Event Report – Mainstreaming Hate: How the Right Exploits the Crisis to Divide Us
Report-launch and Discussion, 10 September 2024, London
Event Report - Mainstreaming Hate
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Mainstreaming Hate: How the Right Exploits the Crisis to Divide Us
Report Launch and Discussion: Mainstreaming Hate: How the Right Exploits the Crisis to Divide Us
10 Sep 2024, London Muslim Centre
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PRESS RELEASE – ISLAMOPHOBIA ACTION GROUP CALLS ON THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE CONCRETE STEPS IN TACKLING ISLAMOPHOBIA
Press Release – 28/08/2024
In light of the recent far-right riots, 80 Muslim organisations and community leaders have come together to demand immediate and concrete action from the government to tackle the growing threat of Islamophobia. The alarming rise in hate and violence towards Muslims has exposed the dangerous normalisation of Islamophobia in society, which fueled these attacks.
The situation is critical. We call on the government to take the following urgent actions:
- Adopt the APPG Definition of Islamophobia: The government must officially adopt the APPG definition, without delay, to send a clear message that Islamophobia will not be tolerated. The normalisation of anti-Muslim sentiment has been a key driver of the recent violence.
- Launch an Independent Review: An independent investigation into far-right activities is urgently needed, focusing on the role of social media platforms, mainstream media, and political narratives in perpetuating hate and Islamophobia.
- Engage with Muslim Communities: The government must engage directly with legitimate, democratically elected representatives of Muslim communities, particularly the Muslim Council of Britain, to ensure that Muslim voices are heard and addressed.
Islamophobia has surged alarmingly in recent months, culminating in serious far-right attacks. It is essential that the government takes immediate steps to build a strong, collaborative relationship with Muslim communities, fostering unity and ensuring that all groups feel represented and heard.
This is a pivotal moment. The time for action is now. A spokesperson for the Islamophobia Action Group said:
“Islamophobia has fueled the recent far-right riots, and the consequences are clear and dangerous. The government must act now by adopting the APPG definition of Islamophobia; investigate far-right activities; and engage directly with Muslim communities and their national representatives. This is a critical moment to address the root causes of hate and to protect our society.”
[End]
Notes to editors:
- The Islamophobia Action Group (IAG) was formed in response to the violent far-right riots that took place over the UK in August 2024 when Muslim communities and their places of worship came under serious attack. As Islamophobia has increased significantly and was the key driver of the far-right violence towards both Muslims and minority communities, a group of Muslim organisations began to coordinate collective action in the face of a very serious threat.
- For media queries, interviews or for further information, email islamophobiag@gmail.com
They Shall Not Pass – Confronting the recurring scourge of Far-Right extremism in Britain
They Shall Not Pass – Confronting the recurring scourge of Far-Right extremism in Britain
By Hsiao-Hung Pai
In this issue
Far-Right groups target Muslims and refugees
EDL, its evolvement, and the mainstreaming of Islamophobia
Successive governments mainstream the Far-Right
The media and its role in normalising far-right ideologies
Islamophobia and anti-migrant racism under Tory rule
Fighting back
Spotlight, Issue 03, Vol 4, August 2024, The Cordoba Foundation
Far-Right groups target Muslims and refugees
When the horrific stabbing and murder of children occurred in Southport on the 29th of July, online speculation and fake news went wild straight away. My instinct told me that this terrible killing that happened in an innocent community would instantly be exploited by racists and neo-fascists in this country, in one way or another. Before the suspect’s name was revealed by the authorities, disinformation and online mobilisation put thousands of white men in the streets. Within days, the rioting has taken place in Liverpool, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Blackpool, Middlesborough, Nottingham, Bolton, Sunderland, Rotherham, Tamworth, Belfast, Plymouth, Darlington. The list goes on; the riots show no sign of abating.
The rioters targeted local mosques, such as in Southport where white thugs threw bricks at a mosque last Tuesday night. Islamophobic abuse and violence has become so frequent that members of the Muslim communities across the country are fearing for their safety. In Manchester, three Muslim girls were spat at and were subjected to attempts to rip their hijabs off. And six Muslim graves were splashed with grey paint at Burnley Cemetery.
The rioters were targeting the most vulnerable in society: asylum seekers. Hundreds of these white men descended on a house that has been used to house asylum seeker in Rotherham, breaking windows and setting bins on fire. It was heartbreaking to see the footage of the scene. These are people who have risked everything to come to seek refuge and to improve their lives.
Meanwhile, politicians were “adding petrol to the fire.” Nigel Farage, Reform UK MP sympathised with the far-right rioters, while Labour MP Sarah Edwards made comments in parliament about “doing something about asylum seekers’ hotel accommodation in Tamworth.” Soon enough, the rioters descended upon a hotel that was housing asylum seekers in Tamworth and set fire to a doorway and smashed the hotel windows, with onlookers clapping and cheering, clinking their beer bottles. “Get out of England” was graffitied on the side of the hotel building.
These angry white men created street scenes in towns and cities across Britain that were chillingly alarming the public that the “EDL is back,” that racial violence is back on the streets of Britain.
Several Black and Asian individuals were also attacked in the past week: a Black man was attacked by white gang in a park in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, knocked to the ground and kicked, before police arrived. One of the white attackers was wrapped in an England flag. Another Black man was attacked in the street in Bristol. It was also reported that Asian taxi drivers in Hull were racially targeted, some unable to work due to the abuse.
Healthcare workers were also among those targeted in racist attacks over the weekend. On Friday evening, two NHS nurses were on their way to work, via a taxi through Sunderland. White rioters in the city centre attacked the taxi containing the nurses, who were Filipino, with rocks.
Far-right groups were planning to target immigration advice centres. The Law Society and Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) said their members were at risk, after a list of 60 immigration centres across the country was circulated on Telegram with a message suggesting they should be the target of riots on Wednesday (7th of August).
These angry white men created street scenes in towns and cities across Britain that were chillingly alarming the public that the “EDL is back,” that racial violence is back on the streets of Britain.
EDL, its evolvement, and the mainstreaming of Islamophobia
Although the EDL (English Defence League) no longer existed in its original structure, the grouping of those who joined and sympathised with it remains. The EDL itself was formed in 2009, in response to a protest of a group of local Muslim men in Luton against the Iraq War. The protest occurred during the homecoming parade of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment. The Muslim protestors held up placards saying, ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: Cowards, killers, extremists’ (referring to the killings of civilians), as the soldiers passed through. Those angered by this protest went on to form United People of Luton (UPL), which organised a 500-strong anti-Muslim demonstration in Luton town.
EDL, from the start, has always been a loosely-organised grouping, led and administered by a few at the top, who preach racist ideologies.
In 2009, most British media, tabloids and broadsheets alike, painted Luton’s anti-war protest as an Islamic protest and an Islamic issue – nothing to do with Britain’s foreign policy and the catastrophic consequences of the Iraq war, but according to the media, all to do with religion. Luton’s anti-war protest was de-legitimised as a case of clashes between belief systems, i.e., civilisational clashes.[1] The anti-war side was depicted as people who don’t want to “integrate.” When I visited Farley Hill Estate where many sympathisers and supporters of the EDL came from, this was their description, too. The majority of the media representation of the issue echoed their views.
At this point in Luton, seeds were being planted for the spread of anger directed at Britain’s Muslim population as the imaginary enemy. It was in this context that United People of Luton (UPL) and Casuals Unite were born, made up of primarily young men from the Farley Hill Estate and other places in Luton. They were brought up in an enclosed, army-loyal, gang culture on the estates and see allegiance to “their own” as important. Their strong local identities then evolved with the ultra-nationalist thoughts and sentiments typical of neo-fascist groupings, to become the mainstream ideologies of the EDL. The leadership of the EDL intentionally emphasised the composition of the grouping as “English working-class.” Their allegiance lies with their ethnicity rather than class. As EDL supporter Billy Blake said in his book, EDL: Coming Down the Road, “the English working-class is a distinct ethnic group, with its own traditions and culture.”
EDL, from the start, has always been a loosely-organised grouping, led and administered by a few at the top, who preach racist ideologies, via online disinformation. The street movement came into being with the muscle of a bitterly frustrated, misinformed, misled and bigoted white mass. The ideologists and strategists of the group were able to tap into the marginalisation and alienation of large numbers of its working-class members. It is the “English way of life” which they are led to imagine is under threat and which they are aiming to defend.
In its heyday 2009-2011, the leadership was able to organise marches in towns and cities across the country via social media mobilisation. Even when Tommy Robinson left the group in October 2013 and went to work with the Quilliam Foundation, the previously government-funded counter-extremism think tank, the EDL model continued and lasted.
Now, faced with rioting in the streets, government and society responded to the violence with shock and disbelief. However, the surge of far-right activities can be well predicted – in Britain as well as across Europe.
This June, some were shocked when seeing the European parliamentary election results when anti-immigration far-right parties made significant gains. In Italy, France and Germany, for instance, what was fringe in the past are now mainstream. Far-right parties no longer needed to talk about leaving the EU. EU’s centrist parties have adopted far-right narratives on migration at both national and EU levels, and have hoped to retain voters by doing so. The centre-right has successfully integrated the far-right into the club. Neo-fascist parties like Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FDL) want to change the EU from within. Parties like them now work perfectly within the bloc and have become more and more able to set the bloc’s agenda, as historian David Broder said.
Becoming mainstreamed was always Robinson’s wish. He reiterated it during our meetings (in which I interviewed him for the purpose of researching the book) during 2013-2016. At one point he said: “Because it’s too important to ignore. What we want to do is to give a credible platform… If you continue to live out at the fringes and continue to alienate people, then you’re going to create big problems… These issues have to be spoken about in a wider arena and a wider platform, and that arena is not on the side streets of Tower Hamlets or Luton. It’s not. It needs to be spoken about on a mainstream level. I want to reach a wider audience.”
