 Fascist Marine Le Pen may have lost the French presidential election, but she remains a huge threat while Macron has legitimised her politics through his use of racism and Islamophobia. Le Pen lost the election to Emmanuel Macron at 58.54 percent, with 41.46 percent. Anti racists must continue to build the mass movement against racism and fascism. Let’s be clear. The National Rally is a fascist and racist party. Despite the falling with her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen is still carrying out the same project he attempted, to de-toxify the fascist brand in France. German fascism was successful with a combination of a street fighting and a parliamentary strategy. It espoused to carry out a radical revolutionary change, but in reality it acted as a bludgeon against workers organisations and democratic institutions. Antisemitism was a central part of its method of mobilisation, giving people an easy target to blame for their problems. But in the wake of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the reality of Vichy France, this fascist model was too toxic to win support in French society, no matter how Le Pen’s father tried to package it in the then Front Nationale (FN). Under Marine Le Pen the detoxification attempt has meant an almost complete concentration on electoral strategy without a concentration on the street mobilisations of classical fascist movements. In Britain in the 1970s, 80s and 90s the National Front (NF) and then the British National Party (BNP) followed the classical strategy, but in later years the BNP concentration was on electoralism and attempts to normalise their brand. The NR as project in France is as if the BNP had amalgamated with UKIP at its height a fascist corp encircled by a racist populist periphery. The collapse of the traditional centre of French politics has opened the door for Le Pen with its near total collapse in presidential politics. In 2017 the Socialist Party and the Republican Party candidates secured 26 percent of the vote between them. In 2022 they couldn’t get 7 percent between them, with both ‘losing their deposits’ by faking to get through the 5 percent threshold. But Melenchon representing the radical left got some 22 percent of the vote, while his organisation was also at the heart of anti racist street protests against Le Pen. Far right Eric Zemmour got 7 percent of the vote, with rhetorical threats to deport 1 million Muslims, formally places himself to the right of Marine Le Pen. But in practice he isn’t attempting to build a fascist party in the way Le Pen is. Deep political polarisation and discontent exists in France, much of it in the previous heartlands of the left. It’s worth noting that despite claims of the so called ‘extreme Left’ and the fascist right being ‘the same’, Melenchon urged his voters not to give a single vote to Le Pen. There was a difficult choice for French voters whether to vote to keep Le Pen out or to vote for Macron whose use of Islamophobia and racism has helped to legitimise her. But we have to be clear that the threat posed by Le Pen will not go away and she is carrying out a serious attempt to build a fascist party in France, an attempt that won’t simply be halted at the polls. Le Pen associates with the fascist and racist populist right across Europe from Matteo Salvini in Italy and Victor Orbàn in Hungary to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in GermanyLe Pen’s strategy is far closer to the Nazi strategy than to the strategy of Zemmour. All fascists are liars, even in the 1930s Hitler would change his message depending on who he was talking to, and not just about antisemitism. Le Pen may have distanced herself from her fathers open antisemitism, but she’s swapped this for Islamophobia – as a more ‘palatable’ form of racism to a modern audience. The process of detoxifying the Nazi brand means that the street strategy is still undeveloped. There is no SA or SS to back up the racist rhetoric. But if fascists are successful electorally, the attempt at that part of the strategy will come. The magnificent protest in Paris on 19 March and the protests against Le Pen initiated by Melenchon and others across France on 16 April show the possibilities of creating a mass opposition to Le Pen and the fascist right. The task of creating a broad based anti racist and anti fascist movement, that unites anti racists whatever their political differences is urgent. It was this method that the Greek anti fascist employed to defeat fascist Golden Dawn just over a year ago, and also how we drove back the threat of fascist Tommy Robinson in 2018-19, as well as how the fasist threat of the BNP and the later English Defence League (EDL) was broken here in Britain. Now, amidst the ongoing crisis, and with a barrage of racist policy and rhetoric from Johnson’s Racist populist government, fascist Robinson is looking to get a foothold in Telford, where Stand Up To Racism will be opposing his planned mobilisation alongside others on 7 May (see here). CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO STAND UP TO RACISM’S ONGOING WORK |