In the previous issue of International Socialism, John Mullen wrote a reply to my article.1 I had criticised the strategy of the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front; NFP) in light of the history of the original Popular Front in France. In his reply, John decided not to talk about that. To validate his support for the strategy of France Insoumise (France Unbowed), which is part of the NFP, John does not simply ignore embarrassing historical facts. He also ignores embarrassing facts about the electoral cycle, as well as the situation that has resulted from the approach he defends.
We should recall that for the second round of the elections last year, all the parties in the NFP decided to withdraw candidates who had been in third position in the earlier round, on the understanding that a vote for conservative or pro-Macron candidates would “block the road to the Rassemblement National” (National Rally; RN). These candidates, once elected, enabled Macron to nominate the most anti-democratic and racist government France has seen for decades.
A pillar of the two governments that have followed in succession since the
elections is the minister of the interior, Bruno Retailleau: He is so racist, anti-migrant and Islamophobic that the leaders of the RN, on hearing him speak, could easily believe he was the spokesperson for their party.2 The second government, named in January 2025, is even more reactionary than the first. Gérard Darmanin—who considered Marine Le Pen too “soft” on immigration and Islam—has been reintegrated into the government alongside Elizabeth Borne, the former prime minister responsible for forcing through the attack on pensions in 2023. The two got elected to the French Assembly as a result of the left standing aside.
The RN is stronger than ever
The RN, the leading party in the Assembly, now decides the fate of the government. It was the RN that caused the fall of the first government in December 2024. Several months after the elections, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the rising star in the RN, are leading the polls. If there were to be presidential elections tomorrow, Le Pen would be well ahead, with 36-38 percent of the vote. In January, popularity ratings placed Le Pen and Bardella in the top 50 favourite personalities among French people. They are the only politicians on the list, and Bardella is even in the top ten.
The situation has given such confidence to the racists and fascists that right-wing groups now regularly counter left-wing protests, particularly feminist and anti-racist demonstrations. This does not mean that the situation is hopeless.3 As I argued in my previous article, the RN still has not built a mass mobilising force. Their claimed 80,000 membership, frightening as it is, is a long way from forming a mass, active base. More importantly, the thousands who demonstrated against
fascism in summer 2024 have not disappeared. Things can develop rapidly—in one direction or the other. A positive sign is that the leadership of the Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labour; CGT), the most militant of the trade union federations, has contacted the organisers of the pro-migrant Marche des Solidarités (Solidarity March) about organising a campaign of mobilisation in support of migrants and against racism. 4 Moreover, there are numerous discussions taking place on the left on the need to fight racism and fascism.
The vote as a tool for fighting fascism?
Let us clarify a few things to avoid fake controversies. Revolutionary strategy in relation to elections should be clear. We support all candidates on the left against candidates of the ruling class, but we do this in an independent way. The specific tactics used to meet these two conditions depend on the actual situation.5
The electoral growth of the fascists has a bearing on these tactics. In France, the RN now comes first or second in the first round of the elections in many areas of France. Only the first two candidates automatically go forward to the second round. A candidate in third position can only go forward if they receive a substantial percentage of the vote—more than 12.5 percent of registered voters.This summer, the alliance between the different sections of “the left” was, in many places, essential for left-wing candidates to advance to the second round. In these circumstances, there was no debate why people need to vote for candidates of the NFP. It is obvious that, for the reformist leaders, the fight against the fascists is reduced to the vote itself: “Vote for us because it is the only way to stop the right and the fascists!” The only mobilisation organised during the voting period was to call for a vote for the candidates of the NFP, and not against the legitimacy and the presence of the fascists in the election.
The facts are there, but John does not talk about them. The strategy he outlines failed. Of the ten million extra voters in this election compared with 2022, over half voted RN. RN came in first or second place in almost every area. In order to stop the fascists, the NFP looked to the right wing.
Fascism and mass movements
John legitimises his preferred strategy by writing “Marine Le Pen put these elections at the heart of her strategy… Her plan is that positions in government will then allow her to build the mass movement of street fascists she needs”.6 John appears to have discovered that the RN has an electoral strategy. However, in the 1970s, this was a central plank in the creation of the Front National (National Front; FN) by diverse currents that were openly fascist.