Successive governments mainstream the Far-Right
In Britain, successive governments, state institutions and centre-right political forces have been mainstreaming the far-right for decades. It can be dated back to the years following 9/11, 2001. In the context of War on Terror, the Prevent strategy was introduced in 2003 as part of the British state’s counter-terrorism approach (CONTEST). In 2015, Prevent became a legal duty for public sector institutions in which surveillance was an essential feature. In the practice of Prevent, extremism and terrorism are intrinsically tied to Muslims and Islam. “Radicalisation” is seen as literally part of a conveyor belt to terrorism. According to Prevent, “terrorism is the symptom; ideology is the root cause.” The terror threat is seen as rooted in the ideology, i.e., the religion. The terror threat is therefore seen as an Islamic threat.
This is Islamophobia, which has at its core the essentialisation of Muslims and Islam as threatening and culturally incompatible with civilisation in the West. As a result, the Prevent strategy practices Islamophobia, institutionalises it and provides justification for it. This, no doubt, has intensified and deepened the insecure position in which Muslims already found themselves in Britain. Indeed, Prevent is the main state actor in disseminating Islamophobia and instilling it in society. It has contributed to the normalisation of Islamophobia, elevating it from the status as discourse of the far-right to become acceptable language and practice of state institutions.
Under this framework, Muslims have been the main target of the Prevent strategy. Between April 2007 and December 2010, 67% of Prevent referrals involved Muslims; and between April 2012 and April 2015 at least 69% of the referrals involved Muslims, and between April 2015 and April 2016 at least 68% of the referrals involved Muslims. This is despite the fact that, according to 2011 census, Muslims make up 4.8% of the population of England and Wales.[2]
The Prevent strategy practices Islamophobia, institutionalises it and provides justification for it.
This situation led to the increase of Islamophobic hate crimes against British Muslims. According to government data in 2023[3], no religious group in Britain has faced more hate crimes linked to faith than Muslims. In the year ending March 2023, more than four in ten of all (recorded) religious hate crime offenses were targeted against Muslims.
Islamophobia always involves the racialisation of Muslims and the “Othering” of Islam. Seeing Muslims as a race has always been at the heart of ideologies of the EDL and other far-right groups. Resisting “Islamisation” is their major perceived task. These have been Robinson’s views throughout.
This was written on the EDL website in May 2013 as the group exploited Lee Rigby’s death:
“We have reached a stage where even simply acknowledging the link between Islam and terrorism makes you an ‘Islamophobe’ or even a racist. No wonder David Cameron refers to ‘Islamist extremism’, as if Islamic extremism can only come in one form and is easily distinguished from more mainstream forms of Islam … The problem is that Islamic extremism has deep roots and cannot simply be brushed aside as if it were ‘nothing to do with Islam’… The Islamic community must accept and acknowledge its share of the blame and its responsibility to confront and defeat extremist attitudes… Our leaders must start addressing the consequences of their policy of unrestricted immigration or there is a very real danger that they will face the ‘backlash’ we all fear…”
This statement is a clear manifestation of how far-right groups attempt to link terrorism with Islam, immigrants and immigration in general. As I came to realise through my conversations with the EDL, this is their consistent theme. Linking terrorism to Islam and immigration revealed their attempt to “Other” and racialise Muslims. In the rioting in the past few days, we often heard them shouting out “Defend our way of life” – against asylum seekers as the Muslim Other (who arrived here on an unsafe boat, and then sent to a overcrowded hostel to wait endlessly for an asylum decision, without the permission to work during their limbo status – but the white racists in the streets aren’t going to know about this or care). You would imagine that Brexit had got what these angry white men wanted? But no, closing doors isn’t enough. Under Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, and the like, these white men’s white supremacy has become more vocal and confident, and they’re showing us that they want to kick the last foreign-looking person out. They want to have the last (essentially Muslim) asylum seeker sent back or sent away.
The media and its role in normalising far-right ideologies
The media have always been part of this Othering and racialisation of Muslims. One of the ways in which it works is by treating religion as the centre while making Britain’s foreign policy completely irrelevant. In this way, in the popular media, “Islamic extremism” can even be placed in the same category with far-right extremism and neo-fascism.
When Robinson left the EDL in 2013 and worked with the Quilliam Foundation, most of the media were talking up Robinson and Maajid Nawaz’s common ground: equating radical Islam with neo-fascism. Quilliam was quoted repeatedly when commenting “Tommy investing his commitment in countering extremism of all kinds.” It was a comic-tragic show to watch. It was only two months prior to Robinson’s departure from the EDL that he proudly told me “the EDL has created the biggest street movement Britain has ever seen” and he never expressed any opposition to the neo-fascist presence in that movement, or any wish to leave the group. The media went along with the Tommy-Quilliam show, reinforcing the soundbite that “ideology [i.e. religion] is driving radicalisation.”
Predictably, Robinson’s Quilliam project didn’t last long. It fell apart. In early 2015, he set up Pegida UK, as a British extension of the German anti-Muslim movement Pegida that was set up in October 2014. Pegida UK is a loose aggregate of ultra-nationalists, loyalists and white supremacists. So “Tommy” was back in the streets again. He had hoped that Pegida UK would attract a more “middle-class” demographic. Behind the façade, some EDL men reveal that some of the splinter groups from the EDL have been organising Pegida UK. In particular, Northwest Infidels and Northeast Infidels, consisting of Loyalists and white supremacists. Other splinter groups like the English Volunteer Force and South East Alliance also got involved. “A lot of them are neo-Nazis. They’re fed up with Muslims,” a London-based EDL man told me. “But to be honest, their ideas, a lot of them, are respected by mainstream society.” Pegida UK was launched again in early 2016. By the end of that year, the group had essentially disappeared.
When Robinson left the EDL in 2013 and worked with the Quilliam Foundation, most of the media were talking up Robinson and Maajid Nawaz’s common ground: equating radical Islam with neo-fascism.
In February 2015, just before Pegida UK was formed, I went to observe an EDL march in Dudley in west Midlands. This was another example of how media narratives amplified the rationale used by the far-right in victimising and abusing Muslim communities. That day, more than 1,200 people turned up, back to the level of the two demos it held there in 2010, and represented its first surge since the stagnation caused by Robinson’s departure. These angry white men came from the midlands and the northeast. What were they here in Dudley for? To oppose the building of a mosque.
They saw this as symbolising the taking-over of their culture and demographic landscape, although the 2011 census finds that of Dudley’s population of over 300,000 (including 80,000 in the town itself), only 4.1% are Muslims. The EDL also talks of “Islamification” again, though by far the most numerous religious group in the borough, at 63.5%, identify as Christians.
But the sensationalist media made a big deal reporting the issue of the building of the mosque. UKIP’s Bill Etheridge, MEP for the area, also opposed it being built. The local Express & Star published a cropped image of the proposed mosque without showing the entire plan of the complex. The plan included an enterprise and education centre, a community centre, a sports centre and a 120-space two-storey car park.
At this point, EDL’s street movement was benefiting from the events of 2014 and early 2015: first of all, the Trojan Horse investigation (2014, which was later discredited) into Birmingham’s schools during Michael Gove’s term as education secretary. Gove had “promoted a state-sanctioned attack on a vulnerable Muslim community in inner-city Birmingham, destroying the careers of many Birmingham teachers, as well as wrecking the education prospects of thousands of largely Muslim children,” journalist Peter Oborne reminded us. The whole thing was launched on a fabricated story based on a fake letter, that British “Islamists” were “plotting to take over” Birmingham schools. The popular media reproduced the lies over and over again.
Then, new terrorism threats in Europe in 2015 hugely benefited the EDL, too. The coverage of these events in the media and the political discourse around them enabled ideas that were propagated by the EDL to become increasingly acceptable in society. The “clash of civilisations” argument, once again, dominated mainstream coverage of the Charlie Hebdo debate, and the “religion-radicalisation” narrative was the norm (as displayed by the BBC Panorama programme on ” The Battle for British Islam” in January 2015). These fitted well with the EDL racists in Dudley, who claim that Islam is the problem.
Robinson told me: “When we were talking about these issues five years ago, we were shunned and called racists. Now, in the last twelve to eighteen months, they, the politicians and media, are all talking about the same issues… My speech at Oxford Union was very well received… These ideas become more mainstream. People are listening to us now. We’ve been proved right.”
Robinson was confident in asserting that the EDL is “a force that isn’t going away”, though he himself was looking for a more respectable platform.
Islamophobia and anti-migrant racism under Tory rule
With help from their friends (the media), centre-right parties have come a long way in their practice of Islamophobia. The fourteen years of Tory rule firmed up what was “achieved” under New Labour and deepened it. The Tories put in place a structure of control and surveillance over British Muslims, while granting legitimacy to what would traditionally regarded as the far right, Oborne commented.
Boris Johnson, under his administration, procrastinated on the matter of adopting the 2019 definition of Islamophobia that had been adopted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, which had defined Islamophobia as “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” Instead, Johnson aligned with those who use “freedom of speech” as a way of shutting down any discussion of Islamophobia in the UK.[4]
In Tower Hamlets where I live, Gove, for the second time in a decade, sent someone to investigate the council. The council is led by independent mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman is a Muslim.
