These French governments just fly past, don’t they? Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, the expected lifespan of a prime minister has gone from three years to three months. Michel Barnier, the latest PM to fall victim to the rolling political, social and constitutional crisis that is the Macron presidency, was appointed in September and kicked out in time to spend Christmas with his family. His predecessor, Gabriel Attal, lasted a comparatively Methuselean six months. Projecting this rate of decline forward, some online statisticians estimate that the duration of the next French government will be somewhere below zero weeks, potentially triggering a crisis in the space-time continuum on top of the political disorder.
Macron called a midyear snap election to disorganise the left-wing opposition. The move backfired. Support for Macron’s coalition collapsed. An increase in support for the far-right National Rally was outpaced by anti-fascist and anti-neoliberal sentiment, the election bringing a surprise victory for the left-wing Popular Front coalition.
In response, Macron carried out a typically high-handed anti-democratic stunt. Claiming that “nobody had won” the election, he spent weeks locking the various parties into “consultations”. Finally, he appointed as his new prime minister an aged operative of the right-wing Republican Party—a party that had just won 3.8 percent of the vote.
Michel Barnier’s new government was completely dependent on far-right support. He had previously distinguished himself in politics by endorsing some of the most extreme and unconstitutional anti-migrant politics of the far right, including a five-year moratorium on immigration. Marine Le Pen, leader of the quasi-fascist National Rally party, noted approvingly that the new PM was “respectful” of National Rally and its supporters. Her offsider, Jordan Bardella, noted with pleasure that the Barnier government would operate “under surveillance” from the far right, who could bring it down at any moment.
For the fascists, the Barnier government provided a means to implement aspects of their anti-immigrant, pro-cop agenda while remaining unsullied by formal collaboration with Macron. For Macron, Barnier’s main qualification seemed to be that, unlike most other candidates for the prime ministerial post, he would retain Macron’s hated neoliberal pension reforms. Barnier embodied the symbiotic relationship between Macron’s neoliberal authoritarians and the French far right, for all that those forces denounce each other demagogically.
France’s broad reformist left is unusual: its most influential and biggest part is also the most left wing. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s pugnacious electoral outfit, France Unbowed, is the main force on the French left. It drags behind it the Greens and France’s ancient, decrepit Socialist Party, whose leaders are constantly tormented by the desire to break with the coalition and return to “respectable” centre politics. When Barnier’s appointment proved Macron’s desire to completely ignore popular concerns, protests broke out throughout France. The left spoke in strong terms: France Unbowed, and others around its region of the left, called the move a “coup against democracy”.
But the reformist left did not rise to the level of its own rhetoric. The midyear elections proved there is strong social support, especially in the big cities, for a left-wing, anti-racist political program. The entire Macron presidency has proven the willingness of workers, students and the oppressed to mobilise in protests, occupations and serious, prolonged strike movements. France faces the real prospect of fascist governments and presidencies. The left-reformist coalition, and particularly France Unbowed, have articulated a pretty coherent anti-racist, left-reformist program, and backed it up with impressive speech making and disruptive parliamentary operations. They have helped cohere and shape a left-wing current in French society that is in better health than what is found in many other imperialist countries. They have scored important victories—including the electoral defeat of the far right this year. But speech making and parliamentary interventions are not sufficient to confront a growing fascist menace in a country experiencing what is effectively a permanent political crisis.
France Unbowed’s main response to the Barnier government was to move repeated no-confidence motions, exposing his dependence on the far right each time the National Rally voted to keep him in power. Now, after Barnier proposed an austerity budget, the far right have decided to bring him down. 
Time after time in France, as social struggles are converted into parliamentary crises, the initiative has passed to the far right. This was true even of the electoral mobilisations, where mass support for a left-wing government was in part defused by Macron’s long procrastination in nominating a new government. It is even more true of the strikes and protests that have been a recurring feature of Macron’s presidency. Both Macron and Le Pen tend to passively wait out the big eruptions of social struggle. It is much easier for right-wing forces—both of the neoliberal and far-right variety—to get away with their political tricks when the streets are empty of protesters, strikers have gone back to work, and the only path to resolve social problems seems to be the state.
The causes of the crisis are not hard to understand. Macron’s commitment to neoliberal austerity politics is confronting a population that consistently rejects his program. Macron’s refusal to back down requires him to engage in more daring experiments with the anti-democratic provisions of the French constitution, and with racist scapegoating. This has fuelled the rise of the far right along with the revival of a social-democratic left. None of these currents can claim a complete social majority. The best weapon of the left is its capacity to mobilise workers and the oppressed in joint struggle, regardless of the rhythm and schedule of elections, and in defiance of the law and constitution if necessary. A significant national strike against Barnier’s austerity budget—a strike that continued even after Barnier had resigned—shows the capacity for resistance to develop and grow remains.
The crisis is likely to deepen. France’s economy is under serious pressure, and not only from the familiar effects of neoliberalism. Last year, the fascist Eric Zemmour, interviewed on Le Grand Jury, analysed the French economy from a different perspective: “France has managed to bring its artillery production from 1,000 to 3,000 shells per month”, he explained. “You must know that Ukraine consumes 5,000 shells a day, and that the Russians produce a million shells a year. Voilà: the balance of forces.” 
Macron, the military-industrial hawk of Europe, sees things in similar terms. Late last year, he spoke of the need for a “long-term war economy” in France. France aims to triple its annual manufacturing of 155mm shells; Russia produces more of its equivalent than all the EU combined. Macron’s project of bringing down the debt and deficit while ramping up military production will require economic sacrifices.
“We have rediscovered what great nations can do: realise the impossible”, Macron said at the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The ceremony did not necessarily provide the symbolic moment of optimism and hopefulness that was intended. Barnier’s government had fallen, and no replacement had been appointed. Macron’s audience included firefighters and priests. It also included President-elect Donald Trump, whose concept of a “great nation” is largely shared by France’s far right and may define future French governments. With him was Volodymyr Zelenskyy; his besieged nation’s need for artillery shells and air defence systems foreshadows how imperialist war is likely to reshape world politics in the coming years.

D. Taylor

On the fall of France’s government

Phil Butland

When a Zionist riot is reported as an antisemitic pogrom

King Felipe of Spain, along with the Spanish prime minister and the Valencian president, visited the flood-ravaged town of Paiporta on 3 November. They were greeted by crowds of angry residents chanting “Murderer!” and had mud thrown at them. 
The furious reception was in response to disastrous floods in the Valencia region in late October. The floods, caused by massive rainfall—in some locations a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours—were the worst natural disaster in Spain in decades. More than 215 people have been killed and about 1,900 are missing. 
This part of Spain typically receives a lot of rain at this time of year, but as global temperatures rise, the air carries more moisture, leading to more extreme events. 
While the flooding is a result of climate change, the death toll is a product of neglect. The day before the downpour, the meteorological agency issued warnings, which the regional government of Valencia largely ignored. 
It was only at 8pm on the day of the floods that the government sent a warning to every mobile phone, instructing people to stay at home or move to higher ground. By this time, flood waters had already hit many towns, trapping people in their houses or in cars on their way home after work. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/XEqfDG8Xn00?feature=shared&amp;t=43">One young man berated the King</a>: “It was known, and nobody did anything to avoid it”.
In line with other disasters, such as <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/rescuers-find-body-worker-swept-tennessee-factory-hurricane-115409477">Hurricane Helen</a>e, there seem to have been several cases of bosses preventing their workers from leaving work early to seek safety. One widely shared video <a href="https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2024/10/30/criminal-companies-outrage-as-mercadona-sends-driver-out-into-deadly-floods-while-other-firms-are-slammed-for-endangering-employees/">shows a delivery driver for Mercadona</a>, one of Spain’s major supermarket chains, being saved by rescue workers. 
After the floods, Juan Roig, president of Mercadona, was <a href="https://x.com/NombreFalso1231/status/1852851619211223496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1852851619211223496%7Ctwgr%5E50476688fdf2e8e70c2e6c13fc8a9205673e97ce%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarxist.com%2Fspain-monarchs-pelted-with-mud-as-rage-over-avoidable-deaths-boils-over-in-valencia.htm">confronted by angry shoppers</a> at a supermarket. “You have no shame. You sent your workers out to die”, one said. Graffiti reading “Your profits, our dead” summarises the sentiment. 
The Valencia Emergency Unit, which had been created to coordinate emergency responses, had been disbanded as a part of budget cuts by the conservative regional government last year. The government also initially refused help from firefighting agencies from other parts of Spain and France in an effort to show that it had everything under control. This left some of the worst affected areas without heavy machinery for up to six days. 
One consequence is that residents have had to organise the cleaning effort themselves. One, Ana Isabel Zomeno, told ABC News: “The street here was full of piled cars. Nobody came here, but all the neighbours in this street have organised themselves very well to do the clean-up. It looks this clean now because of us”. 
People throughout Spain have donated supplies. Volunteers from the region have travelled around to help others clean up. On one day when the government put a call out, up to 15,000 people volunteered to help. 
Video shows mud everywhere. It carpets the ground and is caked onto walls. The people are covered in it—from the flood and from cleaning up afterwards. 
The visiting politicians, and even the king, ended up covered in it too, for different reasons. That was one piece of good news coming out of this disaster.

