Founder of left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Melenchon walks during a demonstration to support Palestinians and to demand for a ceasefire in Paris on June 8.SAMEER AL-DOUMY/Getty Images
When French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap legislative election this month, he was counting on bitter divisions among political parties on the left to enable his centrist coalition to hold onto a plurality of seats in the National Assembly.
Like most things these days, however, this ultra-brief campaign has not been going Mr. Macron’s way. The four main parties on the left have managed to put aside their differences (for now) and agreed to run a single slate of candidates under the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front/NFP) banner, relegating the President’s Ensemble (Together) coalition to a distant third place in the polls.
On the eve of Sunday’s first-round vote, the election is shaping up to be a battle between the NFP and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally/RN) in most of France’s 577 circonscriptions, or ridings. Dozens of incumbents belonging to Mr. Macron’s coalition risk being knocked off the ballot before the decisive July 7 second-round vote that will determine the ultimate winners.
As Mr. Macron’s coalition crumbles, perhaps no group of voters faces a more wrenching electoral choice than French Jews. Shockingly, many are resigned to voting for the RN, a party whose founder once called the Holocaust “a detail of history” and was repeatedly sanctioned for his antisemitic rhetoric.
The NFP takes its name from the Depression-era Front Populaire, an anti-fascist coalition of communists and socialists led by Léon Blum, who went on to become France’s first Jewish prime minister. But the current NFP is dominated by La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, or LFI), a radical-left, pro-Palestinian party whose fiery leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon stands accused of fanning the flames of antisemitism.
According to a poll conducted earlier this month by the firm Ifop, 92 per cent of French Jews said LFI was contributing to the rise of antisemitism in France, compared with 49 per cent who said the same thing about the RN.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Mr. Mélenchon and leading LFI politicians have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and participated in pro-Palestinian rallies where antisemitic slogans have been brandished. They have equivocated about whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. LFI députés have provocatively waved the Palestinian flag in the National Assembly.
All of this has been in keeping with the party’s attempts to court Muslim voters in France’s low-income banlieue, where poverty and youth unemployment have engendered a volatile atmosphere. These are the suburbs that exploded into violent riots a year ago after a teenager of Moroccan and Algerian descent was killed by a police officer.
In a recent blog post, Mr. Mélenchon, who is angling to become prime minister should the NFP come out on top on July 7, charged that “contrary to what the official propaganda says, antisemitism remains residual in France.” Statistics suggest otherwise, with the number of reported antisemitic incidents rising exponentially since Oct. 7. One of the most shocking involved three adolescents who were arrested in the sexual assault of a 12-year-old Jewish girl this month in Courbevoie, a Paris suburb. They allegedly lobbed antisemitic insults at their victim.
For her part, Ms. Le Pen has moved to expiate her party’s antisemitic past as it drums up opposition to Muslim immigration. In 2015, she expelled her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the party he had founded. The RN has stood firmly on Israel’s side in supporting its war in Gaza.
Even Serge Klarsfeld, who was made a national hero for his efforts to bring Second World War Nazis and collaborationists to justice in France, recently said that he would vote for the RN if necessary to block the LFI, “with its stench of antisemitism and its violent anti-Zionism.”
Yet, while Ms. Le Pen’s party has softened its racist edges, it has hardly embraced pluralism. It blames crime on Muslim immigration, espouses mass deportation, and calls for French-born citizens to be given preference over immigrants in dispensing social services and benefits. It also favours the abolition of birthright citizenship, to strip native-born children of Muslim immigrants of their French passports.
Mr. Macron once benefited from the growing polarization of the French electorate to corral anti-RN voters behind him. He has been accused, with some justification, of encouraging this polarization to his own political ends. But his arrogance and deep unpopularity have made him a pariah among his coalition’s candidates, who have now scrambled to dissociate themselves. A desperate Mr. Macron this week declared that the election of the RN or NFP could push France toward “civil war” after July 7. His comments, widely condemned as beyond inappropriate for a president, only served to confirm his own isolation.
Mr. Macron called this election hoping for vindication. He finds himself instead facing his own marginalization as his country heads toward the brink.