Rishi Sunak went further. The APPG definition of Islamophobia on British Muslims[5] was officially rejected only days after the Sunak’s government took office.[6] As the APPG inquiry report said, Islamophobia is the term of choice among British Muslims to describe their experience. Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism. Placing Islamophobia in the anti-racism paradigms is crucial in combating it as structural. The two decades of lack of a widely adopted working definition of Islamophobia, APPG recognises, had lowered the threshold for discrimination and prejudices to be recognised, and led to normalisation and increase of Islamophobia in society which leaves Muslims vulnerable to abuse without recourse to legal or political remedy.[7]
The coming into power of the likes of Braverman and Gove, the latter known as the major architect of British Islamophobia (the then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) under Sunak, said it all about the Tory approach to Islamophobia. As Oborne pointed out, Gove shaped the Tory policy towards British Muslims and was turning them into “an enemy within,” to use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase about the coal miners. Gove set apart Islam from so-called “Islamism,” asserting that the latter was a form of “totalitarianism” incompatible to western liberal values.
In Tower Hamlets where I live, Gove, for the second time in a decade, sent someone to investigate the council. The council is led by independent mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman is a Muslim. Gove sent in Sir John Jenkins this time, who was British ambassador to Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, the right-wing think tank founded by Gove and others in 2002.
Under the Islamophobic politicians, Britain ended 2022 with the debates on Islamophobia disappearing from the political mainstream. Meanwhile the Tory government was working behind the scenes to defend PREVENT and to refocus it on the threat of so-called “Islamist extremism”.[8] The Shawcross review of the PREVENT strategy, published on the 8th of February, 2023, has had huge consequences. It reinforces the focus of the government’s counter-extremism policy on so-called “Islamist radicalisation.” At the time, when explaining the new focus in the Commons, Suella Braverman praised Douglas Murray, the far-right bigot, for his “mainstream, insightful and perfectly decent political views.” (Douglas Murray was a director of the Henry Jackson Society, known as adopting an anti-Muslim agenda. Today Murray is a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange. As Oborne reminds us, these are the two organisations which have done more than any other to frame official thinking about how Islam is perceived in the UK.)
Under the Tory rule, the most regressive migration policies were put in. The Illegal Migration Bill was passed by the parliament and it was the most brutal piece of immigration legislation I have seen passed ever since arriving in this country. The human rights violations involved in this Bill have even invited UN criticism. Yet the British media are complacently quiet; there has been no analysis, no inquiry, no asking questions about what this Bill is about and the impact it will have. Anti-migrant discourse throughout the Tory years was racist and appalling. The inhumanity reached its peak in the Tory government’s Rwanda policy which was absolutely despicable. Racism and Islamophobia have been completely normalised. Bigotry has gained mainstream position in British politics. Sunak and Giorgia Meloni praised each other for their work on “stopping the boats.” Sunak said “Grazie” to her, showing how much he was inspired by her. The British far-right has been thoroughly emboldened. “Stop the boats!” the white supremacists chanted in the riots in the past week, repeating their politicians’ words.
When Keir Starmer condemned the violence in the streets, what he should do is call out the racist nature of these riots, and undo the very damaging policies that have been put in place by successive governments. But our hope cannot lie with Labour, whose leader has continued to pander to racism, even in the first week after the general election – by reiterating its border policy, with Border Force sending a group of thirteen migrants rescued from the Channel back to France as Starmer sought an asylum seeker returns deal with Europe. Starmer said he would also explore sending migrants intercepted in the Channel to countries abroad, to have their asylum applications processed. After scrapping the Tories’ Rwanda policy, Labour also deported 55 Vietnamese migrants back to Vietnam under a returns agreement. We can expect far-right groups to roam British streets every now and then now, and their voices are only getting louder, as their ideologies have been endorsed and put into practice for years by those in power.
Fighting back
There comes a time when we have to say to everyone in society: it is simply not enough not to be racist. Anti-racist campaigning and collective action is the way to fight the far-right.
In Tower Hamlets, it was the years of collective hard work of many campaigners and activists that kept the EDL away – in the typical East End tradition of resisting the far-right. The local Muslim communities and groups such as the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, Islamic Forum of Europe, United East End, Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum, Unite Against Fascism, The Cordoba Foundation, and Stop the War jointly fought the racists and fascists, which eventually led to the demise of the EDL. EDL tried to march past the East London Mosque several times, but every time they were thwarted by the local community working together. The most poignant was when faith leaders stood in front of the East London Mosque saying, “this is our mosque and we stand together to defend it.” The rioters have announced that they plan to protest at the mosque again. No doubt, mosque leaders, local groups and communities of all faiths will be fighting against it.
It is simply not enough not to be racist. Anti-racist campaigning and collective action is the way to fight the far-right.
Anti-racist activists and local trade unions who represent millions of minority and migrant workers have expressed their anger. United Voices of the World (UVW) is one of them. The grassroots union whose membership consists mainly of migrant workers, “expresses its solidarity with communities that continue to be targeted by ongoing racist violence against migrants, Muslims and other minorities across the country.”
UVW said: “We work hard as cleaners, security guards, waiting staff, porters, seasonal fruit pickers, couriers, carers and in many other vital roles. And when we fight for better pay and conditions, we fight for all workers to receive the same. Yet we are often disparaged, looked down on and treated and paid as second-class workers. Many of us often experience racism in overt and institutionalised forms. Many of us have also often felt invisible and have fought hard to be seen as equals with the same fears, hopes and needs as everyone else. We make valuable contributions to society not only in the work we do, but in the culture we bring and share in.”
“Now we are no longer invisible, but because of racist, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric from the highest echelons of our society: from government and from our media institutions, we are no longer invisible for all the wrong reasons.”
“Our strength lies in solidarity and unity – a unity of those who work and struggle to keep the country moving, whilst barely making ends meet, regardless of where we’re originally from or what the colour of our skin is…
“While never an excuse, poverty and despair provide fertile grounds for racism to flourish and for the messages of the far right to take hold. That’s why just as we have united and beaten the bosses, we must now unite and beat the racist upsurge in violence we are witnessing overwhelmingly in working class communities. These are communities which have suffered at the hands of the same powers that seek to impoverish and disempower us and the working class in general. Working class unity is the foundation on which we must seek to build a movement to root up and destroy racism at every level of society.”
“NO PASARÁN!”
Footnotes
[1] “The Clash of Civilisations” came from Samuel Huntington, a political scientist who believed “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” “Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics.” The most influential part of Huntington’s theory concerned Islam. Huntington argued that with the end of the Cold War between Soviet Union and the West, it would be replaced by “a new struggle between two irreconcilable enemies: Islam and the West.” Huntington drew on the work of the Orientalist historian Bernard Lewis, who coined the phrase “clash of civilisations.”
[2] See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0061-9#:~:text=For%20instance%2C%20data%20published%20following,69%25%20of%20the%20referrals%20involved
[3] Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023 second edition – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[4] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.555-6
[5] See ‘Islamophobia Defined,’ https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1ea3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf
[6] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.552.
[7] See ‘Islamophobia Defined,’ p.10 and p.25.
[8] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.555-6
Cover Image: The Epic Battle of Cable Street Mural, East London, FlickR
Author
Hsiao-Hung Pai is a UK-based journalist and the author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain’s Hidden Army of Labour, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize; Scattered Sand, winner of the 2013 Bread and Roses Award; Invisible; Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right; Bordered Lives and Ciao Ousmane, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Bread and Roses Award.
Editors
Dr Abdullah Faliq – Editor-in-Chief & Managing Director
Dr Anas Altikriti – Chief Executive
H.D. Forman
Sandra Tusin
Basma Elshayyal
Cover Image
The Epic Battle of Cable Street Mural, East London
Copyright
© The Cordoba Foundation 2024.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior permission of the The Cordoba Foundation.
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Views and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of The Cordoba Foundation.
Published in London by The Cordoba Foundation
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A people’s revolution in Bangladesh, led by the youth.
A historic day has arrived. After nearly two decades of dictatorial and authoritarian rule, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has fled Bangladesh yesterday. Her regime, marked by the tragic loss of hundreds of Bangladeshi lives due to political oppression, has come to an end, marking a glorious chapter in the history of millions of lives in Bangladesh.
The seeds of this revolution were sown by brave students demanding the removal of quotas in civil service posts. Their voices quickly amplified, transforming into a nationwide call for political reform and a change in leadership. This powerful movement is reminiscent of the Arab Spring, which ignited in Tunisia in 2010 and swiftly spread to Egypt in early 2011.
History has shown us that countries ruled by military powers are often condemned to authoritarianism, stifling both development and prosperity. The people of Bangladesh have made their voices heard, demanding freedom, liberty, and democracy. These calls must be respected and supported by the international community.
The Cordoba Foundation stands in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh in their struggle for basic human rights and freedoms. We urge the UK government and the international community to support this popular movement in its pursuit of liberty and justice. The world must take a stand against dictatorships and oppressive regimes, ensuring that the voices of the oppressed are amplified and their rights upheld.
Together, we can champion the cause of freedom and democracy for all.
The 2024 French Legislative Election
The 2024 French Legislative Election
By Dr Alain Gabon
In this issue
Macron’s dissolution of the National Assembly
Why a reckless dissolution?
A transformed political landscape
How the snap legislative election provided even more surprises
Explanations of the results
How the National Rally was re-demonised
All winners, all losers
The New Popular Front faces a very uncertain future
A Macronist democratic coup?
For the far-right, a momentary setback
For Muslims, the worst was avoided
A break in Islamophobia?
Consensual calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Conclusion
Issue 02, Vol 4, July 2024, The Cordoba foundation
A nation torn apart between the left and the Far-Right, enters uncharted territories
President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise dissolution of the National Assembly following his spectacular defeat at the 9th June European election, which for the French was very much a referendum on his governance, keeps producing shockwaves and unexpected ripple effects across the entire French political landscape. All of this has provoked dismay and grave concerns among financial markets, international investors, foreign media, and Macron’s French and European allies, including his own Ensemble centre-right coalition.
Macron’s dissolution of the National Assembly
The decision to activate “the nuclear option”, which he had contemplated and prepared for months, was received as a reckless one that risked aggravating France’s already severe political, economic, financial, and cultural crises while also weakening the EU itself. To this day, most French people have a hard time understanding that decision, while Macron’s own MPs and party members, many of whom lost their seats, remain infuriated against him.