Ben Lourie

Spanish floods highlight the muck of capitalism

<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/night-britain-uk-fight-back-riots-southport-immigration/">Reports of the anti-racist demonstrations</a> sweeping Britain on the evening of Wednesday, 7 August, were a sight for sore eyes. Quite literally—those of us watching the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/7/mapping-far-right-riots-in-the-uk">racialised thuggery</a> unfold across the UK since July have genuinely had to hold back tears. If the threat posed by the far right in Britain is to be successfully pushed back, much more anti-racist protest will be needed.
Britain hasn’t seen this level of coordinated far-right terror since the late 1970s. It’s <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/beating-the-nazis-in-the-1970s-we-did-it-before-and-we-ll-do-it-again/">reminiscent of the dark days</a> of jackbooted skinheads and the rise of the far-right National Front: days many believed were long gone. But almost 50 years later, anti-racists have once again found themselves having to organise emergency counter-protests against an onslaught of targeted attacks on refugees and migrants. 
The turnouts for the 7 August rallies in major cities were large. In East London, 10,000 took to the streets; there were 7,000 in Bristol, 1,500 in Liverpool and the same number in Sheffield. In one west London neighbourhood, around 400 protesters faced down a pathetic showing of four or five far-right thugs, protected and spirited to safety by the Metropolitan Police. The crowd took up a <a href="https://x.com/deborahfinding/status/1821266059141455880">chant</a> both poignant and to the point: “There are many, many more of us than you!”.
Reports also suggest that Muslim youth have organised themselves to defend physically their mosques and community centres—an echo of the <a href="https://irr.org.uk/article/recollections-on-the-asian-youth-movements-that-emerged-in-the-1970s/">Asian Youth Movements</a> of the late 1970s. 
Back then, migrant communities could also rely on mass anti-fascist mobilisations of workers and young people cohered around the <a href="https://redflag.podbean.com/e/lessons-from-the-anti-nazi-league-with-moira-leahy/">Anti-Nazi League</a> (ANL). After a <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/08/remembering-the-battle-of-lewisham-2">victorious march</a> against police and fascists in south-east London in 1977, the ANL chased the National Front off the streets wherever it was active. The radical socialists who organised the ANL also galvanised support from the most militant sections of the trade union movement; in 1979 the National Union of Mineworkers hosted a “Miners Against the Nazis” conference in collaboration with ANL activists. 
Today, unions are the only official institutions endorsing anti-racist demonstrations, union flags and contingents being present at many rallies. While left-pitching <a href="https://www.hastings.gov.uk/news/latest/joint-statement/">Greens</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-V3tffo79c/">Labour</a> representatives shamefully warned their constituents against attending protests, many local union branches are trying to mobilise. One activist from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—which spearheaded a <a href="https://cms.redflag.org.au/article/britains-historic-strike-wave">strike wave</a> in 2022—told <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/7-august-fear-changes-sides-as-massive-protests-defy-the-far-right/">Socialist Worker</a> that a union conference held on 7 August had voted to attend a nearby anti-fascist protest en bloc. 
What the anti-fascist movement faces is a broad revival of serious and organised neo-Nazi street politics. The mainstream media have adopted terms like “rioting” or “disturbances”, but what we’ve seen are orchestrated physical attacks on mosques, immigration centres and refugee housing. According to UK anti-fascist research group Hope Not Hate, <a href="https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/07/31/the-far-right-and-the-southport-riot-what-we-know-so-far/">flyers and social media posts</a> have been used to coordinate attacks at specific times and places.
On 27 July a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce4qd4e4e1vo">huge nationalist and anti-Muslim rally</a> of around 40,000 people was held in Trafalgar Square, London. Headed by notorious hate-monger Tommy Robinson, this mass mobilisation took place before the Southport stabbing that ostensibly triggered the wave of far-right violence across the country. And Robinson already had a follow-on <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/news/24490711.glaswegians-urged-stand-firm-tommy-robinson-promoted/">demonstration planned</a> for Glasgow’s George Square in September. This will be a major test for anti-racist counter-protesters to face down.
Hitler once wrote that mass rallies and street-level confrontations helped build the hardened core of Nazism because they “burn into the little man’s soul the conviction that, though a little worm, he is part of a great dragon”. 
Sinister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq4c-Wiazw&amp;rco=1">speeches</a> at Robinson’s event echoed this sentiment and delivered clear incitements to racist violence. “There is no political solution to this problem [of Muslim immigration]”, one speaker proclaimed. “The mass of you, the sea of you ... you are the solution. Defend your home ... take back your country and unite the Kingdom—God bless the king!” Another, dressed in full military garb, <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818239415040221667">declared</a> to rapturous applause, “I will keep fighting until I’m lying on the streets, choking on my own blood”.
The establishment politicians, the police and media outlets now decrying “disorder” have done nothing to denounce the rhetoric spewing from Robinson’s brothers-in-arms. Indeed, they’ve pushed a hard-right racist agenda of their own in recent years. Former Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tried to establish <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-australia-taught-britain-torture-refugees">offshore refugee detention</a> camps in Rwanda. His successor, Labour’s Keir Starmer, promises instead new counter-terror powers and faster deportations of asylum seekers directly back to their home countries. 
Establishment parties have given fuel to the far right by whipping up anger against migrants. Almost 17 per cent of voters in the recent British general election <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/">voted for</a> openly far-right candidates running with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK or as ex-Conservative independents.
When mass industrial action <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-summer-industrial-discontent">broke out</a> in 2022, the British labour movement had an opportunity to impose a different narrative about rising inflation and falling living standards. Instead of scapegoating migrants and refugees, striking workers laid the blame squarely on the capitalist class gorging itself on the profits of the crisis. 
Keir Starmer condemned those strikes, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/27/sam-tarry-sacked-labour-frontbench-rail-strike-picket-line-keir-starmer">sacked</a> a Labour shadow minister for visiting a picket line. The Labour Party has actively engaged in racist fearmongering and undermined serious class resistance and solidarity. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
The ruling class is cohering around a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/riots-starmer-turning-point-police-b2593477.html">“law and order” response</a> to the so-called disturbances of the past few weeks. British anti-fascists are well aware of the role police played in <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/eyewitnesses-to-the-battle-of-cable-street-fascists-did-not-pass/">defending far-right marches</a> in the 1930s and ’70s. The police daily enact their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/24/outrage-after-british-police-officer-filmed-kicking-man-in-the-head">own racist violence</a> against Muslims and enforce the “order” of a perpetually unjust system. 
That’s why any movement against the far right must be imbued with a radical and unforgiving critique of the system that breeds fascist thugs. They are the political spawn of equally criminal bosses, media moguls and establishment politicians. Against all of them—all these fascist worms and their capitalist enablers—our side must respond decisively: “There are many, many more of us than you”.

