French elections: the dark consequences of derogatory rhetoric

In a historic precedent, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) won the first round of French legislative elections. “Macronist bloc has been all but wiped out,” she triumphantly declared, in front of a roaring audience of her supporters.

Le Pen’s party received 33 percent of all votes, surpassing President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance coalition, which secured a mere 20 percent of the vote, while the leftist New Popular Front alliance received 28 percent of the vote. At 66.7 percent, voter turnout for a parliamentary first round was the highest ever since 1997, signalling a desire for change among large parts of the French public. In the run-up to the second phase of the parliamentary elections, Time magazine has observed that France might see its “first far-right government since the World War II Nazi occupation—or no majority emerging at all.”

In an interview with Sky News, Professor Rainbow Murray, an expert on French politics at Queen Mary University of London, noted that Le Pen has “been trying for a long time to soften that party's image to make herself seem more acceptable to voters and to detoxify her party's brand…But I think it's an illusion. I don't think she's changed all that much."

According to the New York Times, despite some reformation, “certain tenets remained unchanged, including the party’s euro-sceptic nationalism and its determination to ensure that Muslim women be banned from wearing a headscarf in public. Also unchanged was its readiness to discriminate between foreign residents and French citizens, and its insistence that the country’s crime level and other ills stem from too many immigrants, a claim that some studies have challenged.”

"Legitimised racism"

For more than a decade, far-right politicians have openly deployed racist, xenophobic language for political gains. What had remained a closeted form of hate for decades became a dog whistle in 2012, when former President Nicholas Sarkozy took a dig at someone by describing him as being of “Muslim appearance”.

With every passing year, such polarising language was adopted by the likes of Le Pen. The same year, an Open Society-funded survey into the rise of xenophobia suggested that the incidents of racism were no longer an aberration but a norm enabled by the country’s fast-changing political discourse.

Similarly, in the aftermath of the three-week, so-called ‘ethnic riots’ in 2005, then interior minister Sarkozy had referred to rioters as “scum” and “thugs” and said that the French suburbs should be “cleaned up.” In a meeting with police in Paris, he warned against “the order of the gangs, or the order of the mafias, or another kind of order,” placing the protestors against French values and society.

The authors of a 2016 study noted that even though the methods of the protestors did not differ from any other in France’s history, politicians and intellectuals framed them in an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim framework. They concluded that “the rhetoric used by the French government” at that time signalled “the rise of a legitimised racism, becoming a dominantly accepted and supported view in the political arena and society in France.”

They found little difference between Sarkozy and RN’s speeches and ideology. “Ideas previously used by the extreme right have become ‘banal’ in the political landscape because Sarkozy’s rhetoric has justified and legitimised the ideology behind them,” they warned.

Now fast forward to 2024, Le Pen’s nominee for the prime minister post, Jordan Bardella, has no qualms about demonising the country’s Muslim minority. In an interview with Financial Times, he did not hesitate in pinpointing “Islamic ideologies” as a problem in French society, promising that if voted to power, he would close mosques and deport imams deemed to be “radicalised”.

Amid such political grandstanding, younger people are getting attracted to hardline views and at times take the law into their own hands and attack those who they see as detractors. Last week, for instance, Green party activist Olivier Richard was headbutted in a French suburb of Bordeaux. "We'll smash you, Bardella will win, and it starts now," Richard, he recounted the two young attackers as saying, as per Reuters.

At the time of attack, he was carrying pamphlets for the left-wing New Popular Front. "They were sure they were going to win and could do what they wanted. This situation is terrifying," Richard was quoted as saying.

France's decomposition

On the other hand, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal delivered a solemn speech, requesting the French public to live up to their "moral duty,” as quoted in Le Monde.

"Our objective is clear: to prevent the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round, from dominating the National Assembly and therefore from governing the country with the disastrous project it has in mind," he said. "I say this with the force that the moment calls for from each and every one of our voters. Not a single vote must go to the RN. In such circumstances, France deserves no hesitation. Never."

Macron’s decision to dissolve the national assembly and call for snap elections on June 4 took many by surprise, but was welcomed by the country’s right-wing, as a moment in which "history is accelerating,” said Le Pen.

"A bloc-against-bloc confrontation is setting in. A general recomposition is taking place against the backdrop of the decomposition of France.”

For his part, Macron has warned of a possible “civil war” if people were to vote for “the extremes.”

While the far-right RN has been trying to sanitise its ‘extreme’ image over the years, many observers remain sceptical. The party continues to host controversial candidates, several of whom are known for spreading hateful rhetoric against minorities and immigrants.

Some RN candidates who have made it to the second round of elections include Frederic Boccaletti, who once served a prison sentence for illegal possession of weapons. His bookshop is reported to include works that are racist.

Another candidate Gilles Bourdouleix was once found guilty for saying Hitler "maybe didn't kill enough,” after getting into an altercation with a Roma community member. Another candidate Monique Becker had shared Facebook posts glorifying violent French organisations in colonial Algeria.

While it is too early to say if RN will form the majority of the 577-seats in the National Assembly, this much is certain: once considered a fringe group—led by “France’s perennial protest candidate,” according to Time magazine—RN has officially entered the French mainstream.