Indeed, if Macron wanted to respond to the strong message of rejection the French sent him at the Euro elections, he had other options including a change of Prime Minister and government, the adoption of different policies, or postponing the dissolution until after the Olympic Games while trying to enlarge his electoral popular base through alliances with the centre-left and the centre-right – as he had successfully done in the 2017 Presidential election.
There was, in any case, no hurry. Yet Macron deliberately took that dramatic decision at the worst possible moment for both himself (rarely has a French President been so hated and despised), his centre-right coalition (which had all but lost its initial 2017 momentum and was forced, unprepared into a new campaign while at its weakest, right after a major electoral defeat), and his own country, which has since been in disarray.
Regarding the EU, given that the French far-right’s support for Ukraine is at best recent, uncertain, partial, and insincere for a traditionally pro-Russian party, it is the whole European pro-Ukrainian front, one that he himself champions, that Macron risked undermining but also much of the rest of his own European policies on the environment, a new strategic European defence architecture, or a joint reindustrialisation policy.
On all these crucial issues and more, France’s far-right Rassemblement National, which unlike Macron’s own centre-right coalition Ensemble, enjoys a spectacular momentum, could not be more opposed to Macron’s policies, who thus seemed to have shot himself in the foot.
In so many respects, his gamble has been a suicidal Russian roulette in reverse, with five bullets in the six-shot barrel instead of one. There is no doubt he has hurt his own political group and himself. On the international scene, he cannot take any decision until the new government is formed and he is thus a lame-duck President as made obvious by the recent NATO summit.
At a time when there has never been so many threats and challenges of all sorts, economic, environmental, industrial, military, and more, furthermore shortly before the Olympic Games when the terrorist threat has once again re-emerged, Macron could not have chosen a worst moment to throw his country into chaos.
Why a reckless dissolution?
There are several ways to understand Macron’s decision, the most charitable being that it is a truly democratic one: Macron had heard the message of the French at the European election where he suffered a scathing defeat, and he chose to give them the possibility to end his own domestic government at home too and have another one, should they choose to. Read this way, this would be a true Gaullist gesture that put his own national fate in the hands of the voters.
Macron had also for several years complained that France’s political system was not democratic enough because the people did not have mid-term elections, now that the presidential and legislative elections take place essentially at the same time and a mere few weeks apart with the latter merely validating the former, which was not the case before when they took place years apart.
The dissolution can thus be read as a pragmatic decision. Stripped of a parliamentary majority following the 2022 legislative election, France had become hard, if not impossible to govern and there was an urgent need to provide a new opportunity for a stable ruling majority, especially since the whole French political, legislative, and governmental system has been designed to produce and guarantee strong majorities for effective governance. Macron seemed to believe he could win those legislatives and had often expressed how tired he was of governing without a solid, strong and stable legislative majority, as is the norm under the Fifth Republic.
A third explanation has to do with Macron’s personality: isolated in his bubble, largely cut off from realities especially the extent and depth of the resentment he has generated in the population after seven years of power, unaware of how degraded his image had become — that of an arrogant, privileged, out-of-touch elite, a “former banker” and “President of the Rich”, a man both clueless about the daily hardships of common people and contemptuous of the popular classes. Despite this widespread popular rejection and resentment, Macron nonetheless continued to believe, against all evidence, that he may win the June-July legislative elections. Macron claimed he wanted to be a “Jupiterian” president when he was first elected in 2017, may have been the victim of his own megalomaniac egotistic belief in his miraculous intelligence and strategic skills.
An Alpha male type of ”winner” who hates defeat and never gives up, he also loves challenges, risks, and bold moves, like a player of bluff poker, an analogy often used by commentators. His message to the French seemed to be: “You people have been tempted for years to elect the far-right? Well now you can. I dare you to put them in charge, but the trick is you must decide right now, within two weeks, not in 2027. So, what are you going to do now?.”
Fourth, there may have been even more cynical electoral calculations in this daring move.
Instead of waiting for a vote of no confidence that was bound to happen soon at the next budget proposal, Macron, being his usual self, preferred to anticipate, strip the opposition of that opportunity, and remain the “Master of the Clocks” and main game player while precipitating his opponents in a state of panic and crisis. Moreover, forcing totally unexpected, rushed elections down the people’s throats without enough time for them to prepare adequately. Which incidentally, unlike the first explanation, is profoundly undemocratic.
Most cynically, he may have secretly preferred to yield legislative and executive power to the far-right of Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella for the next three years (they were at the time the probable winners) in exchange for a better chance to have his chosen heir, current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, win the 2027 presidential election. The Machiavellian calculation of this tacit Faustian pact would be that with its lack of experience and reputation of incompetence, Marine le Pen’s National Rally would discredit itself as a capable and viable ruling party once in government. After three years of failed governance, even their own voters would be disappointed and cease to believe they offer a credible alternative.
By essentially giving power to the far-right, Macron would thus have helped discredit them at the cost of inflicting three years of abject policies and extremist right-wing government on his own country and people. In that line of thinking, even if he lost in July 2024, Gabriel Attal, a sort of pale Macron II, would win in 2027.
A transformed political landscape
Whatever Macron’s secret calculations may have been, the fragmentation bomb of the dissolution and the rushed legislative campaign have already restructured the French political landscape and rendered the next three years till the 2027 presidential election quasi-impossible to predict.
There are now three deeply antagonistic blocs at the National Assembly, none of which has a majority, not even close, none of which can govern on its own. This may lead to political paralysis and deadlock.
Besides the dissolution itself that took everyone by surprise, the most surprising plot twist ahead of the French legislative election, a second one nobody, including Macron, expected either, has been the overnight reunification into the “New Popular Front” of the four main opposition parties of the left: the Socialists (nearly 14% at the European election), La France Insoumise/France Unbowed (nearly 10% of the Euro vote), the Greens (5.5%), and the Communists (2%).
The New Popular Front (a reference to the short-lived but mythic Popular Front of the 1930s against the rise of fascism in Europe) was soon joined by a broad coalition of civil sector forces including trade unions and associations, then within three days it had successfully negotiated a substantial and coherent 24-page electoral program which could then be presented to the French ahead of the first round of the legislatives.
The relationships between the leaders of France’s two main leftist parties had also become so heinous and detestable that Macron was betting on the continuation of this political fragmentation to defeat his left opposition.
The European election had been marked by severe fractures between the Socialist Party (centre-left social-democrats not too different from Tony Blair’s New Labour) and the “hard left” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed on major issues like Ukraine-Russia, antisemitism, and Gaza. The relationships between the leaders of France’s two main leftist parties had also become so heinous and detestable that Macron was betting on the continuation of this political fragmentation to defeat his left opposition. Cynically hoping for their continuing political, programmatic, and personal disunity, Macron actually accidentally gave them the miraculous historical opportunity to silence their dissensions, mend their fractures, and accomplish the union of the leftist forces at a time when no one, not even those parties, thought that possible.
This too shows Macron’s poor strategic skills and his inability to read his social and political terrain, confirming that even on political matters, he is out-of-touch.
In particular, he did not understand a major factor which the left itself understood immediately: that given the electoral maths that had emerged in France from the results of the European election, there were only two options for the left ahead of this next and unexpected national legislative campaign Macron was forcing upon them. The options were a) either unite and get a chance at both winning and defeating the far-right (their main historical arch enemy) as well as the Macronists themselves, or b) remain divided and perish at the ballot box.
All the various forces of the left were quick to understand and seize the moment. Within three days, profoundly different and often divergent parties and leaders who often hated each other and had spent much of the European campaign slandering each other, reunited and presented a common front and program for the legislatives.
Macron’s repeat of his successful 2017 strategy of fragmenting his double opposition (on his left and on his right sides) was far more successful with the conservatives. Forced with the same dilemma as the left of either uniting (for them, with the far-right of Marine le Pen / Jordan Bardella’s National Rally) or disappearing, the main conservative government party (LR, The Republicans, 7.25% at the Euro vote) fractured internally and split in two between those who pushed for an alliance with the far-right and those who resolutely refused.
By fracturing internally this way, the already electorally weakened heirs to former Presidents Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac probably sealed their fate for years to come of what used to be France’s main ruling party in the post-war era.
How the snap legislative election provided even more surprises
The French 2024 legislative election has been the most dramatically eventful of the whole post-war 5th Republic, with the latest plot twist of the 7 July second round of the vote the most surprising and unexpected of all.
One possible short version is that unlike Hungary, Italy, or the United States, the French ultimately refused to put the far-right in charge shortly after bringing it themselves to that threshold at the first round of this national election.
On 7 July, taking everybody by surprise including themselves, the French reversed the vote they had cast a week earlier at the 30 June first round.
Defeating all polls, which had been consistent until the last minute and predicted a victory for the far-right, they actually did the opposite and put the New Popular Front leftist coalition ahead at the National Assembly (180 seats out of the total 577) while relegating the far-right, which had come first on 30 June and was the predicted winner, to a sorry third position (143 seats).
Not only did the party of Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella lose to their arch-enemy of the left, which no one thought could possibly win, but they even fell behind the centre-right Macronist coalition Ensemble (163 seats), which everybody had (prematurely) announced dead following two severe consecutive defeats at the European election and the first legislative round. The Macron bloc fared much better than expected thanks to the withdrawal of many candidates from the left at the second round and the vote switch from the New Popular Front to the Macronist Ensemble coalition between the two rounds.
This was a triple surprise. While everybody expected the far-right in power in July with Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister and the troops of le Pen having already packed their boxes to move to Matignon (the headquarters of the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet), France should now logically have the exact opposite: a left government in the next several weeks, though most likely after the Olympic Games, possibly even later.
