national Right that is taking over from waning centre-right government formations.

Today, the RN is no longer seen as a pariah party, and has achieved spectacular results, including among sections of the population that were previously rather hostile to it: women, young people, managers and pensioners. It has also emerged from its isolation with the alliance it is preparing to form with part of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) party, led by its president Éric Ciotti, who has realised that an alliance with the RN is its only chance of survival if it does not want to die by being absorbed by Macronist centrism. The declarations of Marion Maréchal, head of the Reconquête party’s list for the European elections, who is prepared to work with the RN to ensure the triumph of ‘national union’ lists against the left, reinforce this dynamic.

Given this, the system has no intention of giving in. For a week now, journalists and politicians have been sounding the alarm bells about the ‘fascist danger’ threatening the French Republic.

The defensive reflex first manifested itself in the centre-right Les Républicains party, whose apparatchiks were upset when the party’s president, Éric Ciotti, reached out to the RN to present joint candidates. A legal battle ensued. Ciotti can count on his status as elected president, confirmed by the courts in an emergency procedure, and on the membership, the majority of whom are in favour of uniting the Right. In the meantime, any means are good enough to trip him up, even the most grotesque: local legal proceedings have been launched against Ciotti, accusing him of having abused free parking cards in Nice during the 2022 legislative campaign. On the centre-right, cacophony reigns. Candidates are running all over the place, but it’s not always clear who’s loyal to what, who’s allied with whom, and who represents what—against a backdrop of a war of logos and labels.

Then there is the resistance of the left-wing parties, which have organised themselves in record time into an electoral alliance called the ‘New Popular Front,’ hoping by this name to revive the mythical past of the anti-fascist alliance that brought the socialist Léon Blum to power in 1936. The New Popular Front of 2024 is a motley conglomeration of far-Left groupuscules and established historical parties, who have nothing in common other than a fierce desire to avoid the arrival of the ‘foul beast’ in power at all costs, and who are prepared to make any accommodations to achieve this.

The candidates of this feverish Left include everything from classified dangerous people to dual nationals who have mastered the art of spitting on France, ex-convicts to notorious antisemites. It doesn’t matter, because they are fighting for the side of the good. Their faces, however, remain unattractive. This New Popular Front is the instigator of the demonstrations that sprang up in towns and cities across France over the weekend of 15 and 16 June, allegedly “against the RN,” but which were marred by violence, destruction and hate-filled pro-Palestinian or pro-Algerian speeches. All in all, they provided a fairly effective repellent for many French people who have no desire to see such a gang come to power.

The problem is that some members of Macron’s Renaissance party maintain a guilty relationship with the New Popular Front, on the grounds that the enemy to be brought down remains the ‘far-right.’ For example, Clément Beaune, former Minister of Transport, explained to the media that between a ballot paper for the RN or a ballot paper for La France Insoumise, the left-wing party that is the linchpin of the ‘anti-fascist’ front, he would always prefer La France Insoumise.

Other bodies play the same part.

The various Masonic lodges have come together in a joint communiqué to say ‘no’ to “the ideology of hatred of the far-right.” Using their customary bombastic rhetoric, the lodges, meeting at the headquarters of one of their largest, the Grand Orient de France, reiterated that “Freemasons, who have always resisted the hateful hydra of the far-right, and who are faithful to the ideals of freedom, equality, fraternity and secularism, are rising up, determined to play their part in rebuilding republican hope for all.” Will their appeal be heard? Nothing is less certain.

In their turn, artists, actors and football players have come to explain that we must mobilise against the ‘brown plague’. Marion Cotillard, the famous actress who portrayed the singer Edith Piaf, comfortably settled in her luxurious Los Angeles villa, declared on her Instagram account that she was “p*** off the Front National”—a slogan that dates back to the 2002 election, when Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the presidential poll. France’s young footballing talent Kylian Mbappé went one better, explaining that in future he would refuse to play under the colours of a country that did not represent his values. He had no qualms about working for several years for Paris Saint-Germain, a club owned by the Emirate of Qatar, which is notoriously homophobic and practises national preference on its soil. And what can we say about the footballer Marcus Thuram, who also spews his hatred against the RN, all paid handsomely by the club Inter Milan, in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni reigns?

These speeches by self-righteous censors no longer carry the same weight as they once did. Young people who used to boast about “p*** off the Front National” now vote overwhelmingly for the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, and the YouTuber Squeezie, who is very popular with young people in France, lost more than 100,000 subscribers in the space of a few days for taking a stance against the RN. It would seem that some voices no longer carry weight.

More subtle and more indirect, and perhaps more effective with the public, are the communications from newspapers and big companies aimed at discrediting in advance the France that Marine Le Pen and her supporters would prepare for the day after July 7th. The headline in Le Figaro reads: “Major companies warn of a ‘major risk’ of a ‘lasting stall’ in the economy”—as if the French economy, with its €3,000 billion in debt, was doing just fine and was running the risk of a sudden and unexpected downturn. The magazine Les Échos, meanwhile, published a German university study revealing that “populisms” (including, of course, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany) had always made choices that were disastrous for the economy. These orchestrated warnings mean that a France that gives victory to the RN would be the target of financial and global institutions, as the liberal-conservative economist Charles Gave points out, being much worried about the obstacles that may await the national Right if it succeeds in its electoral gamble.

Will the major offensive to destabilise public opinion bear fruit? For the moment, it is still too early to say, especially as other signals are emerging between the lines. Testimonies from senior civil servants, who assure us that in the event of a victory for the RN, they will ensure the continuity of government services without difficulty and with complete confidence. Unexpected statements from prominent figures, concerned about the danger of the far left, who see the value of an RN ballot paper, such as Serge Klarsfeld, the famous Nazi hunter, who now says he has no qualms about voting for the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the face of the antisemitic danger of the far-left.

With just under two weeks to go before the election, the Rassemblement National is still well ahead of the pack in terms of percentage of voting intentions. But the local logic at work in the legislative elections means that they cannot claim victory just yet, especially as there are two rounds of voting. We can trust the ‘system,’ which is already on the alert, to throw all its energy into the battle between the first and second rounds, and perhaps prevent the right-wing vote from crystallising.

Original article: europeanconservative.com