Ruby Healer

‘There are many, many more of us than you’: British anti-racists mobilise against far right onslaught

When French President Emmanuel Macron solemnly addressed his fellow citizens in early June, he promised that a snap election would provide a “necessary clarification”. Moreover, it would express his deep commitment to the democratic process as a solution to political deadlock: “To let the sovereign people have their say: nothing is more republican”.
By late July, little has been clarified, and the power of the “sovereign people” does not seem to be in evidence. An enormous surge in far-right support—10 million votes for the post-fascist National Rally (RN)—was matched and exceeded by an anti-fascist electoral mobilisation. Terror of an impending fascist government was converted into uncontrolled joy and relief for French leftists. Yet France’s parliament remains split into three blocs, with no clear majority. Since that moment of joy, France’s anti-democratic constitution has worked its dark magic to convert this social crisis into behind-closed-doors manoeuvring, to the advantage of the ultra-powerful presidency.
Gabriel Attal, Macron’s prime minister, resigned yet remained in power in a legally mysterious caretaker arrangement. After three rounds of parliamentary voting, Macron’s former speaker of the parliament, Yaël Braun-Pivet, was re-elected to her post. The pre-election status quo has reasserted itself and demanded a leading role in forming a new government. After the election results were confirmed, the daily news was converted into rolling updates on the latest backdoor deals that had been made and broken, the moves and countermoves between the various parties to try to form a new government. The “sovereign people” were pushed out of the picture.
The partisans of the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition, and in particular its biggest and most left-wing section, France Unbowed of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have a claim to power. The left is now the biggest parliamentary bloc. Within that bloc, France Unbowed is the biggest section. By tradition and convention, it should lead the formation of a new government. 
But even the tweediest conservatives seem to lose interest in tradition and convention when they might result in taxes on the rich and support for Palestine. Both RN and Macron’s supporters seem to agree that they will do anything to prevent a government formed by France Unbowed. During the electoral campaign, Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, made his principles clear in a television interview: 
“If it came down to a two-way race between RN and France Unbowed where I live, I wouldn’t vote for France Unbowed. I love the police too much. I love the gendarmes too much. I love the state too much.”
Despite presenting the NFP as a threat as bad as, or worse than, the fascists, Macron’s machine relied on left-wing anti-fascist votes to keep its remaining parliamentary representation. Afterwards, it tried to undo the election results by breaking up the left-wing bloc and absorbing parts of it into the discredited ruling regime. The more “mainstream” (read: right-wing) members of the NFP coalition want to lead it towards political compromise and deradicalisation. So much for a necessary clarification; so much for the sovereign people.
This depressing spectacle should not be the end of the story. France’s elections occurred in a country shaped by regular, frequent, deeply rooted oppositional social movements. “Universal suffrage”, Vladimir Lenin wrote, “is an index of the level reached by the various classes in their understanding of their problems. It shows how the various classes are inclined to solve their problems. The actual solution of those problems is not provided by voting, but by the class struggle in all its forms”. 
What can we learn from these elections about how the classes in France are inclined to solve their problems?
For insight into the French capitalist class, we can begin by considering Macron and his political machine. There is a good reason to start here. French economists Thomas Piketty and Julia Cagé recently published a systematic study of French voting patterns going back to 1789. They found that Macron’s base is “the most bourgeois in all history”. Like most conservative parties, Macron’s group finds its highest support among the wealthiest people, whether measured by income or property ownership. Unlike traditional conservatives, he and his party have almost no support among the poor, whether in the cities or the countryside. Macron truly is the “president of the bosses”, as the chants of striking workers put it. 
Hence his authoritarianism. With no genuine mass support, Macron has forced through his program with raw state power. This runs the gamut from the physical violence of riot cops to the repeated use of article 49.3 of France’s constitution to implement laws without a parliamentary vote—most notably the hated pension changes. He has consistently tried to draw out the most authoritarian aspects of the French constitutional and legal framework, and normalise their application in political life.
However, Macron’s group does not rely solely on mechanical authoritarianism. It has a bigger plan for its project’s long-term survival, which is both more political and more insidiously undemocratic. Macron aims to transcend the old left-right split in politics and replace it with a new two-way division between liberals and nationalists. He has constantly attempted to disintegrate, split and anathematise the institutions of the left, while absorbing their most demoralised elements into the base of his own party.
Unions have been confronted and defeated. Left-wing anti-racist activists have been smeared as antisemitic terror-lovers. Almost any institution that might mobilise the oppressed against the rich has been targeted in one way or another. Meanwhile, Macron has anointed the far right as a legitimate opposition while demanding left-wing voters’ support in the face of the fascist threat. This is how the political representatives of France’s liberal capitalists have attempted to eradicate the left and pave the way for the growth of the far right.
What about the workers? It is well-known that fascist politics have penetrated the consciousness of French workers. But the picture is complex. More than half of French ouvriers voted for the far right in the European elections. But an ouvrier is not simply a worker. It is a blue-collar worker, of a kind that is shrinking as an overall proportion of the French working class. The ouvriers
now make up only 20 percent of France’s population; bosses outnumber them. They are ageing as France deindustrialises. The research of Piketty and Cagé shows that ouvriers now mostly live and work outside the big cities: factories and warehouses were pushed into the countryside, drawn there by cheap land and access to motorways, but also by the bosses’ desire to isolate blue-collar workers from the leftist influence of city politics.
France’s ouvriers are now its older workers, its more isolated, the ones who live in areas more dominated by small- and medium-sized businesses, and who are more likely themselves to own some property. As France’s mainstream parties adopted neoliberalism, the fascists took their “social turn”, proposing to re-industrialise and revive France’s welfare state on a racial basis. Following this, their electoral base expanded and shifted from the urban middle class towards rural workers. 
All this is no cause for complacency. Every working class will have its backward, even reactionary, currents. But the backward current in France’s working class is really big and really backward. It is no foregone conclusion that isolated workers should be reactionary, let alone fascist. And although those rural ouvriers
provide the largest concentration of fascist support, fascist voters and activists are found at every level of French society and within every section of its working class. The question becomes whether the organised parts of the French working class can resist and reverse this tendency.
Among French trade unionists, it’s a different story. Polling by Harris/AEF Info shows that only 19 percent of union-supporting workers support the fascists, compared to 37 percent of non-unionists. Among the powerful and influential General Confederation of Labour (CGT), there is real cause for concern: 27 percent of its supporters vote for RN, a very dangerous development indicating a major problem. Still, a large 61 percent majority voted for New Popular Front candidates in the last election. The CGT represents many blue-collar workers in regional industrial hubs and could mount a counterattack on the development of right-wing politics in the working class.
Among supporters of the FSU, a union representing mostly teachers, 74 percent support the NFP, and only 4 percent support RN. This confirms the argument by Piketty and Cagé that the left finds its strongest support among the professions intermédiaires—highly educated but badly paid and precarious workers like teachers and nurses, who mostly rent, live in big cities and tend to work for public institutions. They are generally younger, live among bigger concentrations of other workers and are more politically aware.
These figures do not simply represent voting blocs that can be expanded and consolidated to the advantage of left-wing politicians. They represent organised and class-conscious workers, many of whom have recently been on strike against Macron’s neoliberalism and have mobilised politically against fascism. That energy must be translated into action.
The recent electoral victory against the fascists was only a temporary reprieve. The growth of far-right sentiment in the working class makes a fascist government more likely, but it also risks making the working-class movement more disorganised and powerless in the face of attack. The electoral results show a huge desire to resist and reject the growth of fascism. The recent history of France’s strike movements shows that the anti-fascist trade unionists can lead the entire working class, and indeed much of the nation, against the country’s political elites. If they took up the fight against both racism and the French bosses, they could halt and reverse the advance of far-right politics in society as a whole.
In this, probably their biggest obstacle is the trade union bureaucracy. Despite much tough talk, France’s union bureaucrats have shown no desire to rise to the level of the current crisis. They allowed recent general strike movements to dissipate despite the rank and file’s willingness to go further. This contributed to the sense that France’s social problems will be resolved only through parliament, terrain that fundamentally favours right-wing politics. The left reformists of France Unbowed have refused to challenge the failings of the bureaucracy, instead hoping to curry favour with historically hostile union leaders and consolidate their voter base. In this, they have been successful: the CGT’s new leadership under Sophie Binet broke with long tradition to endorse the NFP in the elections. For reformist leaders, whether in the political parties or the trade unions, class struggle is valuable only insofar as it translates into a good result at the ballot box.
Yet for all their limitations, and for all the efforts of France’s establishment to lock the crisis within France’s constitutional puzzle box, the struggle may develop nonetheless. On the night of the election, after the left was shocked by its own success, Jean-Luc Mélenchon spoke to the crowds of France Unbowed supporters in Place Stalingrad. He demanded the right to form a minority left-wing government. 
“Those loudmouths who’ve blathered all week about an ‘ungovernable country’: they will have the responsibility to bring down the government”, he said. “And I bet they’ll be wise enough not to do it. Because it would be a grave error to think this electoral victory is like all the others. The politics from before will not continue. The people have come out: the working-class neighbourhoods, the youth.”
It was a threat: if you bring down our government, there might be social chaos. It was also a promise: let us form government, and there’ll be no problem.
The threat is a legitimate and powerful claim. The French ruling class has persisted in winding back democracy to force neoliberalism onto an unwilling population. Its refusal to accept the electoral results is just the latest example, and the growth of the far right is one of the results.
The promise indicates the limitations of France Unbowed’s project. It has cohered and inspired a left-wing current in French politics but remains content to use this as a bargaining chip to negotiate more aggressively with its parliamentary rivals.
Friedrich Engels wrote that elections “informed us of our own strength and that of all opposing parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion second to none for our actions, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness”. Now, the “untimely timidity” would be to wait for a parliamentary resolution to the threat of French fascism. Left-wing, anti-fascist sentiment dominates the most powerful and influential currents of France’s youth and working class. It should be put into action before it is too late.