Explanations of the results
So, what happened?
The main reason for this radical vote inversion between the two rounds and the unexpected reversal of fortune for all three blocs (the leftist New Popular Front, the centre-right Macronist Ensemble, and the far-right of Marine le Pen), is actually simple: round one was largely an anti-Macron vote while round two was an anti-le Pen/Bardella vote.
In between the two rounds, the perceived danger, the existential threat to the nation (the Republic, its institutions, its civil liberties, etc.), and the main enemy changed for the vast majority of the French. For the left voters it was no longer Macron and his already severely weakened centre-right bloc Ensemble, and for the Macronists themselves, it was no longer the “extreme” left incarnated by the now thoroughly demonised figure of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “extremist” France Unbowed “party-of-antisemitic-Hamas-lovers-and-supporters-of-Palestinian-Jew-killers.”
After years spent equating the “extreme left” with the “extreme right” as equally evil – a false symmetry that has become common in mainstream media too – the far-right became again the clear and present danger for the Macronist coalition itself and the mainstream media. Especially since after the first round, no one thought the New Popular Front could win and it was then Jordan Bardella not Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was at the door of power.
On the evening of 30 June after the announcements of the results of round one, both Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, so far sworn enemies, clearly designated the National Rally as their main common enemy.
In a repeat of what is now a French political tradition, the barrage or Front Républicain (Republican Dam or Republican Front, a code term designating the tactical electoral alliance of all “legitimate Republican parties” from the left to the right to prevent the far-right from reaching power) was miraculously recreated in yet another surprise, after being so often declared dead given the steady advances and spectacular electoral successes of Marine le Pen.
France’s “Republican Front” was thus reactivated overnight, and the mutual accords de désistements between the Macronist Ensemble and the New Popular Front coalitions, by which parties strike deals to withdraw their candidates at the second round and give the remaining one a better chance to defeat those from the far-right in the logic of the lesser of two evils, worked their magic. Marine le Pen’s National Rally was once again successfully squeezed out by this double hammer as it had been many times in the past twenty years.
How the National Rally was re-demonised
At least three other factors explain this defeat of the far-right, yet another huge surprise (the fourth of this electoral sequence) since after the first round which had put the Lepenist party ahead and until the very end, it was unanimously given by all as the winner. No one thought the French would or could so radically invert their vote in only one week between the two rounds.
First factor, the well-known glass ceiling of Marine le Pen’s National Rally (the former National Front created by her father, the racist antisemite Jean-Marie le Pen) that has so far prevented it from reaching a majority. This is due to the major electoral weakness of this party: its political isolation and difficulty to find allies to form coalitions and thus expand its electoral base. This was a crucial necessity in the strongly majoritarian French political system where the imperative at the second round of presidential and legislative elections is to aggregate voters and parties. Unlike all the other parties big and small, the National Rally/National Front was never able to do that, and this latest election confirmed that.
Though it is a strong, large, and expanding party, it remains isolated in France’s political landscape, stripped of allies, at least enough of them to reach a majority.
The second factor is correlated to the first. The dé-diabolisation (“de-demonisation”) strategy of Marine le Pen to transform what used to be a taboo fringe party into a respectable mass party by stripping it of its ugliest elements and dimensions (its origins in the Vichy Regime and French colonial Algeria, its fascist and racist ideological DNA, her own father, etc.), abruptly reached its limits right after their victory of the 30 June first vote.
It’s so far highly effective banalisation (normalisation) stopped abruptly just when it was about to reach power. Faced with that now real possibility, the French recoiled once they saw it could indeed happen. Instead, behind the charming, youthful, smiling face of the charismatic Jordan “Perfect-Son-in-Law” Bardella, the old, ugly, violent, and racist National Front of Marine’s father, Jean-Marie le Pen, reappeared.
Besides the traditional barrage (dam) of the Front Républicain already cited, two things happened.
First, the excellent investigative reporting conducted by the French mainstream media during the crucial week between the two rounds showed quite clearly that despite their sanitisation operation to offer the public a respectable, acceptable, even moderate face, so many of the National Rally candidates had remained the same as those the National Front was under during the time of its founder Jean-Marie le Pen, Marine’s father.
Day after day, the French press excavated countless stories of racism, antisemitism, Nazism, homophobia, physical violence, corruption, and more involving National Rally officials. Literally dozens of Lepenist candidates were outed every single day while many more deleted their social network accounts in panic in order to hide what was there.
This devastating reporting pulverised Marine le Pen’s decade-long effort to reconstruct and present her party in a favourable light as a regular parti Républicain. Within a week, the National Rally of the daughter was effectively re-demonised into the old ugly National Front of the father, which consolidated further the “Republican dam” between the other two Macronist and New Popular Front blocs.
Even the smooth, highly polished and civil PR image Jordan Bardella had carefully crafted with his media coaches to render his party respectable melted under close scrutiny, and an altogether different man, both vacuous, unaccomplished, radicalised, and dangerous for the nation, appeared.
Second, the National Rally contributed to its own defeat through its radical approach. Its electoral programme, especially the measures Bardella kept putting forward (the suppression of the right of the soil, the stigmatisation of binational French citizens as potential traitors, the reduction of immigration to a mere 10,000 per year, a sheer impossibility, the differences made not just between foreigners and citizens but among French citizens themselves) was so un-French, extreme, divisive, and clearly xenophobic, they reeked so much of the Vichy Regime that many voters who would otherwise have abstained decided that France could not be governed by this. For most voters, a good two thirds, the National Rally had once again become its own scarecrow.
The intense campaign week between the two votes thus became an anti-National Rally mobilisation. Parties and voters were largely joined by the mainstream media, both print, radio, and television in their rejection of the National Rally and the now very real possibility of having it in charge a week later. The far-right’s preceding two consecutive victories at the European election and the first legislative round ended up functioning as shock therapy during the last week, shaking many out of their apathy, taking them in a panic to the polling stations to avoid waking up in a France led by Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella, while uniting rival parties and leaders against this common enemy.
This generated a very strong national mobilisation against them and pushed voter participation to its highest level (70%) since the 1997 legislative elections.
Third, and last reason for this surprising result, Jordan Bardella’s week-long campaign was impossibly messy, disorganised, amateurish and confused, scaring voters further. For example, no one was able to understand what their plan was on major issues like the retirement age. Worse, Bardella himself slashed entire chunks of his own electoral program including major promises like ending income tax for people under 30 years old, in an attempt to appear responsible and reassure certain segments of the population like the management and business owners. But those constant, daily U-turns that rendered even their own voters dizzy only seemed to confirm the reputation of incompetence as a governing party that has stuck to the National Rally/National Front since its beginning. Its lack of credible experienced personalities to govern a nation like France or even form a government also became obvious.
All winners, all losers
It can be said that all three blocs are both winners and losers.
The New Popular Front left coalition comes first. . The Macronist “central” bloc avoids another predicted disaster and will instead retain a pivotal, even essential role in whatever future coalition majority may emerge. Though defeated three consecutive times in a month, the electoral arithmetic of the new legislature renders it indispensable: in a fractured tri-partite Assembly that looks like an unsolvable puzzle, an impossible Rubik’s cube, or a broken mirror, there can simply be no majority, and therefore no real governance without the Macronist Ensemble coalition. In a very real sense, despite three severe defeats and popular rejection, what is left of the Macronists keeps the upper hand.
Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s far-right National Rally continues to make progress. It maintains its dynamic and loses nothing of the spectacular and steady momentum it has shown in the past three decades, essentially by capitalising on popular discontent and the economic hardship, frustrations, fears, anger, and suffering of the French — its main fuel and the main reason for its success.
A few telling figures: the National Rally had no MP in 2007, two in 2012, eight in 2017, 89 in 2022 (with its few allies from other parties), and now it has 126 all by itself, 143 in its bloc counting the conservatives who joined them.
It is both the largest party of France, the largest at the National Assembly, and the one who got the most votes (32% versus about 25% each for the left and Macronist blocs). All the studies done on its electorate as well as the empirical evidence one can have when one lives in France have shown it has in the past few years made spectacular progress throughout the whole country and all its regions. It is now growing roots just about everywhere. For the first round of 30 June, it simply came first in 93% of the French communes, producing a stunningly monochromatic electoral map of France that only regained colours at the second round. It is also advancing rapidly in all social classes from the rich to the poor and in between, in all ages from the young to the retirees, and among both men and women.
However, in glaring contrast with the quasi systematic pattern of elections under France’s Fifth Republic and its majoritarian system, none of the parties and even none of the three coalitions obtained a majority (a required 289 seats out of the total 577), not even close. It can therefore also be said that they all lost or that there is no real winner, as Macron wrote in his Letter to the French. Given that each of the three blocs has roughly two thirds of the electorate who did not choose them and each of them has thus been rejected by the vast majority of the voters, the message of the French was clear: “We do not want to be governed by any of you, we do not want any of you in power, at least not solely.”
The far-right of Jordan Bardella-Marine le Pen has once again broken its head against their 30%-35% glass ceiling and its teeth against the recreated barrage Républicain and the popular vote itself. It also looks more isolated than ever. Despite its spectacular progress since Jean-Marie le Pen, power seems more than ever out of reach short of miracles that would give them the extra 15%-20% needed to reach the majority but that they seem unable to find.
The New Popular Front is the real winner, but it now faces several major challenges and a very uncertain future.
The New Popular Front faces a very uncertain future
First, the coalition parties of the left must select a Prime Minister who satisfies its four parties. Given that two weeks after their victory as these lines are being written they still have not agreed on a name, this clearly is not an easy task, due to the real political and ideological differences in a makeshift coalition torn apart between its pale pink, centre-left, “Macron-compatible” social-democratic pole (the Socialists) and its deep red, hard left (France Unbowed and other fringe parties like the New Anticapitalist Party). Then that candidate must be approved by President Macron. Once those two hurdles are navigated, it will need to keep together this shaky coalition with profound internal divergences that was assembled overnight, not so much to win, but to prevent the far-right from reaching power and was as such not really meant to last past 7 July. It is also chock- full of strong personalities and aspiring leaders with their clashes of ego that further tear it apart.
