The Daily - France’s Far Right at the Gates of Power

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

The far right in France had a big win this month, crushing the party of President Emmanuel Macron in elections for the European Parliament. But the results did not affect France’s government at home — until Mr. Macron changed that.Roger Cohen, the Paris bureau chief for The Times, discusses the huge political gamble Mr. Macron has taken, which has brought the far right closer than ever to gaining real power in France.Guest: Roger Cohen, the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Battered by the far right in voting for the European Parliament, Emmanuel Macron called for new elections in France.The president has challenged voters to test the sincerity of their support for the far right. Were the French letting off steam in the European elections, or did they really mean it?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Katrin Benhold. This is The Daily. The far-right in France had a big win this month. It crushed the party of President Emmanuel Macron in elections for the European Parliament. But it was a largely symbolic win because the elections did not affect France's government at home. Until Macron changed that.

Today, my colleague Roger Cohen on the huge political gamble Macron has taken, and how the far-right is now closer than ever to gaining real power in France. It's Wednesday, June 26th. Roger, the far right has been a player in French politics for a very long time. I used to be based in France myself and remember writing about it like 15 years ago. And of course, you've been on the show more recently to talk about it. But now the far right has its best shot yet at actually governing. Walk us through what just happened.

Well, Katrin, the National Rally, formerly known as the National Front, the far right anti-immigration party in France, headed by Marine Le Pen, has been rising for some time due to growing frustration with the government, growing anti-immigrant feeling in France, and a feeling of marginalization among many people. But until very recently, nobody thought the national rally could actually govern France. thought the National Rally could actually govern France. The world's largest multi-country election is underway for the next European Parliament.

Today, Spain... Now, suddenly what has happened is that early this month, European Parliament elections were held. Millions of people in 27 nations are deciding what the next five years will look like for the European Union. These are elections to the directly elected body of the European Union. I'm currently at the National Rally's electoral party in eastern Paris where they're just crushing it. And there was a huge breakthrough for the party. But looking like a surge for the far right in France. The national rally got more than 30%

of the vote, which is more than twice the total of President Emmanuel Macron's party. It came in easily first among French parties. And this produced general disarray in the country. Today, you were called upon to vote in the European elections, in mainland France. And induced in President Macron a shock decision. I have decided to give you, again, the choice of our parliamentary future through the vote. And that was to dissolve parliament,

or National Assembly as it's called here, something he had absolutely no obligation to do under the Constitution. I will be signing the decree that will call the French people on the 30th of June to legislative elections on the 7th. And call new legislative elections, which will be held in two parts. The first this coming weekend and then the next a week later. And he can just do that? Yeah, he can do that.

The president has enormous powers and among those is the power to dissolve parliament and call elections. The time is now. Long live the republic. Long live France. So let me just try to understand this. There were these European elections, which per se have absolutely no impact on how France itself is governed. In theory, they did not affect the balance of power inside of France. You know, Macron remains president. He doesn't have elections for another several years. And yet at the very moment where the far right is kind of looking stronger than ever, he decides to call an election. It seems a little nuts.

Yeah, on the face of it, it is pretty nuts. The national rally has the wind in its sails. of it, it is pretty nuts. So the national rally has the wind in its sails. And it's a lot to expect that the French people, three weeks after one election, are going to vote entirely differently in this next one. And it's a strong possibility as a result that the national rally will be the largest party in the parliament. They may not have an absolute majority of the 577 seats. If they do, however, President Macron would almost certainly be obliged to name a prime minister from the far-right party. That would be a transformative moment in post-war French history. Right. He'd basically be handing control of his own government to his political enemy. Yes. He didn't even consult his own prime minister. He had named this prime minister

in January, Gabriel Attal. He was Macron's wunderkind, his great favorite. He did not consult him on the decision, which he took in a small coterie of four or five advisors. And this has provoked outrage within the government. And perhaps it's most crystallized in a photograph that emerged from the Elysee of the moment when the president was announcing that he was dissolving parliament. And you see Attal, the prime minister, in front of him looking absolutely dumbfounded. And not only Attal, but other members of the government. So, Roger, I guess the obvious question is, why did Macron do this? Well, you know, Katrin, the European Parliament elections are historically elections where people feel they can blow off steam because they have no direct consequences on national politics.