What we learned from the French elections

Who’s it going to be: me or the fascists? That’s the question Emmanuel Macron asked the French electorate a few weeks ago when he dissolved the parliament and called a snap election. On 7 July, he got his answer: neither. 
It was the most important electoral defeat for the French far right in decades. The National Rally (RN) has lost national elections before—indeed, every single one. But, since 2002, the party has steadily advanced in what began to look like an inevitable progression towards power. It has come to be seen as the government in waiting, prepared for office by the fiascos of the Macron presidency. 
Vincent Bolloré, France’s Rupert Murdoch, cultivated the RN, promoted it and finally helped negotiate a breakthrough electoral deal with a faction of the centre-right Republicans. The party even rented an apartment in Paris to conduct negotiations with bosses and prepare for government. The RN seemed to have it all: the blessing of important parts of the French ruling class and the aura of an authentic outsider party representing a clean break with rotten traditions. 
“We’ve never tried them” became a cliché supposedly expressing the national mood of openness to an RN government. This was meant to be the far right’s turn. 
The disappointment has inflicted a psychological blow on the fascists, who think power is their birthright. You could see it in the face of Jordan Bardella, the party’s prime ministerial hopeful, who spoke to supporters using the same tone and expressions with which he might explain his internet browser history to his mother. 
It was even more apparent in the <a href="https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1810044783693287894">reaction from the RN election night party</a>, which was undoubtedly the worst social event of the season. Watch the young woman who, knowing the cameras are rolling, uses every ounce of her Will to Power to maintain a smile and not down her glass of white wine in one gulp. The activists were crying. “What a joke”, <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/reportage-legislatives-2024-au-qg-du-rassemblement-natioanal-les-militants-sont-passes-de-la-joie-a-la-desillusion-en-dix-secondes_6651807.html">one of them told France Info</a>, suddenly contemptuous of French voters. “They’ve behaved like sheep. A historic choice was offered to them, and they’ve done this nonsense.” 
The people let down the party. What will happen now?
The apparently inexorable rise of RN developed its own momentum. It was like a steam train smashing through its right-wing rivals—from the ultra-right Reconquete to the “respectable” Republicans—and causing splits everywhere as more and more ambitious conservative politicians jumped on board the RN express. Let us hope that this setback creates demoralisation, confusion, internal blame and paralysis.
The supporters of France Unbowed—the most left-wing and dominant force in the broad left coalition that claimed victory in the elections—gathered, appropriately, in Place Stalingrad in northern Paris. They cried too—in relief, and also with justifiable pride. They had been bracing for an electoral result that would express a triumphant wave of reactionary hatred, especially against migrants, and most especially against Arabs and Muslims, but generally directed at anyone who believed in social equality and progress. Instead of having to console each other and prepare to fight a fascist government, they celebrated a victory over both the fascists and Macron’s authoritarian liberals.
They campaigned against racism, for solidarity with Palestine, for taxing the rich and for increasing wages. They forced the cringing establishment left—the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Greens—into the position of resentful junior partners in their coalition. They were relentlessly slandered as antisemites and terrorist sympathisers, in practically every media interview, by the fascists and even by some of their own coalition partners. But, as party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon crowed in his election-night speech, their program had mobilised the youth and the quartiers populaires, the poor and working-class neighbourhoods, to beat back the right wing and provide a victory to the left on a historically high turnout.
American voters might be wishing they lived in France right now. Every institution in US politics is designed to prevent such a thing from happening. “Progressive” politics is trapped inside the capitalist Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party itself is structured to make its capitalist leadership unassailable—even more tightly so since the two failed candidacies of Bernie Sanders. The top minds in the US political establishment are currently trying to push out a candidate who has all of Macron’s flaws and none of his virtues: a babbling, genocide-enabling pillar of the neoliberal establishment. How desperately the United States needs an independent, socialist political alternative that renounces the moral blackmail of the Democrats and fights the far right on a working-class, socialist program.
Important lessons should be drawn from the French victory. When far-right politics becomes a mass phenomenon, it can be blocked without capitulating to its racism. Sticking to leftist principles—whether on economics, immigration or Palestine—will attract scorn and slander from powerful institutions. But this can be challenged and overcome. A powerful political coalition of the oppressed—young progressives, migrants and workers—can be constructed.
But the victory is not total, and it is not permanent. It is a reprieve.
France Unbowed is a reformist party, which means it is pro-state and pro-capitalist, with all the limits that entails. Mélenchon has demanded the right to form a left government and insisted that they will not trade away their coalition's program: they will take power only to implement “the program, the whole program, and nothing but the program”. 
We have heard that before. It sounds great compared to the prevailing standards of the centre-left, in which compromises are upheld as virtuous. The history of social democracy is full of such stirring declarations. They often come on the eve of a catastrophic sell-out. Manuel Bompard, a senior official in France Unbowed, called for the activists to continue protesting and organising, to defend and pressure a left-wing government. 
Both pressure and defence may be necessary, but Bompard’s call still operates within a framework that reduces the masses to supporting and cheering on a set of politicians rather than reshaping society themselves. The fundamental rules of capitalist politics remain unchallenged: power remains in the hands of big business; the people exist to support politicians. 
While that is the case, even the most radical left government will find its program circumscribed in practice. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party have been discredited over the course of a century, not only because they sold people out, but because they did so despite having such lovely programs. Even if France Unbowed could form government independently, it would still be beholden to the system that produced the present political crisis.
But, of course, it cannot form government independently. Its electoral coalition with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Greens has been a lifeline for those parties, particularly the shrivelled Socialists, who have more than doubled their parliamentary representation. France Unbowed makes up less than half of the overall left bloc, and that bloc makes up less than half of the new parliament. 
The right-wing socialists and Greens have rebelled against the notion that the combative followers of Mélenchon could lead an emerging left-wing government. Many view France Unbowed as their biggest threat, and will repeat the red-baiting slurs that fuel the growth of the far right if they think they can improve their bargaining position by doing so. They are being tempted by the prospect of a “rainbow coalition” with Macron’s group. To form a bloc with the followers of Macron would be a propaganda gift to the fascists. They would declare that the whole project was ultimately nothing but a trick to keep the old order in power. They would claim that the fascists are, as they have repeated over and over, the “real opposition”.
The RN is already rehearsing this argument. In the 1980s, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen denounced the domination of the “gang of four”: the Socialist Party, Communist Party, and the two-right wing parties of the day. Now, the RN talks about Macron constructing a parti unique, a one-party state made up of fraudulent front parties ranging from left to right, to which only the fascists represent an authentic alternative. 
The National Rally is the smallest bloc in the new parliament, but it got the most votes of any party. Its people may be demoralised, but they have not disappeared. They will await betrayals and failures by any emerging coalition. “The tide is coming in”, Marine Le Pen said. “It didn’t swell enough this time, but it keeps growing, and thus our victory has only been delayed.”
The left’s victory shows that France’s most important political actors—urban workers and young people—want to fight against both fascism and neoliberalism, and for a left-wing program based on the principles of solidarity and equality. But it is plain to see that more battles are ahead. To use their energy solely as a basis for parliamentary manoeuvres will be to disperse it and aid future fascist breakthroughs. The enormous latent power of this left-wing resistance must be converted into class struggles outside the parliament—into a force that can drive the fascist influence out of politics and change the world for the better regardless of who forms government.