They also have to prevent a vote of no-confidence that would topple a left government the Macronists would find unacceptable and too “radical.” Concretely, this means they must secure the good will of at least 100 other MPs to prevent a vote of no-confidence from at least 289 of them (the majority of the 577-seat Assembly). Not to mention the possibility of another parliamentary dissolution and legislative election in one year should Macron decide it, and as the Constitution allows.
The New Popular Front must crucially and substantially expand its parliamentary base and find allies to first avoid being toppled if it forms a government and then get a voting majority. Getting the extra 100 MPs from other groups, especially from Macron’s centre-right bloc Ensemble, to vote with them if it wants to pass any law and implement any part of its programme will not be easy.
There is little to nothing in the current electoral program of the New Popular Front that could attract enough votes from any other bloc. In that respect, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s promise after their victory that they must form a government to “implement our programme, all our programme, and only our programme” is totally unrealistic and mathematically impossible given the arithmetic of the new legislative Assembly. Which incidentally, creates another rift within the left coalition between those who refuse to compromise with the Macronist central bloc and those who recognise they will have no other choice given the New Popular Front, though number one, is still so far from a voting majority and thus unable to govern all by itself.
The risk is therefore a legislative and political deadlock, due to the Fifth Republic being a political system and culture designed for two major dominant political forces (parties or coalitions, one from the right one from the left with regular alternance between the two as has been mostly the case so far) but not for three blocs, and even less three blocs with more or less equal strengths. This is however the case now, and for the French, this is quite a new situation they don’t know to handle.
It means that provided the New Popular Front gets to form the next government or at least be a substantial part of it, at a strict minimum since they constitute at most a third of the Assembly, they will have to seriously edulcorate their programme and put water in their wine. A lot of water. Maybe so much their voters would no longer taste the promised wine, recognise their electoral program, and will end up considering they have been once again betrayed by the left, with severe consequences for the 2027 presidential election.
Above all, the New Popular Front will not only have to pass in less than three years before 2027 enough of its measures, even in moderated forms, to prove it is a viable and trustworthy governing force, or it will alienate its own voters who may then abandon them. But with that 2027 Damocles Sword above its head, it must significantly, concretely, and rapidly improve the daily lives of the French, who struggle economically so much, with most of them now unable or barely able make ends meet. For this, it certainly cannot count on Macron, the Macronists, or the far-right for support or good will, as their adversaries have every interest in seeing this new left coalition fail if it manages to form a government approved by the President. A success on their part would indeed mean they will probably win the Presidency too in 2027.
If the New Popular Front is in government and fails, it will be primarily the far-right of Marine le Pen-Jordan Bardella, who thrives on popular discontent, hardship, political disillusion and disappointment, who will benefit the most from their debacle. Marine le Pen is already in an ambush position for 2027.
A Macronist democratic coup?
Since the second round of 7 July, Macron and his camp have been relentlessly manoeuvring to ignore, change and even cancel the vote of the French through cynical deals between party apparatuses that aim to outplay and marginalise the New Popular Front, if not to completely exclude it from government despite the fact it came first and is the largest bloc.
The French very clearly rejected Macron and his policies at the ballot box, they did so three consecutive times in a month, so the message is clear. For their second and final legislative vote, they put the left first and it is now the largest of the three blocs. As the tradition of the Fifth Republic requires and as has always been the case, the new Prime Minister and the next government must come from the largest force at the National Assembly, therefore the left.
Yet, not only has Macron not called, written, talked to, or met with any of the New Popular Front leaders to approach them as potential Prime Ministers, as he should, but he and his political allies have been meeting with leaders from the right including Marine le Pen herself. Shockingly, they now talk openly of selecting a Prime Minister from the conservative right (which only got a mere 66 seats and 8% of the vote while the left coalition has 180 seats and received 26% of the vote) then form a government of the centre-right.
Since their defeat, the Macronists have actually tried to build an alternative coalition with the conservatives of the Droite Républicaine/Republican Right party to prevent the left from governing and exclude them from the game. Macron himself and the centrist and conservative leaders are also trying to fracture and dismember the New Popular Front through wedge politics, declaring everywhere that Jean-Luc Melenchon’s France Unbowed cannot be included in any future government, that one cannot work with or talk to them because they are “anti-Republican”, “extremist”, “antisemitic”, and even “insurrectionist.” Those are all laughable and slanderous accusations, yet in France they have acquired the force of truth, even among many of France Unbowed’s own allies within the New Popular Front.
The strategy here is to detach France Unbowed (the largest party of the New Popular Front, the one with the most MPs, and the most leftist) from the other three parties of the coalition which the Macronists and conservatives call legitimate and respectable (the Socialists, the Greens, and the Communists).
Lately, all the leaders of the Macronist bloc and the conservative right have been openly blackmailing the New Popular Front and Macron himself (who must approve the new Prime Minister) by threatening to immediately topple any future government by a vote of no confidence if the Prime Minister comes from France Unbowed or even if a left government includes a single minister from that party. Macron himself is playing that game by delineating the contours of the “legitimate” parties he will accept in what he calls “the Republican camp” or the “Republican arc” as going from the social-democrats (essentially the Socialists and the Greens) to the conservative right. Thus, excluding from any future government not just the far-right National Rally (though with 126 MPs out of 577 it is actually the largest party by far) but also France Unbowed, itself the largest party of the left. He recently declared he will not govern with them either.
Here, the goal is clear: to split and weaken numerically the left coalition by severing it of its largest party so what is left of the New Popular Front will be, first, even more dependent on the Macronist bloc to pass any law, second, separated from their more leftist component (France Unbowed), and third, forced to abandon their programme or at least dilute their electoral measures to the point where they will be unrecognisable.
This is starting to look like a coup de force, if not a “democratic coup d’état” on the part of the Macronist and conservative parties who try to stay in power after being squarely defeated and rejected at the ballot box three times in a month.
At a minimum, all this manoeuvring, blackmailing, and setting of conditions on the part of those who lost constitutes a clear attempt to deny the vote of the French by deliberately ignoring the fact that it is the left who came first and therefore, in the tradition the Fifth Republic, must be the ones to select the next Prime Minister and form the government.
Yet lately, this is not where things are going.
For the far-right, a momentary setback
Despite the disappointing outcome of the second round, the National Rally and its le Pen-Bardella dynamic duo is actually in a comfortable position. It preserves its main card: that of the “only-real-opposition-to- ‘the-system’”, the “only alternative”, and the sole party that will still not have been tested in power when the time comes for the 2027 presidential election.
Le Pen-Bardella may simply have suffered a momentary setback, taking a step backward for an even bigger leap forward in 2027.
The far-right will thus not suffer but, on the contrary, benefit from the mess, political chaos, and possible institutional deadlocks, popular disappointment, or policy failures of those who govern.
Le Pen-Bardella may simply have suffered a momentary setback, taking a step backward for an even bigger leap forward in 2027, or as the French say, reculer pour mieux sauter. It is actually better for them not to be in power now, especially in such a chaotic situation and with a restricted window of opportunity until 2027 to prove their worth as rulers of a nation. The experience of power may have been fatal to them and they probably feel relieved that they will not have to manage a country in such a bad political, cultural, economic, and financial situation, under close surveillance from the increasingly concerned EU, financial markets, investors, and credit rating agencies. Staying in the opposition and blaming, pointing, and accusing is so much easier, especially when you know their loss will be your gains.
For Muslims, the worst was avoided
Regarding France’s Muslims and other racialised minorities, at the very least they have avoided the worst.
Needless to say, on all issues regarding Islam, Muslims, national identity, culture, integration, immigration, the program of the National Rally, largely borrowed from Marine le Pen’s 2022 Presidential program, was a most hostile one promising only further hardship and exclusion. Their right-wing allies at the National Assembly such as Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest are even more extreme in their heinous and racist targeting of foreigners, immigrants from the South, Muslims, and Islam, cloaked as is now routine as a “fight-against-Islamism-for-the-defense-of-Republican-values-especially-laicity.”
Despite their vociferous denial, the far-right’s real ambition seems to be the creation of a nativist, all-white or mostly white homogenous society of citizens purged of its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity.
Besides the predictable “end to population settlement [read: immigration] and family reunion laws,” the promotion of “national preference”, and a slew of tough-on-crime, law-and-order measures that are always the trademarks and main priorities of the far-right everywhere, the National Rally even includes such radical and ironically truly anti-French proposals such as ending the right of the soil (which has existed since the 16th century for children born of foreign parents) in order to stop “the migratory invasion”, and the suppression of most forms of state assistance to foreigners including emergency medical aid.
Most alarmingly for Muslims, Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella also planned to “close all radical mosques,” “dissolve all associations from the ultra-left [read: all those they will deem “Islamist”] and from the ultra-right,” ban hijabs (and most likely other “Islamic” outfits) everywhere including universities and the street, “ban Islamist ideologies”, and more in the same vein [read: suppress anyone and anything that just looks too visibly Islamic to them].
The far-right’s real ambition seems to be the creation of a nativist, all-white or mostly white homogenous society of citizens purged of its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity
Worse, given they would have quickly been forced into economic realism since France is essentially broke (a threat now looming over the New Popular Front and severely limiting its future) — as evidence of that Jordan Bardella had already given up or postponed to an undetermined future most of his major socio-economic promises for helping the popular classes — a National Rally in power would have been tempted to give priorities to the cultural and identarian portions of their programs such as laicity (the falsified and weaponised type), “Islamism,” “separatism,” “integration,” and immigration, as diversion from their inability to fulfil their economic promises and mark their difference with the rest.