So I assume that Macron is thinking, well, you blew off steam now. OK, let's get serious. And he thinks that when French people do, they may en masse vote differently. There's a more cynical interpretation of it that has been doing the rounds, which is that, and this too is risky, which is that, okay, if the national rally has risen so much,

it's now inevitable that it's going to come to power at some point. Why not hand it power while I'm still president and can control the national rally's exercise of that power? For example, the president continues to control defense and foreign affairs questions. So the bet then would be that the national rally would be in power for the next three years until the next presidential election in 2027. And by then, the sheen would be off them. The sheen would be off the national rally. They would have failed. And, you know, governing is much more difficult than railing from outside. So some people are looking at this and thinking, oh, this is a strategy by Macron. Basically, give away some power now and hope that people fall out of love with the far

right before the next presidential election. Yes, that's right, Catherine. But ultimately, maybe it's just as he said at this press conference the other day. He wants to put it to the people. The word he used about 40 times was clarification. There has to be a clarification of where people stand. Are you really going to hand power to the far right? So he's calling the bluff of voters, or he thinks he is. You make it sound almost like he's calling basically a referendum on himself.

And what's more, it sounds like he thinks he's going to win this referendum. I wonder, what makes him so confident? Well, Katrin, Macron is a confident guy. Confident sometimes for many people bordering on arrogance. You know that he's had a problem throughout his seven-year presidency with people who say that he looks down on them, that he's a Jupiter-like figure, that he's superior. Look, he's never lost before.

This was a big defeat. And there's a certain hubris about him at this point, almost an intellectual narcissism, it seems sometimes, where against all the evidence, he just believes somehow he will pull out a positive result in the election. The thing is, though, that Macron did something extraordinary. You know, he burst on the scene in 2017. And at a time when nationalists and illiberal and anti-immigrant politicians like Donald Trump himself were rising, he said, no,

I'm going to stand for Europe and I'm going to stand for liberal democracies. And well, seven years have gone by since then. And his star has faded. He's term limited. He will be gone in three years. People are beginning to desert him. None of the politicians from his own party, or virtually none of them, who are running now, they don't want an image of Macron on their posters.

They don't want to be seen with Macron. He's seen as negative. So he was the Kennedy of France, of Europe, seven years ago. But things are different now. And the country is different. France is different. It's moved rightward. And not only has the country changed, but this time, his opponent is different. We'll be right back. So, Roger, you mentioned that when Macron first came to power, he beat the far right, which, of course, he did again just two years ago. But since then, the country has changed.

How has it changed? Well, there's been a drift to the right as France has faced many problems. Of course, there was COVID, and then that went straight into the war in Ukraine, and that sent prices soaring, high inflation, a lot of people in France struggling to get to the end of the month. And a feeling that you've seen in many Western democracies that in what France calls la periferie or the periphery, i.e. outside the big wired capitals of the knowledge economy, there's a whole group of people who feel largely forgotten, who feel alienated from the cultural values of the cities, who feel almost invisible at times. And that has generated a huge amount of frustration. And so people have been wanting to look outside the traditional parties and toward a party that

for them expresses that anger. And that has been overwhelmingly the national rally. And it has benefited from those emotions. Right. And you said not only the situation on the ground in France had changed, you said also that the far right had changed. Yes. Marine Le Pen, in the 15 years or so that she's been leading the party, has rebranded it, not only rebranded it by changing its name from the National Front to the National Rally, but she got rid of several basic tenets of the party under her father, who founded the party in 1972, that is Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was an out-and-out racist,

was an out-and-out anti-Semite. It was a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant party that came out of the World War II quasi-fascist right. Under Marine Le Pen, she not only expunged completely the anti-Semitism to the point that some people now regard it as the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish party in France. But it also got rid of, for example, it used to say it would exit the European Union. It got rid of that. It said it would exit the euro currency. It got rid of that. It toned down its language. Marine Le Pen was always smiling. Every effort has been made to say, you don't need to be afraid of us. We're just like any other party.

We've been through a makeover. And certainly one of the most powerful demonstrations of the ways in which the national rally has changed has been the decision to entrust its future to a very young man who has taken French politics by storm. Young voters in France are expressing enthusiasm for a rising star of French politics. Leader of the party, Jordan Bardella. The 28-year-old Jordan Bardella.

Hello, Jordan Bardella. Hello, Madame de Mellart. Thank you for being in this studio. He's a good-looking, impeccably dressed guy who has a very even tone. Mr. Attal, you have pulverized one by one all the immigration records. Who has been intensely coached on how to present himself to the media. Your security will be my priority tomorrow. And he's done so extremely successfully.