Victory for the left in France

The British Labour Party has won the UK general election, securing a large majority of seats and routing the Conservative Party, which ruled the country for the last fourteen years. The Tories, as the conservatives are known, have been reduced to a rump, losing 250 seats, including some that have voted for the party since it was formed in the 1830s.
Labour’s victory was widely predicted. The Conservatives stumbled through years of explosive political controversies, from Boris Johnson’s flouting of pandemic restrictions to party with his rich friends to the meltdown of Liz Truss, who held the prime ministership for just 49 days. The chaos was fuelled by divisions within the party and among its base—between centrist conservatives and a radicalised far right. The results showed the latter’s influence: Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK party won more than 14 percent of the vote.
The last fourteen years have been a disaster for workers. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the Conservatives slashed government spending, leaving schools and the health system to crumble. Wages stagnated; working-class communities were devastated. Meanwhile, the Conservatives funnelled money to their wealthy mates and the bankers of the City of London. 
As the masses became alienated from the government, the Conservatives moved sharply to the right. They tried to divide the population and give themselves the appearance of popular support. They deported refugees, demonised trans people, condemned the left and riled up their conservative base. Yet while people were turned on each other, they also turned on the Tories, leading to the emergence of various far-right formations and a revolving door of prime ministers.
All of this fed the widespread desire for the Conservatives to suffer a humiliating defeat. Few will mourn the end of Conservative rule in Britain. 
Yet Labour’s victory is far less impressive than it first appears.
Keir Starmer’s Labour comes to power with the lowest primary vote of any party entering or retaining government since 1929. While it will hold 65 percent of the seats in the new parliament, this is almost double its share of the vote, which was less than 34 percent. That’s more than 6 percentage points lower than when Labour lost the 2017 election under the leadership of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. It is barely higher than the Labour result in 2019—a result considered so terrible that it led to the removal of Corbyn as Labour leader. 
So while voters despised the Conservatives, not many were won to Labour. Some of those deserting the Tories were traditional right-wing voters who instead backed either the centrist Liberal Democrats or Reform UK. 
Substantial numbers of working-class people and young left-wing voters also refused to vote for Labour. In Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn won as an independent, defeating the official Labour candidate by more than 7,000 votes. Pro-Palestinian independent Shockat Adam defeated Labour shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth in a surprise win. Ashworth’s vote plunged to 13,760, from 33,606 in 2019. 
Another pro-Palestine independent, Adnan Hussain, defeated Labour in Blackburn, an industrial city held by the party for the last 69 years. So too did Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury and Batley, and Ayoub Khan in Birmingham Perry Barr. In Ilford North, pro-Palestine independent Leanne Mohamad was just 500 votes behind the Labour candidate. As well, Labour shadow culture minister Thangam Debbonaire lost their seat to the Greens in Bristol Central by more than 10,000 votes. 
Even Labour leader Keir Starmer wasn’t immune to the backlash over his staunch support for Israel’s genocide. Starmer’s vote fell to 18,884, from 36,641 in 2019. Andrew Feinstein, a South African-born anti-Zionist Jewish activist, came second, winning more than 7,000 votes.
Then there were those who voted for no-one. Voter turnout was 60 percent, the second lowest in any general election since the franchise was established in 1928.
Even among those who voted for Labour, there was hardly great enthusiasm for Starmer’s project. The chief data reporter for the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch, noted on X that the “lack of enthusiasm for Labour at this election really is striking”, pointing to analysis of a British Election Study poll revealing that “among those who plan to vote Labour ... the party is much less well-liked than in 2019, 2017 or 2015 (no data before that)”. A YouGov poll found that 71 percent of voters felt that the election campaign didn’t address any issues they cared about. 
All of this is understandable when you look at what Starmer’s Labour Party is all about.
“Change begins now”, Starmer said in his victory speech, “and it feels good, I have to be honest, after four and a half years of work changing the party. This is what it is for!” Later, he repeatedly returned to the theme, telling the audience: “The party has changed”, “We will govern as a changed Labour Party”, “The values of this changed Labour Party are the guiding principles of a new government”, “This election could only have been won by a changed Labour Party”.
Starmer was referring to his four-year crusade to destroy the influence of Jeremy Corbyn and shift the party to the right. In this, he has been very successful. At the launch of the party manifesto in June, Starmer argued that Labour should be “pro-business” and “the party of wealth creation”. He rejected the idea that there should be higher taxes on big businesses and argued that significant increases to social services were ruled out because “you cannot play fast and loose with the public finances”.
The British bosses have lapped it up. In May, the Times
newspaper printed a statement by 120 business leaders supporting Starmer’s party. Starmer also received the backing of the majority of the corporate newspapers, including the Murdoch-owned Sun and the voices of the centre-right establishment, the Economist and the Financial Times. 
In response to Conservatives and the far right running a hysterical campaign demonising refugees and migrants, Starmer has made it very clear where his government will stand. “Read my lips—I will bring immigration numbers down”, he told the Sun. “I will control our borders and make sure British businesses are helped to hire Brits first.”
Israel’s war on Gaza only intensified Starmer’s campaign to shift Labour ever further to the right. Speaking to Jewish News shortly after winning the leadership, he said: “I support Zionism without qualification”. On this, he hasn’t disappointed. As Israel launched its horrific assault on Gaza, Starmer told radio host Nick Ferrari that “Israel has the right” to deny electricity to Palestinian civilians. Since then, he has driven out Labour members for supporting Palestine, sacked frontbench MPs for supporting a ceasefire motion and suspended Labour MP Kate Osamor for calling Gaza a genocide. 
No wonder that pro-Palestine candidates were able to bring down some Labour MPs.
Starmer’s Labour comes to power, then, in a fraught context. On the one hand, there is already a substantial minority of left-wingers angry with Labour over its centrist pro-corporate politics and support for Israel. This is bolstered by the fact that the UK has had the biggest rallies in solidarity with Palestine anywhere in the world. On the other hand, the rise of Reform UK shows that a sizeable radicalised right-wing section of society will try to push politics further to the right. 
“What is interesting is there is no enthusiasm for Labour, there is no enthusiasm for Starmer. Half the vote is simply an anti-Conservative vote. This Labour government will be in trouble very, very quickly. And we will now be targeting Labour votes”, Nigel Farage stated ominously after being elected for the first time as a UK MP. 
“Keir Starmer is going to be attacked on all sides; there is not going to be a honeymoon”, Channel 4 News political editor Gary Gibbon argued as the results rolled in. Referring to those seats lost to pro-Palestine independents, Gibbon noted: “It’s almost like mid-term anger but at the very start of a new government”.
Starmer’s huge majority in parliament may give the illusion that he is running an all-powerful government, at least for a period. However, the election results reveal that the social basis for such a government is weak. 
The disappointment of the UK general election is that, despite there being a significant space to the left of the Labour Party, no socialist groups were capable of taking advantage of the situation. Several pro-Palestine independents were elected, but none seem more generally connected to the organised far left, which has declined significantly in size and influence.
Rebuilding the socialist left will be vital if workers in the UK are to fight back against Starmer’s pro-corporate Labour government and the threat of an emboldened right wing.