A break in Islamophobia?
With the recentring to the left of the political landscape thanks to the largest bloc that includes the most genuinely anti-Islamophobic and anti-racist political force of France (France Unbowed) and other genuinely anti-Islamophobic parties like the Greens, not to mention many sincerely anti-racist and authentically humanist and universalist leaders, Muslims and other minorities should see a pause in the slew of Islamophobic laws and initiatives that has sadly characterised the Macron years.
Since its creation in 2017, France Unbowed, which at 74 MPs is the largest party of the left including within the New Popular Front (180 seats total) has also been by far the strongest – actually the only – French political voice against Islamophobia in France and one of the strongest in Europe. The others, including from the left, have been at best silent and utterly passive about it, when they were not purely and simply refusing to use the word “Islamophobia” arguing it was coined by the Iranian regime to vilify the West, split their societies, or prevent the criticism of Islam.
In the French landscape, it is also the only party who dares talk about and denounce systemic and state racism – in a country where the mere use of those terms can cause you to be sued for incitement to violence against France – and the only one to have inscribed in its program the abrogation of the infamous “laws against Islamist separatism,” a major part of Macron’s “Systemic Obstruction Policy.”
Given the new political arithmetic and the dilemmas explained above, the risk is now that even France Unbowed will tone down their strong anti-Islamophobia rhetoric, moderate or silence their much-needed positions, or be forced into compromises out of fear of introducing dissent within the New Popular Front.
Consensual calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Nonetheless, on issues like Palestine-Israel and Gaza, besides the consensual calls for an immediate cease-fire, the program of the New Popular Front somewhat surprisingly includes many of France Unbowed’s own proposals, including “ending the French government’s support to the right-wing Supremacist government of Netanyahu”, “the liberation of the Palestinian political prisoners”, an “embargo on weapons sales to Israel” (among other sanctions), the “immediate recognition of the Palestinian State within its UN 1967 borders,” and “the organisation of free Palestinian elections under international supervision.” All things absent from the programs of the other parties.
The program of the New Popular Front somewhat surprisingly include[s]… “ending the French government’s support to… [Netanyahu’s] Supremacist government, “the liberation of the Palestinian political prisoners”, [and] an “embargo on weapons sales to Israel”.
It also proposes to abrogate many of the recent and most xenophobic laws targeting populations from the Global South (especially Muslims) such as the Migration & Asylum Pact, while facilitating access to French nationality.
All those strong and principled measures show the influence of France Unbowed within the New Popular Front. Whether they will be able to maintain that influence or lose their relative domination over the French left to the advantage of the far more moderate, centre-left/social-liberal, Macron-compatible, rose pale (pale pink) Socialists is another story. We may want to remember here that Macron was after all Socialist President François Hollande’s Minister of the Economy, and with Hollande back to politics as newly elected MP, the future centre of gravity of French political life may well be a Parliamentary alliance between the Socialist party and the Macronist Ensemble coalition, which would marginalise France Unbowed.
The next three years may finally give a break to Muslims and other racialised minorities, who may be able to breathe better in a less toxic, less racist and Islamophobic atmosphere.
In any case, the stigmatising debates and false problems around Islamic outfits, laicité, “Islamism”, and more will for sure continue to be used as diversion and scapegoats. The hard conservatives of Les Républicains, the far-right, and/or the Macronist centre may be tempted to propose new repressive measures to capitalise as they have done for years on the strong French anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments. But with the New Popular Front as the largest coalition and itself an indispensable player, unless the “centrist” Macronist bloc sides with the far-right to get a majority on this or that text, it will be hard for any party or coalition to pass new laws like the burqa ban or the “anti-separatism” bill.
Hopefully, the next three years may finally give a break to Muslims and other racialised minorities, who may be able to breathe better in a less toxic, less racist and Islamophobic atmosphere.
Conclusion
The 2024 electoral sequence, which will remain in history, has produced an unprecedented French political situation which its actors, and the French in general, will have to learn how to navigate for probably quite a long time.
This stunning electoral sequence that just ended is only the beginning. France is now in a transitional period that will last months and possibly years, and it is impossible to predict what may ultimately come out of it.
If the New Popular Front is able to maintain its unity and exert influence, Muslims and other racialised minorities should, as said above, benefit from a break until at least 2027 and fare better than they have under Macron, when the discrimination, racism, stigmatisation, and scapegoating has been intense.
Regarding Palestine and Israel, it is unfortunately unlikely that we will see much change in French policies: the only genuinely pro-Palestinian party (France Unbowed) in this otherwise extremely rich and diverse political landscape that goes from the revolutionary left to the far right is itself a minority within its own New Popular Front coalition which is itself, even taken together as a bloc, a minority within the new Assembly. And all the other parties, blocs, and leaders including the Macronists (and Macron himself), the conservative Republicans, and the far right, which taken together are a majority, are all unconditional pro-Israeli parties — none of which ever did or say anything concrete about the massacre of Palestinians still under way. They will for sure oppose any initiative from the New Popular Front that would either try to put pressure on Israel or seek to redirect French policies in a more pro-Palestinian direction.
Despite emerging figures like Rima Hassan (but she is a European MP not a French one), the political situation that emerged from the election should not give Netanyahu much cause to worry or much hope for the Palestinians.
*Portions of this paper appeared in the Middle East Eye, France elections: Voters rejected the far-right. What happens next?
Author
Dr Alain Gabon, a French native, holds advanced Masters and Ph.D. degrees in English & American Literatures & Civilization, Film, and French Studies from several French and American universities. He is Associate Professor of French Studies in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures-Classics where he specialises in contemporary France and the Francophone world including literature and the arts, culture, politics, and society. He has taught, lectured, and written widely including on Islam and Muslims in the West. He is also a regular contributor to the Middle East Eye. Several of his essays and papers can be found on The Cordoba Foundation website. His next publication, a book chapter on the roots, origins and forms of French Islamophobia with an emphasis on the Macron years, is forthcoming in 2024 in “Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia”, (University of Alberta Press).
Editors
Dr Abdullah Faliq – Editor-in-Chief & Managing Director
Dr Anas Altikriti – Chief Executive
H.D. Forman
Sandra Tusin
Basma Elshayyal
Copyright
© The Cordoba Foundation 2024.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior permission of the The Cordoba Foundation.
Disclaimer
Views and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of The Cordoba Foundation.
Published in London by The Cordoba Foundation
info@thecordobafoundation.com
www.thecordobafoundation.com
NEW RECORDS FOR THE FAR-RIGHT IN EUROPE, MORE BAD NEWS FOR MUSLIMS?
NEW RECORDS FOR THE FAR-RIGHT IN EUROPE, MORE BAD NEWS FOR MUSLIMS?
By Dr Alain Gabon
In this issue
Renewed interest
A continent in crisis
Main winners
Who are the main losers?
No groundswell
The real threat: influence
Issue 01, Vol 4, July 2024, The Cordoba foundation
The real threat of the far-right may not be its electoral victories but its mainstreaming and ability to co-opt other parties.
On 9 June, nearly 380 million citizens from the 27 EU nations elected their MPs in what was the largest democratic election in the West and one of the largest in the world.
Renewed interest
As is customary for European elections, by far the largest group, at 49%, nearly half of all eligible voters, was once again the abstentionists. It is nonetheless noteworthy that since the 2019 election, the decrease in voter turnout, which had been steady since the first 1979 election, has stopped, and the 51% participation was the highest in thirty years since 1994. The long downward trend thus seems to have been inverted.
If Europhobia has recently receded, few continue to advocate Frexits or Greeksits, and even France’s Marine le Pen and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have abandoned the idea, it is not because the enthusiasm for the Union has increased but because people have come to understand they may be worse off without it in a strictly national framework. Moreover, their nations no longer have the strengths and resources to address any of the main challenges that confront them, such as the environmental crisis or global pandemics.
Brexit has also given a cold shower to many who may have been tempted to follow that example.
With indifference, the main attitude is therefore no longer outright rejection of the EU but pragmatic, sometimes fatalistic acceptance without enthusiasm.
A continent in crisis
Thematically, this election was dominated by economic bread-and-butter issues, especially the cost-of-living, the combination of low incomes with high inflation and the subsequent dramatic impoverishment of large segments of the popular classes; immigration, the environment, national and European defence, and the Ukraine war, now increasingly presented and defined by media and politicians as a genuine European war and even a resurgence of the Cold War.
Those issues have much in common. They are all lived as both national and trans-European crises and even civilisational existential threats. Each of them has generated a moral panic, often largely unjustified especially regarding immigration, security, terrorism, and the threat posed by Russia to countries other than Ukraine, where threat inflation prevails. They have contributed to creating a siege mentality across Europe. And none has found a solution, not even close, especially on the environment, the economy, and the war in Ukraine.
Far from the European utopia of the first postwar decades, a sense of crisis and decline, of doom-and-gloom, of losing control over one’s nation and future has settled among very large segments of the Euro populations, especially in countries like France, and was often reflected in the electoral debates.
This pessimistic, often catastrophist dystopian mood and discourse on the “decline” of a Europe surrounded by enemies and besieged on all fronts by immigration, terrorism, “Islamism”, the economic competition of the US, China, or other bogeymen, coupled with a new sense of internal military threat due to a Russian invasion lived as a traumatic “return of war on the European continent”, has strongly favoured the far-right parties who were able to capitalise on that sense of crises and fear.
Main winners
Much has been said about the triumph of the far-right “national-populist” parties especially the spectacular victories of France’s National Rally (former National Front) with its flamboyant telegenic new leader Jordan “The-Ideal-Son-in-Law” Bardella, who at 31% inflicted a truly humiliating defeat to President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance coalition (15%), before being defeated at the July national legislative election.
