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Macron Wins Again
The French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected recently, the first French president to serve two successive terms since 2002. French politics can be split into three blocks the left, the more centrist right and the far right with Macron representing the centre right. Sunday’s results showed a lack of support among the French populace for the returning President and his right-wing politics as 40% of those who voted for Macron did so just to prevent the far right candidate Le Pen from getting elected. The gap between Macron and Le Pen halved from the previous election in 2017 from 66% for Macron and 34% for Le Pen to 58% for Macron and 42% for Le Pen this time around. Many didn’t vote at all in this election with the country seeing its lowest turnout since 1969 of only 72%, and 9% of those who did vote cast blank or spoiled ballots. Thousands of protestors even took to the streets after the election to voice their displeasure at France’s current political situation.
Le Pen was able to reach this position in large part because of the widespread coverage that far right candidates receive across Western media, disproportionate to their left wing counterparts. Their ideas are used to distract from the falling living standards in the West. Immigration is used to take attention away from the rising cost of living, falling healthcare standards, the climate crisis and other important political and economic issues that have a far greater effect on everyone’s lives. Instead the media will talk about far right candidates like Le Pen as if they represent the working class despite having extremely right wing and pro business policies. During the election Le Pen would often use left wing rhetoric, for example, speaking out against Macron trying to raise the French age of retirement and talking about building strong social security systems. She constantly tries to appeal to the left however most of those who supported left wing candidates in the first round of elections either chose to vote for Macron or chose not to vote in the second round.
Macron’s right-wing policies gave credence to Le Pen’s far right ideas. During his presidency Macron legitimised the far right by introducing a law against Islamic separatism and making it easier to deport undocumented immigrants. These are very right-wing policies that make discrimination against minorities mainstream. His economic policies were also very right wing and very unpopular, he repealed a wealth tax in his first budget which was applied to those with over €1.3million in assets, he put in labour reforms to make it easier to fire workers and he tried to make it harder for the unemployed to obtain unemployment benefits, to name a few.
In this election Le Pen put a cleaner image to her party’s fascism although she clearly has the same racist ideology as any of her far right supporters. She proposed extremely cruel policies such as to cut off social housing for foreigners, ban the hijab, deport undocumented immigrants and legalise discrimination against foreigners when applying for jobs in France. However, even more right wing candidates such as Eric Zemmour made her look moderate compared to his obscene racism, he was even convicted of inciting racial hatred in France this year.
What we have just seen in France is taking place across many liberal democracies the world over. The countries with these systems see very low levels of support for any reigning government. Significant portions of the population simply refuse to vote every election because they know whoever wins they will see little material benefit. In response to this situation those on the political left push for measures that would improve the lives of ordinary people such as a higher minimum wage, better funding for social programs etc. On the other hand those on the right support measures that whip up hatred against minority groups splitting the working class along racial lines and distracting from the problems in our society. The right does this because in our democracies they are funded and supported by the richest people in our society and they all vehemently oppose any measure that would tax them more to improve society.
The Tories in the UK are currently running into this problem after promising better living conditions after Brexit and in the 2019 campaign. Now we see that those promises were empty and as a result their support is falling as the cost of living continues to rise and they do nothing to alleviate the financial burden on the British people. Instead they push anti-immigrant policies designed simply to hurt migrants and frame this as defending the country and protecting these people from traffickers. The real goal is to play into the racism in our society to motivate enough supporters to keep voting for them so that they can stay in power. Liberals will also often copy this tactic to avoid supporting actual pro working class policies. President Biden did this with his anti-immigrant policies on the US-Mexico border coupled with the dropping of many of his left-wing economic policies like student debt relief and the UK’s Labour party used a similar tactic under Ed Milliband in the build up to the 2015 election.
As younger generations seek to move away from racist thinking and strive for equality there’s a real chance to see actual progress based on class solidarity. The racist proposals of centrist and right wing candidates receive less support as time goes on and voters seek real solutions to the problems they face. The relative success of the campaigns of left-wing politicians such as Bernie Sanders in the US and Corbyn in the UK, who although they didn’t win their elections got further than any of their historic counterparts have for decades, shows a growing appetite for left-wing politics. Melanchon, the left wing French presidential candidate, received 22% of the first round of voting compared to Le Pen’s 23% and Macron’s 28%, which is closer than his previous result in 2017. However, it’s not impossible for younger generations to slip back into the racist worldview of their elders and there is still a lot of work left to do to get left-wing leaders into power.