Jordan Humphreys

UK Labour’s victory rests on rocky foundations

Has the political centre held off the far right, or are the fascists surging? 
According to Britain’s Economist magazine, a weekly diary of establishment opinion, the “political centre has been dented but it still holds”. Yet parties of the centre lost to the far right in the continent’s biggest countries. In Germany, the centre-left Social Democratic Party, which leads the ruling coalition federally, came in third place—behind both the right-wing Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition received less than half the vote of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
Contrary to the Economist’s take, the results confirm that the overall trajectory of European politics has shifted decisively to the right.
To start with, the political “centre” has become more right wing, more authoritarian, more racist and more anti-worker in recent years. 
When Macron was elected in 2017, he was presented as a liberal statesman who would modernise the country and stop the advance of Le Pen’s fascists. In the seven years since, the French president has ruled by decree, unleashed the riot police on striking workers and protesters, and banned demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. Despite being a secular liberal, Macron has flirted with conservative Catholic identity politics, telling a conference of bishops in 2018 that striking workers were motivated by an anti-Christian “nihilism”. 
Macron has denounced “Islamo-leftism”, threatened to ban environmental groups that he claims support “violence against property”, made it illegal for French citizens to post social media videos of police, and frozen the bank accounts of pro-Palestine charities. Finally, despite years of protest and strikes, in April 2023 he did what previous centre-left and centre-right governments had failed to do and raised the pension age from 62 to 64. 
Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Le Pen has continued to grow in popularity. 
When a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party was formed in Germany three years ago, there was hope that it would take the country in a more progressive direction. But in office, the coalition has expanded the German military, increased the number of refugee deportations and positioned the German government as the most hardline supporter of Israel in the world. Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, the German government has ruled out any serious measures to combat poverty. No wonder the Social Democrats were punished by voters.
The decline of the German Greens, who lost nine seats and whose Europe-wide bloc declined, is also notable. 
The centre-right Christian Democrats did well in the European elections, but they have shed what remained of former leader Angela Merkel’s soft conservatism and espoused increasingly far-right-sounding anti-migrant rhetoric. As in many countries, the centre-right in Germany has radicalised in the era of Trump. The latest expression of this is the leader of the Bavarian Social Union, the more right-wing coalition partner of the Christian Democrats, flagging that he is open to working with the Alternative for Germany in the future. 
Across Europe, the centre has driven things further to the right. In February, a meeting of economy ministers passed the New Migration and Asylum Pact, increasing the ability of EU countries to deport refugees and asylum seekers, including children.
Another important expression of the shift to the right is the incorporation of sections of the far right into the centre itself. This is most notable with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. After the initial shock of this far-right figure winning government, there has been a substantial softening towards her by the political centre. 
For her part, Meloni has been willing to break with other sections of the far right by stridently supporting NATO, military aid to Ukraine and the project of European political and economic integration. She has formed her own bloc in the European parliament, separate from that of the French far right and hostile to the more openly fascistic parties such as Alternative for Germany. Despite Meloni’s vile views on LGBTI rights, abortion and migration, her distancing efforts led one Guardian columnist to go so far as to ask: “Macron and Meloni appear poles apart—but what if they joined forces to save Europe?”
Sometimes the differentiation of the European far right is presented in a positive light— a sign that sections of the far right are moderating. But current developments should be treated with alarm, not complacency. 
To start with, the public shifts of leaders such as Meloni are an expression of the fact that far-right parties in several countries are within striking distance of forming government. Second, there is more overlap than is commonly thought between the policies of the far right and the centre in Europe. Finally, the space is being opened for even more hardline far-right groups to gain a following—as has occurred with Eric Zemmour in France and the Lega in Italy. It was particularly shocking to see the Alternative for Germany do so well despite becoming more and more openly fascist in recent years. 
The centre has created a Europe of appalling inequalities, rampant racism, violent policing and hard borders ruled over by an extravagantly wealthy elite. This is the not-so-secret key to the rise of the far right. 
European far-right parties drift along with the right-wing flow of European politics and while positioning themselves against the grain of European elites. As they do, the centre squirms and adapts to the far right’s electoral gains and increasingly extreme policies, taking a hard stand against them only on issues such as support for NATO and the European Union, which are core to the interests of the European capitalist class.
Missing is a resurgent socialist left that could fight the centre and expose the fake populism of the far right. This seems further away than ever. Outside of France, the parties of the left went backwards in country after country. Long gone are the days when the threat to the European centre seemed to be Podemos and Syriza, the occupation of city squares and general strikes against austerity. Emblematic in this regard is Die Linke, the German left-wing party, which has fallen apart after years of collaboration with centre parties and a recent split. 
France at least has a more recent history of social protest. The EU election results led to sizeable demonstrations against Le Pen. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of left-wing party France Unbowed, increased his vote and has formed an electoral alliance with the Socialist Party and the Greens to challenge both Macron and Le Pen in the upcoming French elections. But questions abound about the political expediency of an alliance with parties such as the Socialists, which ran a neoliberal centre government that attacked workers and helped Le Pen grow in the first place, let alone the Greens.
Key to breaking the right-wing trajectory of European politics will be a renewal of grassroots struggles by workers, students and the oppressed against not just the far right but the centrist political set-up that has made fascism respectable again.

