The fight must continue against fascism despite French victory

The result – where the broad left ­coalition the New Popular Front (NFP) topped the poll (with 188 seats), followed by the Renaissance party of France’s ­neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron (on 161) and the fascist RN and their far-right allies (on 142) – narrowly averted a disaster for France, Europe and the wider world.

Just one week before, the RN and its far-right allies had taken a third of the ­national vote and seemed poised to ­become the ­largest bloc in the French National ­Assembly. This would have propelled the fascist party’s president, 28-year-old ­Jordan Bardella, into the position of prime ­minister.

It would also have enabled the RN to ­increase their influence within the ­structures of a French state which – under the guise of upholding “Republican values” – is ­already hostile towards its Muslim and Black ­citizens, as it is towards refugees and ­migrants.

The RN would have been quick to seize the opportunity to sink ever deeper roots within elements of the French civil service and, of course, within police forces that are already disproportionately ­pro-fascist in their sympathies.

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Looking ahead to 2027, an RN victory last Sunday would have bolstered the presidential campaign of the fascists’ de facto leader, Marine Le Pen. An RN victory there would take us into the terrifying situation of a fascist ­president with her finger on France’s nuclear button.

There is no question that the July 7 poll represents a rejection of ­fascism. No sooner had Macron gambled with the future of France by calling the snap election than anti-fascists called a ­series of demonstrations against the RN (which reached a magnificent 800,000 at their peak).

This popular expression of ­opposition to fascism, combined with the shock of the first round of voting on June 30 (which forecast an ­ outright ­victory for the RN), led to the ­thwarting of Le Pen’s party in the July 7 poll.

For these reasons alone, every decent person – whether in France or any other country – has every right to celebrate the outcome of the vote. However, it is ­important that we be realistic about what the election result means, and what it does not mean.

Firstly, the result is a setback for the RN, but it is, sadly, by no means the end of the fascist menace in France. With 37.1% of the national vote and 142 deputies (MPs) in the French national assembly, Le Pen’s party has 53 more seats than they achieved at the previous general election.

National Rally politician Marine Le Pen

Whatever way you cut it, although the RN are crestfallen and furious about last Sunday’s result, France still faces the enormous problem of a large fascist party that enjoys mass support.

If the election is a setback, rather than a final defeat, for the RN, it is certainly not – as some have claimed – an ­unambiguous “victory for the left”.

The NFP may have achieved the ­biggest number of seats, but they did so only by means of an electoral pact with the ­supposedly “centrist” (in reality, ­centre-right) Macronites.

Macron’s politics of the “extreme ­centre” – neoliberal policies in defence of big business interests (ranging from tax breaks for the wealthy to a rise in the pension age) – led to massive protests by the French trade unions and by the “gilets jaunes” (“yellow vests”) movement.

They also contributed massively to the discontent with mainstream politics that fed into the growth in support for the fascists.

However, following the appalling ­outcome of the June 30 poll, the NFP and the Macronites made a ­hastily arranged electoral pact by which both stood down in favour of the other in seats all over France. Such a pact is ­inherently unstable, and the ­Macronites are already ­making it clear that – although the ­strongest group within the NFP is the France Unbowed party led by the veteran leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon – they will only accept a prime minister from the less popular centre-left or their own neoliberal ranks.

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The electoral pact between Macron and the NFP is noteworthy because it tells us that, for now, the predominant view of French big business is that the fascists represent a greater threat to economic and social stability than the broad left ­coalition. However, it would be ­foolish to bank on that situation continuing ­indefinitely.

The lesson of history is that, ­although the German business class ­initially ­considered Adolf Hitler to be an ­unreliable extremist, they eventually ­became convinced that the Nazis were a useful bulwark against the German ­Communist Party (KPD).

The unreliability of the pact with ­Macron is not the only reason that the “victory for the left” rhetoric is ­misplaced. The NFP itself is a loose and uneasy ­coalition of the hard-left France ­Unbowed, the Greens, the Communists and the widely discredited, centre-left ­Socialist Party.

Not only is it very possible that the NFP’s relationship with the Macronites will come unstuck, but the unity of the NFP themselves is far from assured.

Indeed, many in the NFP – including far too many on the French far left – have spent their political lives denying the ­fascist character of the RN and their ­predecessor the FN (the National Front, which was established by Marine Le Pen’s father, the bilious antisemite and ­neo-Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen). While the FN and, later, the RN grew, too many ­people in France downplayed the dangers.

Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie Le Pen

If the parties of Le Pen senior and ­junior were not fascist, the argument seemed to go, then France didn’t have a fascism problem.

However, now that the RN have come within a whisker of achieving power – and as the French people are ­witnessing an ­increase in fascist street violence ­(including paroxysms of outraged ­thuggery since last Sunday’s election) – the true nature of Le Pen’s party has come into sharper focus.

Another lesson from Germany in the 1930s is that fascism cannot be defeated on a purely electoral basis. Even as late as March 1933 – an election held in the midst of a wave of Nazi terror across Germany – the two parties of the left – the Social Democrats of the SPD and the KPD – had more seats between them than the Nazis.

The mutual antagonism between the SPD and KPD and their failure to fully understand the need to prioritise a ­united struggle against the Nazis proved to be catastrophic. What Germany needed not only in 1933, but much earlier, and what France needs now is an anti-fascist united front.

That means the French left – from the various parties in the NFP to the trade unions – needs to find common cause with anti-racist organisations, ­community groups and with people (particularly the youth) from Black, Muslim, ­Jewish, Roma, LGBTQ+ and other minority ­communities.

They need an anti-fascist organisation that systematically propagandises against the RN (exposing their fascist nature and history) and organises mass protests to confront the RN wherever they seek to hold rallies or demonstrations.

This is the 11th hour for France. How the country’s anti-fascists respond has implications for the entire continent of Europe.