Italy’s PM, Giorgia Meloni, strongly consolidated her position both at home and at the European Parliament where she may now be in the pivotal position of King (and Queen) maker.
Germany’s AfD, a party more extreme than France’s National Rally, came second and at 16% defeated the Social-Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (14%).
At nearly 45%, Hungary’s Victor Orban’s Fidesz Coalition continued to pulverize his opponents, winning far ahead of the second largest party (30%), while far-right national-populist parties made significant gains in several other countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, where the Freedom Party won its first nationwide ballot at 25% of the vote.
Who are the main losers?
The major losers included French President Macron and his liberal Renew Europe, which lost 23 seats; German Chancellor Scholz and his Social Democrats; and, most sadly yet barely emphasised by most commentaries, the Greens, who either collapsed or performed poorly in major countries including France, Germany, Italy (the two founding members of the EU and its three largest economies), and Austria.
There is no doubt the environment now, and in the future, must be counted among the major casualties, possibly the main one of those elections. Especially since the winning parties are themselves, at best, “climate-sceptics”, deliberately passive, indifferent, and silent in front of the worsening environmental destruction, when they are not outright hostile to the ecological transition, which they have successfully renamed “punitive ecology” – turning green policies into another perfect scapegoat, with immigration.
No groundswell
The commentaries on the election results were largely dominated by the successes of the far-right. Yet, their European victories, real as they are, may have been overestimated by a strong focus on France-Germany-Italy, which produced an inaccurate and misleading picture.
First, as alarming as it is, the rise in Europe of the radical hard right is nothing new. Those ideological families have been steadily emerging since the 1980s, with their most spectacular advances in the last 20 years.
Second, their gains were concentrated in mostly a handful of countries especially France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Hungary, masking the variety of national situations and results including the successes of the left and the defeats or losses, sometimes drastic, of the far-right in countries like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Poland.
These countries show there is nothing inevitable about the electoral victories of the far-right, and the recent success of the New Popular Front leftist coalition in the French national election may be taken as yet another example.
Third, the far-right deep blue wave continues to advance but it is in no way a groundswell. A comparative look at the 2019 and 2024 Parliaments shows its total gains are actually quite modest: 118 seats total in 2019, 131 now, only 13 more. Furthermore, in a Parliament with 15 more seats (720) than in 2019 (705). By percentage, the far-right merely increased from 16.74% to 18.19%, and thus still represents a small minority.
The other major winner is actually the existing dominant coalition especially the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which remains the largest force and comforts its domination over the Parliament thanks to its strong and already old alliance with the Social Democrats of the S&D, itself the second largest group, and Renew.
Far from being taken over by a “brown wave”, the European Parliament thus remains stable, with the same majority coalition. At 403 seats out of 720, 56% of the total, this tri-partite coalition keeps its comfortable majority, and the two far-right groups are not a part of it. Contrary to the fears expressed by some, the reconducted majority coalition should not have to form a new coalition or count on the vote of the far-right to pass policies.
Fourth, despite recent high-profile efforts at coordination and strong commonalities, a nativist brand of ultra-nationalism, a penchant for authoritarianism and “strong” leaders, opposition to non-Western immigration, and traditional conservative family Christian values – its many parties, far from forming cohesive groups, are divided on major policy issues. These include the economy, European integration, Russia, and more. Not to mention quarrels between egos as illustrated by the detestable relations between Marine le Pen and Giorgia Meloni.
It is unlikely that the two far-right umbrella groups, the European Conservatives & Reformists and Identity & Democracy will even be willing to merge in order to constitute a genuinely strong formation, which for them would be a historic opportunity.
The real threat: influence
The data clearly shows that the far-right is in no position to take over the Parliament. Yet the gravity of the situation for ethnic minorities, Europe’s relationship with the Global South, Muslims, and the already embattled status of Islam in Europe should not be minimised.
Because xenophobia, virulent Islamophobia, and hostility to both immigration from the Global South and the presence of non-Western people as full citizens of Europe are part of the DNA of most of those parties, the situation is now bound to become even worse for those minorities, whether foreign or citizens.
Because the ideologies those parties and leaders are propagating are profoundly undemocratic, inegalitarian, authoritarian, essentialist, exclusive, and rooted in fantasies of racial-civilizational superiority and white-Christian ethno-states, European societies may become even more hostile, less inclusive, and less accepting of diversity. Especially the Muslim kind.
On the one hand, the threats remain situated mostly at the national level more than in the EU Parliament.
The far-right is already in power in several European countries, and Macron’s shocking dissolution of France National Assembly and the subsequent snap legislative elections of 30th June and 7th July — the real surprise, which has provoked a cascade of spectacular plot twists and rapid transformations of the whole political landscape of France, could have opened the door of both legislative and executive power to Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella.
That threat was avoided thanks to the overnight recreation of the famous French barrage or Front Républicain (Republican dam or front) by which both parties and voters mobilise to prevent a victory of the far-right even at the cost of voting for a candidate they hate, in the logic of the lesser of two evils.
Yet, the possibility of having, for the first time since the Collaboration and the 1940’s Vichy Regime, a far-right government in France too with Jordan Bardella as the new Prime Minister was a clear and present danger. Besides, the far-right is already remobilising in view of the 2027 presidential election, which Marine le Pen hopes will be her moment.
On the other hand, as the past 20 years have made clear, the real threat is not so much whether the far-right reaches power but its spectacular capacity to influence the other parties by setting the agenda, the priorities, the terms of the debates, and the policies, whoever will pass them.
This is where the real power of the far-right has so far resided: in its ability to win not so much elections, but in Gramscian terms, the battle of ideas and of ideologies to establish a cultural hegemony. Then the rest, including the actual policies, automatically follow, whichever government passes them.
In that respect, its successes have been nothing less than spectacular, especially on immigration, security, law and order, Islam, and increasingly on issues like the environmental transition. All of those and more are now widely seen and understood, or rather misunderstood, by both the ruling elites, the mainstream media, and the majority public opinions through the ideological angles and discursive prisms of the far-right.
The successful establishment of this cultural hegemony, relative as it may be, has led on the one hand to the normalisation and mainstreaming of extremist right-wing parties, ideas, and debates that not so long ago were both marginal and taboo. On the other hand, to the radicalisation of what used to be centrist parties, especially the centre-right, which are moving further and further to the right to the point of often being indistinguishable from the far-right. This is a phenomenon highly visible in France with the conservative party, Les Républicains, whose differences with the far-right cannot often be seen.
As a result of this mainstreaming, those parties no longer need to win elections for the gravity centre of political life, majority public opinion, and dominant culture to shift dramatically to the far-right, as has been steadily happening these past few decades, especially on Islam and Muslims. This has happened in the most complete manner to the US Republican Party, which used to be centrist and is now an extreme right-wing party on all issues.
In France, a superb example that this process has been under way in Europe too, the Islamophobic laws of the past several decades — the multiple bans on Islamic outfits, the August 2021 law “against Islamist separatism”, the “Islamic Charter”, and the whole edifice of the “Systematic Obstruction Policy”— were not passed by the far right but by the left and centre-right, including the Socialists, the Gaullist RPR of former President Jacques Chirac, and Macron’s own government.
At the EU level, the risk is that racist and Islamophobic far-right policies will simply be implemented by the still dominant EPP coalition as has already become visible with the Migration Pact and asylum seekers.
In their misguided attempts to pre-empt the far-right by emulating it in the hope of attracting its voters, the mainstream political forces are being co-opted by the right-wing parties.
Author
Dr Alain Gabon, a French native, holds advanced Masters and Ph.D. degrees in English & American Literatures & Civilization, Film, and French Studies from several French and American universities. He is Associate Professor of French Studies in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures-Classics where he specialises in contemporary France and the Francophone world including literature and the arts, culture, politics, and society. He has taught, lectured, and written widely including on Islam and Muslims in the West. He is also a regular contributor to the Middle East Eye. Several of his essays and papers can be found on The Cordoba Foundation website. His next publication, a book chapter on the roots, origins and forms of French Islamophobia with an emphasis on the Macron years, is forthcoming in 2024 in “Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia”, (University of Alberta Press).
Editors
Dr Abdullah Faliq – Editor-in-Chief & Managing Director
Dr Anas Altikriti – Chief Executive
H.D. Forman
Sandra Tusin
Basma Elshayyal
Copyright
© The Cordoba Foundation 2024.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior permission of the The Cordoba Foundation.
Disclaimer
Views and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of The Cordoba Foundation.
Published in London by The Cordoba Foundation
info@thecordobafoundation.com
www.thecordobafoundation.com
Israel & the West; The Question of Peace in the Middle East | The London Circle
The Cordoba Foundation remembers the victims of the Srebrenica Genocide, 29 years on
The Cordoba Foundation remembers the victims of the Srebrenica Genocide, 29 years on.
On the 29th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide, The Cordoba Foundation (TCF) stands in solidarity with the survivors, the families of the victims, and the entire Bosnian community.
We remember the tragic events of July 1995, when over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were brutally murdered in what remains the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.
The Cordoba Foundation has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of this horrific genocide and to ensure that the memories of those who perished are never forgotten.
Our dedicated efforts, spanning more than 20 years, have included educational programmes, community outreach, and collaborations with international human rights organisations to highlight the importance of remembering Srebrenica genocide.
Sadly we see similar and worse occurances today, such as the genocide by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza and other parts of Palestine.
The Cordoba Foundation will continue to champion these efforts, advocating for truth and reconciliation, and striving to prevent such atrocities from occurring in the future.
Together, let us pledge to uphold the values of peace, justice, and humanity, ensuring that “Never Again” is not just a slogan, but a reality we work towards every day.
[End]