In Europe, the centre faces a strengthened far right—which it helped create

If a fascist government comes to power in France, it should build statues in honour of President Emmanuel Macron. Victory wouldn’t have been possible without him. In fact, there is probably no individual in postwar French politics who has done more to rehabilitate the image and to legitimise the program of the extreme right.
It has been a long and winding road of reinvention and dédiabolisation for French fascism, or post-fascism or quasi-fascism—whatever we might call the National Rally of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen. The first steps were taken in the 1950s. In those days, Pierre Poujade pioneered a much-needed rebrand of far-right politics. Fascism didn’t seem so civilised and patriotic in the immediate aftermath of Nazi collaboration and the Holocaust. In the early Cold War, Poujade’s Defence Union of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen found a new focus for middle-class reactionaries: anti-tax, anti-Communist and committed to the retention of France’s colonies by any means necessary.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, aged just 27, was first elected to the National Assembly as a Poujadist deputy in 1956. He carried out the next phase of the movement’s renewal. French ultra-colonialism had no political future after the victory of national liberation movements in Algeria and Indochina. So, in the 1970s, Le Pen was a pioneer of the European far right’s turn to anti-immigration politics.
His organisation, the National Front, went nowhere for some years. But it broke through in the 1980s after the Socialist Party’s transformation into a neoliberal austerity government, its tournant de la rigueur, under François Mitterrand. Mainstream centre-left “socialism” no longer even pretended to offer an alternative to the free market. Anti-immigrant racism offered an alternative that built on the prejudices of capitalist society. It worked for almost anything. Unemployment: expel immigrant workers. A housing shortage: evict immigrant residents. Social breakdown: deport immigrant criminals.
The neoliberal stranglehold on mainstream French politics allowed breakthrough after breakthrough for the National Front, later to be rebranded the National Rally. After the Socialist government of François Hollande and Manuel Valls forced through a law attacking the rights of workers, the Socialist Party’s vote collapsed to 6 percent in 2017. Emmanuel Macron, representing a pure embrace of neoliberalism, became president. Le Pen’s daughter Marine became leader of the fascist opposition.
And opposition to what? Macron’s neoliberalism increasingly blended with a right-wing authoritarian politics that makes fascism seem like the logical next step. At the highest level of politics, he has forced through unpopular policies using constitutional tricks to bypass parliamentary votes. In civil society, he has ordered the legal dissolution of anti-racist and environmentalist NGOs. On the street, he has banned protests and unleashed head-cracking riot cops on opposition movement after opposition movement.
On immigration and the persecution of Muslims, Macron’s thuggish interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, accused the fascists of being “un peu molle” (a bit soft), not “assez dure” (tough enough). Macron’s government passed an immigration law inspired by the National Rally, which Le Pen called an “ideological victory” for her tradition. After parts of it were ruled unconstitutional, Macron mused about amending the constitution to allow for the longstanding flagship policy of Le Pen’s party: a referendum on the immigration question. “It cannot be avoided”, he said.
And in election after election, Macron has begged leftists to faire barrage, to build a blockade against the far right. Faire barrage is French for lesser-evilism, the moral blackmail demanding that leftists support right-wing candidates or else be blamed if the public votes for even more right-wing candidates. At the same time, Macron and his allies have constantly characterised the broad left as an enemy within. The left are, the Macronie constantly repeat, outside the arc republicain. Unlike the fascist opposition, the leftist opposition of France Unbowed are said to have no legitimate place in French politics. This refrain intensified after anti-police riots in 2023, which France Unbowed would not condemn, and became deafening after it opposed Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza.
Macron’s government has done so much to legitimise the far right, and to diabolise the left, that the fascist leader Jordan Bardella can now wield his own version of lesser evilism. On BFM TV, one of the large media networks, he called on the conservative electorate to faire barrage
(block) the left—the left who, in words that could have been written by Macron himself, “pass their time insulting our police, who want to disarm the police, who refuse to call Hamas ... a terrorist organisation, who trample on our businesses, who trample on our farmers’ fields, who trample on secularism”. He concluded: “I am the only one who can faire barrage against Jean-Luc Mélenchon [leader of France Unbowed], who can faire barrage against the far left”.
Is struggle the solution to the situation? France has had no shortage of it. Since the end of the Cold War, France has probably seen more and deeper social movements than any other major European country. Since 2016, there has been a once-in-a-generation social movement roughly every eighteen months. There have been student occupations, urban riots, environmentalist blockades, unclassifiable popular uprisings like the Yellow Vests and nation-wide political strikes of such breadth and intensity that they put most of the world’s workers’ movements to shame.
Some have been politically contradictory, like the Yellow Vests. Some, like the recent farmers’ blockades of the cities, have probably benefited the far right: when Jordan Bardella popped in to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EskOABYuvmc">Salon de l’Agriculture</a> in February to campaign for “economic patriotism”, he was received like Taylor Swift showing up at a fan’s birthday party. But most have been unambiguously left wing: led by left-wing activists, informed by left-wing politics, opposing deregulation, privatisation, neoliberalism, racism and environmental destruction. Chief among these movements were the national strikes against Macron’s attacks on France’s pension system.
These strikes deserve close study. They persisted for years, beginning in 2019 and reviving almost as soon as the COVID lockdowns were over. Their size and resilience shattered expectations and defied the downward trends of the last few decades that had led to some suspicion that the French trade unions were past it. They combined local reconductible strikes—ongoing strikes, re-ratified daily by mass meetings of workers, in key sectors like rail and oil refineries—with enormous one-day national mobilisations. They were supported by sympathising movements: student occupations in the cities and cross-class protests in the little villages throughout France. Most importantly, they were overwhelmingly popular, with enormous super-majorities supporting the strikes in poll after poll.
In many ways, they were exemplary: political general strikes, in which the working class appears as the leading force in society, confronting a hated enemy and defending the people as a whole. Socialism will be impossible without many, many more movements of this nature. And the far right was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, its activists could not even attend the demonstrations, and were roundly mocked for their invisibility as a purported “opposition” during the biggest and most important oppositional movement of Macron’s presidency. The reason is obvious: fascists are known enemies of the workers’ movement, and if they had shown up, they would have been beaten up and driven out. 
It is sometimes said that the fascists are the leading party of France’s working class. This is highly misleading. Among workers and the poor in big cities, the vote is overwhelmingly for the left. The big population centres, in which the most organised, militant and class-conscious workers live, have so far rejected the fascists and embraced the left in overwhelming numbers.
And the story is not even as simple as an urban-rural split. Yes, the far right has its electoral base in rural and semi-rural electorates. But throughout France, it seems to appeal to a particular kind of voter, as the researcher Gala Kabbaj <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuLj1f3W7to">explained</a>
at a France Unbowed conference in 2023. The fascists do well among workers in areas where small businesses predominate, where there is little open class conflict and where workers can be strongly influenced socially, personally and politically by bosses who may be their neighbours, relatives and aspirational role models. 
When the biggest, best-organised, anti-fascist sections of the working class become active and assert themselves, they can provide an alternative leadership and undermine the influence of right-wing politics everywhere. So by April 2023, 60 percent of small business owners opposed Macron’s pension attacks, according to an Ifop poll. Right-wing political support began to crack up; conservatives said they would not vote for the policy, making a parliamentary majority impossible.
Yet the strikes failed. They wound themselves up. The apparently mighty Intersyndicale, the united campaign group of the chief national union bureaucrats, ran out of puff. Self-sacrifice and determination of the rank-and-file notwithstanding, the bureaucrats who summoned the movement into existence always wanted to limit it. Both the right-wing French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), which repeatedly offered deals to wind the movement up, and the more “militant”, Communist Party-aligned General Confederation of Labour (CGT) were much more comfortable with a series of national one-day rallies than with generalising the reconductible strikes and following through on their verbal threats to “blockade the country”.
In March 2023, Macron abandoned any pretence at democracy: he sidestepped parliament to force through his attacks using the notorious Article 49.3 of the French constitution. Attempts by the opposition to compel a referendum were rejected by France’s Constitutional Council, which consists mostly of ex-politicians. Serious riots, led by youth in the cities, exploded throughout the country. Spontaneous strikes proliferated. In late March, <a href="https://www.ifop.com/publication/le-regard-des-francais-sur-la-mobilisation-contre-la-reforme-des-retraites/">polls</a> showed an overwhelming majority of the population wanted the strike movement to “harden” and go further: 62 percent of the whole population, 68 percent of those under 35 years old, and 74 percent of the poor.
It didn’t happen. There was no generalisation, no hardening of the movement, no real general strike. The Intersyndicale didn’t want it, only another one-day mobilisation to take place on May Day and then another a few weeks later in June. It was an admission of defeat; an official recognition that the union bureaucracy would rather be beaten than destabilise the political order. The centre of gravity shifted back to elections—a much more comfortable one for the fascist opposition. And in that field, what has the French left offered?
The key figure, of course, is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He had a long career in the Socialist Party, first as a young MP in the time of Mitterrand’s neoliberal turn, then as a participant in left-wing internal party oppositions. Then he left the party to launch a series of projects aimed, in various ways, at reviving old-school, pre-neoliberal social democracy, with an anti-imperialist flavour and a tendency to propose electoral alliances with the Communist Party. In program and rhetoric, he is not far from Jeremy Corbyn. Unlike Corbyn, he made the wise decision to launch his own parties, of which the latest is France Unbowed—so he is in no danger of being controlled or deposed by a hostile right-wing internal opposition. He has stuck to his principles.
As France’s political crisis has deepened, Mélenchon and his comrades in France Unbowed have achieved remarkable success. In current polls, they are neck-and-neck with the National Rally. They have won high support among demographics socialists crave: young people, urban workers, the oppressed. Firmly rejecting Islamophobia, even under the traditional French guise of “secularism”, France Unbowed is the party of choice for French Muslims, 69 percent of whom voted for Mélenchon in the 2022 presidential election. Its MPs are creative and disruptive in parliament. The party supports all the right causes and tends not to back down, even under the most intense media pressure: support Palestine, support the strikes, attend banned protests against police brutality.
This is all to its credit, and it is to the credit of France’s workers and youth that they reward France Unbowed with their support in such large numbers, despite the constant and predictable streams of slander from the mainstream media. It is better than most reformist parties ever get these days. It recalls Greece’s Syriza at the peak of its oppositional momentum. 
But is it enough?
During the pension strikes, the bureaucratic union leaders, who were leading that movement to a shameful defeat, attacked France Unbowed time and again—for being too radical. Philippe Martinez, the Stalinist secretary of the CGT, complained that France Unbowed wanted to “appropriate the movement and push the unions into the background” when it tried to disrupt the passage of the pension law; Laurent Berger of the right-wing CFDT called the party’s parliamentary protest a “shameful spectacle”. France Unbowed did nothing to counter these attacks. When the union leaders wound up the movement with a couple of hopeless one-day protests, Mélenchon simply announced: “We must all be ready to line up again behind the Intersyndicale”.
The right-wing press often accuse the “Islamo-leftist” Mélenchon of engaging in cynical electoral opportunism: betraying the principles of the republic to seek Muslim votes, adopting “antisemitic” support of Palestine. This is a typical racist slander. But there is a real problem of electoral opportunism. Mélenchon is happy to leave class struggle to the union bureaucracy—his party supports strikes but does not organise them, and certainly does not challenge their bureaucratic leadership. In exchange, it is hoped that the French union bureaucracies will maintain a neutral or friendly disposition to France Unbowed.
So far, so good. The political momentum of France Unbowed has forced its rivals in the reformist left to once more collapse into a Mélenchon-led electoral coalition, the New Popular Front. Everyone can get on board: the Communist Party on one side and the old, hated Socialist Party on the other. Even François Hollande, the political father of Emmanuel Macron, has reemerged as a candidate in Mélenchon’s coalition. None of the constituent parties will stand against each other: there will be no criticism of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party or the union officials. All together to faire barrage against Le Pen. “Throw rancour in the river” is Mélenchon’s slogan of the day.
Who knows? They might even win. If they do, they will presumably find themselves constrained by the realities of capitalism to jettison much of their program—like Mitterrand with his social democratic programme commun of 1981, abandoned for austerity in 1983. Nonetheless, just as Le Pen and Bardella became the opposition to Macron, now the left—with an anti-neoliberal, anti-racist, pro-Palestinian leadership—is the main opposition to Le Pen and Bardella. This is a real achievement, and something to build on.
But France does not need one more “socialist” government to draw up policies and abandon them under pressure. It has had plenty of them since 1848. 
The oppressed people in France, the youth, and especially the workers have shown their willingness to throw themselves into struggle to defend themselves collectively against the ravages of neoliberalism. They need a politics that can build on this determination, not by converting it into votes, but by helping it to break free of the bureaucratic leadership that keeps it within the bounds of the system. That alternative—a revolutionary socialist one—will be necessary whoever wins these elections, or the ones to come after.