In doing so, the FN picked up the thread of historical fascism. In March 1932, Hitler was a candidate in the presidential elections in Germany. The vote he got in the first and second rounds (13 million votes) was dramatic. He was beaten by what John would no doubt have called a “tactical victory” by the left. The socialist party had not run a candidate, in order to support the ultra-conservative Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, to block the Nazis. Three months later, in legislative elections, the Nazis became the leading party in parliament. It was this same Hindenburg who made Hitler head of the government six months later.
Hitler’s electoral strategy enabled him to develop numerous conditions favourable to the realisation of his fascist project: a mass audience, legitimacy, a parliamentary crisis and links to parts of the ruling class and the state apparatus. These were conditions that led to Hitler being made chancellor by a section of the German ruling class. Yet, fascism needed something else. Parallel to the electoral strategy, and reinforced by it, Hitler also built a mass organisation. His party had 800,000 members in January 1933, of which the military wing, the Sturmabteilung (Storm Division; SA), was just one part. This was what enabled Hitler to use his accession to power to install a fascist regime.7
The example of Italy today is useful for illustrating the difficulties of fascists coming into government without a mass movement.8 There is also Trump’s case. The exact characterisation of his politics has been the subject of debate and needs to be further discussed. I will limit myself here to taking up what led the historian of fascism Robert Paxton to characterise the Trump of 2024 as fascist, unlike the Trump of 2017. What is of interest are the arguments used by Paxton. These criteria are not based on Trump’s political programme but on the development and the nature of the movement that supports him: the attack on the Capitol and the development of the Make America Great Again movement along with groups such as the Proud Boys. In other words, the development of a movement of mobilisation and, potentially, a mass movement.
In France, the RN has multiplied its public appearances throughout the country since the elections and could base itself on the legitimacy it has gained, including millions of regular voters. Nowhere have the NFP, France Insoumise included, led a campaign to organise counter-demonstrations.
Antifascism and elections
What historical experience, such as the 1934 election that I dealt with in my article, shows is that struggle to isolate and marginalise the fascists is possible, and it works. It necessitates uniting the forces of the working class and social movements. Just to reassure John, this includes, in this context, appealing to France Insoumise for united action.9 However, this appeal must also be made to the unions and organisations of the movement, in which France Insoumise’s supporters do not intervene in a systematic manner.10
This is particularly the case during election periods, which are also important periods of mobilisation for the fascists. Particularly during these periods it is therefore a question of challenging their legitimacy in the field of propaganda and their presence in public.
Unity needs to be built in the process of action, in denouncing fascism, destroying fascist posters, and preventing fascists distributing leaflets, organising public meetings and organising demonstrations. The main slogan, in unifying such a movement, should be: “Not a Single Vote for the Fascists!”, accompanied by the creation of anti-racist zones of solidarity in neighbourhoods and workplaces.11 The aim, here, is to detach the potential fascist party’s electorate from the fascist core, which is trying to “transform it into its image”, and to break the fascist core itself.12
Limiting the campaign to voting for the left transforms the battle to destroy an enemy into a fight between adversaries, thus helping legitimise the fascist party. It excludes from the anti-fascist ranks all those who do not have the right to vote, who number in the millions in France. Finally, it orients all activity on the terrain most favourable to reformist ideology. From being a strategy to win the working class away from the dominant ideas, this kind of unity, limited to the electoral terrain, becomes transformed into a tool for reinforcing them.
Critique and alternative
In summer 2024, the NFP’s strategy disarmed the anti-fascist struggle. As I recalled in my article, before the first round of voting, hundreds of thousands of people mobilised against the fascist danger.13 Yet, so far, this energy has not been used to isolate the RN, to dissuade electors from voting for them, and to develop a core of activists in workplaces and neighbourhoods open to continuing activity after the elections.