Good evening everyone. I'll make this video in a few days. He has a very big TikTok presence. He eats candy on TikTok, even though it's become a big deal. People say, you know, I'm eating candy like Jordan Mandela. I think he has a lot of ideas for young people. He's speaking out for young people on our future. And one of the striking phenomena of French politics in the last year or so has been a pretty strong shift among the young demographic from about 18 to 28, toward the national rally. It's become a very popular party among young people in France.

And of course, Bardella, being 28 years old, he draws that vote. Jorgen, Jorgen, Jorgen, Jorgen! Marine Le Pen says Jordan Bardella will be prime minister if the right-wing group wins enough votes at the upcoming French general election. So this is a remarkable rise for this young politician, this political figure who, it sounds like, has not just made the national rally a kind of palatable option to vote for, he's actually made it really popular. Yeah, I think he's not only energized people who were already supporters of the national

rally, he has brought in part of the center that was moving in that direction, the traditional conservative right. And Bardella has succeeded in bringing that about. So what happens to Macron's government if the national rally actually wins the most votes? What do we think that government and its policies would actually look like? Well, I think that they will push hard to reinforce the police, side with greater security, as they always put it, in the country. And they would try to push through some of their anti-immigrant program. They would reduce the immigrant presence in France, whether by introducing borders in France, you know, selective controls at certain borders. He's been pretty vague about it, but they want what they call a second border.

What they don't want is somebody who is, let's say, a legal immigrant in Italy crossing over to France under the Schengen arrangement, whereby this person could just come to France. And so they want to make it easier to throw immigrants who have infringed on the law or have committed a crime or even just insulted the Republic in some way, easier to throw them out of France. They want to impose a ban on the use of the Muslim headscarf in public, everywhere.

You know, in terms of governing, they have a model at this point. They have Orban in Hungary, they have what Kaczynski did in Poland, and they talk about it. They want to begin to chip away at the independent power of the judiciary, and they're talking also about the fact that state media is too hostile to the right and needs to be shut down. So they're going to go at the judiciary, they're going to go at the media, they're going to go at the counterbalancing institutions within the French Republic, in much the same way that has already been done in other societies that moved in an

illiberal direction. It's interesting, there's almost a playbook in Europe now, right? There's a lot of these populists who no longer want to leave the European Union. It's like they want to change the European Union from the inside. Yes, I think that's true. So maybe this is not so much a referendum on Macron as a person. Maybe he has actually called a referendum on the very idea of a liberal democracy in France, you know, a democracy that is about protecting the rights of minorities, protecting things like an independent press and an independent judiciary, but also one that is very pro-European, because that's not just Macron's DNA. It's also actually very much an integral part of France's DNA since World War II. Yeah, I never thought the national rally would come to power in France, but the zeitgeist has changed. Post-war, it was all about avoiding a repetition of the wars that devastated Europe in the first half of the 20th century. And the European Union grew out of that. It was a

peace magnet. It was a way to say, we're going to remove borders between countries. We're going to make it impossible to go to war. We're going to fuse our iron and steel industries. And that spirit reigned right through the end of the Cold War. But one has to just recognize, I think, the fact that there is a feeling that Western democracies, including the United States, have failed a lot of people over the last three decades. They failed them with growing inequality. They failed them by failing to control borders they failed in many ways and this has given rise to the nation resurgent the nation resurgent that is the epoch we are living in right now it's just possible that this anger that is present has to come out

and that France is going to find itself part of that. Roger, thank you very much. Thank you, Katrin. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, the Kenyan government deployed the military after protesters who were furious over package of tax increases, stormed the parliament building in the capital Nairobi. The protesters climbed in windows and set fire to the entrance of the building. The police responded by firing tear gas and guns.

At least five people were reported dead from gunshot wounds, and more than 30 others appeared to be wounded. The turmoil has shaken Kenya, which has long been an anchor of stability in East Africa. And in a closely watched Democratic primary, Congressman Jamal Bowman of New York was defeated on Tuesday night. Bowman, the subject of yesterday's episode, was the target of a multi-million dollar campaign by groups supporting Israel. They wanted to punish him for harshly criticizing Israel's response to October 7th.

Bowman is an outspoken progressive and lost to George Latimer, a more moderate Democrat. Their race became the most expensive House primary in history. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennesgetter, Will Reed and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Devin Taylor, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wanderley. that's it for the daily i'm katrin benhold see you tomorrow