The left leads the fight against fascism in France

In a hotel near Potsdam, two dozen far-right politicians, fascist activists and wealthy supporters met to discuss a “masterplan” for mass “remigration”. In their scheme, millions of asylum seekers, migrants and “non-assimilated” German citizens would be forced out of the country, some relocated to a proposed new territory in North Africa. This is not an anecdote from the rise of fascism in the 1930s, but the revelations of an investigative report by German newsroom Correctiv.
Central to the secret meeting were leading figures from Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Formed in 2013, AfD has become the most successful far-right party in Germany since the Nazis. Stoking anti-migrant and anti-Muslim racism has been key to its success. In response to Correctiv’s report, a leading AfD politician declared: “Remigration is not a secret plan—it’s a promise”. 
While AfD formally rejects Nazism, party activists have well-documented ties with fascist groups. For example, a former AfD parliamentarian was arrested in 2022 for aiding a planned coup attempt by a far-right movement.
In the last year, AfD has become the second most popular party in Germany. It polls ahead of every party in the current coalition government, comprised of the Social Democrats, Greens and centre-right Free Democrats. In the eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, which each hold elections later this year, AfD is on track to become the biggest party. 
The current government has ruled over a historic decline in living standards. Rent is so unaffordable that a camping site in Munich recently offered concession rates for homeless students. Prime Minister Olaf Scholz has delivered little meaningful cost-of-living relief and he told mortgage holders late last year that they shouldn’t complain about rising interest rates.
But when corporate profits are suffering, the government has plenty of empathy. Scholz spent more than €50 billion bailing out energy giants Uniper and Siemens. The government has also pumped cash into reviving German military power.
Unsurprisingly, all this has made the coalition deeply unpopular and allowed AfD to position itself as the “anti-elite” choice. In echoes of President Joe Biden’s America, the political establishment, unable to offer an attractive alternative to the far right, has resorted to calling on the courts to ban the AfD. This is unlikely to be successful, but the strategy risks boosting the AfD’s anti-establishment credibility. It could also set a dangerous political precedent in a country that is already repressive against left-wing activism.
Yet there is an alternative. Since mid-January, hundreds of thousands of Germans have joined weekly mass demonstrations in a powerful show of opposition to AfD. It has become the biggest German protest movement since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While it’s too early to say whether it can push back the far right, there are some encouraging signs. AfD suffered a surprising defeat in a local election in eastern Germany, while the party has dipped below 20 percent in opinion polling for the first time in months. 
Germany is not alone in its rise of the far-right. This is the new normal across Europe.
“The Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch—the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed.” So promised Geert Wilders, long-time figure of the European far right and now leader of the biggest party in the Dutch parliament, after last November’s elections.
For two and a half decades, Wilders has built his brand as a rabid anti-Islam campaigner. Despite naming the parliamentary group he started in 2006 the Party for Freedom (PVV), Wilders calls for shutting down mosques and banning the Koran. He says that migration from Muslim-majority countries should be stopped, all asylum seeker claims should be rejected and Muslim immigrants should be paid to leave the country. He was convicted for discrimination in 2016 after leading a chant demanding “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.
Due to the peculiarities of the Dutch electoral system, Wilders is still negotiating with other parties to form a coalition government. The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)—the conservative party leading the outgoing government—has suggested it might support a Wilders-led administration.
Like AfD, Wilders’ PVV benefitted from the cost-of-living crisis and the unpopularity of the mainstream parties.
Wilders offered seemingly simple explanations and solutions for the crisis. Housing is unaffordable? There are too many migrants. You don’t get enough welfare? There are too many migrants. The healthcare system is in crisis? “The treatments of ‘Henk and Ingrid’ are being postponed because [hospital] beds are occupied by ‘Mohamed and Fatima’”, Wilders once said on social media.
The conservatives attempted to capture the anti-migrant vote by taking an increasingly hardline approach. Ex-Prime Minister Rutte split his coalition government and triggered new elections by trying to force through tougher immigration restrictions. Under new leader Dilan Yesilgoz, a Turkish-Kurdish refugee, the conservatives ran a tough-on-migration campaign, summed up by the title of their election manifesto: “Make Space, Set Boundaries”.
The strategy backfired. It escalated anti-migrant sentiment, gave confidence to racists and made the positions of the far right, once consigned to the fringe of Dutch politics, seem legitimate. Predictably, Wilders, the symbol of anti-migration politics in the Netherlands, got a massive boost. In the words of French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen: “People prefer the original over the copy”.
The “progressive” parties have offered no alternative. The Labour Party ruled in coalition with the conservatives from 2012 to 2017. Its leader recently told a popular podcast that, while he’d like to be like Bernie Sanders, he has to be like Joe Biden (a craven ally of the rich).
The day after the Dutch election, on 23 November, Ireland was rocked by major riots. After a stabbing attack outside a school, racist lies spread that the perpetrator was an Islamic terrorist. Hundreds of people took to the streets of Dublin to burn cars, loot businesses and battle police through the night. #IrelandIsFull trended on X and rioters held banners reading “Irish Lives Matter”.
The hard right of Irish politics, including the Irish Freedom Party and news outlet Gript, helped whip up the anti-migrant frenzy. British fascists Tommy Robinson and Paul Holding, leader of Britain First, circulated racist content on social media. “Ireland, we are at war”, MMA fighter Conor McGregor declared to his 10 million followers on X.
Ireland had been heralded as a success story of thwarting the far right, but anti-migrant sentiment has grown in recent years. Last May, a makeshift camp for homeless refugees in Dublin was attacked and tents set on fire during a racist demonstration. On New Year’s Eve, a disused pub in Dublin, rumoured to soon house refugees, was set alight.
Elsewhere on the continent, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who comes from the fascist wing of Italian politics that has direct historical links to Mussolini, has been welcomed into the Western political establishment since her election in 2022. According to the Washington Post, she has “proved her critics wrong”, meaning she hasn’t rocked the boat of European capitalism, as the elite feared she would. Meloni has backed the West’s military aims in Ukraine and worked with the political and economic elites of the European Union. She has found an especially close friend in British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak—in October the pair co-authored an anti-migrant opinion piece in the Times.
While the ruling class can sleep easy, workers and the oppressed in Italy are under attack. Last August, about 169,000 low-income families had their social support slashed after being notified via text just weeks earlier. Same-sex couples who use a surrogate parent, even if that person is in another country, now face jail time. Meloni is leading the charge for a naval blockade of North Africa to stop boats carrying refugees from getting to Europe. 
Fascist presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen has benefited from years of polarisation in France. Unpopular President Emmanuel Macron has routinely attacked the working class and beaten the anti-migrant drum. In December, Macron introduced a vicious set of attacks on the rights of immigrants—so vicious that some proposals, like preventing migrants from accessing key parts of the welfare state for five years after arrival, were deemed unconstitutional.
French workers have resisted Macron on a scale unseen in the Western world in years—most significantly, historic strikes rocked the country for the first four months of last year. But the refusal of the trade union officials to lead an indefinite general strike assured defeat for the movement, and the long-term growth of the French far right has left Le Pen best positioned to benefit from the turmoil. Opinion polls indicate that she would win an election held today. 
The far right is making serious gains across Europe. This is a threat that should not be taken lightly.

On the fall of France’s government

When a Zionist riot is reported as an antisemitic pogrom

Spanish floods highlight the muck of capitalism

‘There are many, many more of us than you’: British anti-racists mobilise against far right onslaught

What we learned from the French elections

Victory for the left in France

UK Labour’s victory rests on rocky foundations

In Europe, the centre faces a strengthened far right—which it helped create

The left leads the fight against fascism in France

Far-right continues its march across Europe

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