It was not this mobilisation, unfortunately, that stopped the RN from gaining a majority of deputies: it achieved the results predicted by the polls before the NFP was established. What was in play was simply the mechanics of elections, and within those mechanics, a choice made by the left to withdraw its candidates in favour of those better placed from the right. John supported this strategy because one has to drink the reformist cup right to the very dregs. This is why he talks about a (tactical) victory. As if the tactic could contradict the strategy of the unity of the class without having any consequences.
On the very evening of the death of the former fascist leader and father of Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen, thousands of young people celebrated in numerous towns in France. That is where we will find the seeds for the counter offensive. That is where revolutionaries can play a role and find fertile ground for an alternative.
Denis Godard is one of the initiators of the anti-racist coalition Marche des Solidarités and a member of the revolutionary group Autonomie de Classe.
Notes
1 Thanks to Sheila McGregor for her translation of this piece from French.
2 See Europe 1 and AFP, 2024.
3 For example, the fascists came to a theatre occupied by young migrants in central Paris and, later, to a demonstration of undocumented migrants. They were physically chased away. At the point of writing, a demonstration is being built against a fascist commemoration at the tomb of a Nazi supporter executed in 1945 as a collaborator. Unions, associations, and organisations in the area are uniting in a call for a counter-demonstration led by an anti-fascist collective set up during the electoral period at the initiative of comrades from my organisation, Autonomie de Classe (Class Autonomy; A2C). The local France Insoumise group was invited but refused to join, although it is calling for participation.
4 La Marche des Solidarités (Solidarity March) is an anti-racist coalition very closely tied to the struggle by migrants, in which comrades from A2C are actively involved. This coalition consistently turns to the unions and the left for active participation in its initiatives.
5 For a reminder of the principles and debates on the complexity of tactics see Choonara, 2024.
6 The idea that contemporary fascism has no need to build a mass movement before coming to power dominates the left at the moment. Having rejected, for many years, the dangerous character of fascism in France, all the currents on the left have now taken up the idea of “fascisation”, the idea that it is the whole political spectrum, and with it the state apparatus, which is becoming fascist. All it requires in these conditions is for the RN to take the reins of government in order to implement its political aims. This concept was introduced independently by two activist intellectuals, Saïd Bouamama and Ugo Palheta, the one referring to the analyses of Georgi Dimitrov from the 1930s and the other to those of Nicos Poulantzas in the 1970s. For a critique of these ideas and consequences see Erwan, 2023.
7 See Paxton, 2005.
8 Thomas, 2023, explains the contradictions in Giorgia Meloni’s project. That does not mean that fascists having access to government is without consequences. It should be fought.
9 For reasons of lack of space, I will have to disappoint John again by not saying much more about the nature of France Insoumise. Its ideological and electoral audience is undeniable. As one of the elements of the current polarisation in France, this should be viewed positively. However, it remains a reformist organisation. Moreover, it has not built the organic connections to the movement (including the unions) that characterise traditional reformist parties. It refuses the label “party” and presents itself as a “movement” in its own right. It does not have members, just supporters. You can only become a supporter via the Internet by agreeing to its programme. There are no membership dues. According to the organisation itself, less than one supporter in five makes contact with a local group. There is no conference, and the leadership is not elected. Twice a year, there are representative assemblies that comprise half of the representatives of the leaderships of the local groups, chosen by lottery. The resulting perspectives are then voted on via the Internet.
10 France Insoumise theorises a separation between its objective (governing) and the movement. Its latest perspectives document, from December 2024, only suggests preparing for possible early elections (presidential and legislative), along with a detailed plan for preparations for municipal elections in 2026.
11 In 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round in the presidential elections, huge assemblies, collectives and committees were set up straightaway. I remember fiery debates in these meetings, where, in the end, the position “Not a Vote for Le Pen!” was won everywhere that revolutionaries put the argument. This time, there were very few anti-RN meetings, only meetings to organise the electoral campaign of the NFP. There was no debate on the decision to withdraw left-wing candidates for the benefit of government and right-wing candidates.
12 This expression was used by a an openly fascist, François Duprat, architect of the FN.
13 According to opinion polls, less than half the voters for the NFP voted for candidates out of conviction. More than 60 percent voted against other candidates and to block the RN.
References