Anti-dreyfsards return possible

Political confrontation between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the second round of presidential election in france The deal is far from done. A number of political figures from the left and right, such as the socialist, Anne Hidalgo, the communist, Fabian Roussel, the Republican candidate, Valerie Pecrese, and the environmentalist, Yannick Jadot, have called on behalf of French ecologists to vote for the outgoing president.

Nevertheless, the right-wing candidate Eric Zemour, despite disagreeing with Marine Le Pen, sought a vote for him. However, we must not forget that according to the vote count in the first round (in this election, it was on 10 April), French voters generally seem to lean towards anti-incumbency sentiments – represented by political leaders such as Jean Is. -Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen. Many commentators and journalists believe that a large part of the French electorate will vote for Mr Macron in the second round (on 24 April), for the same reason as in the 2017 French presidential elections – because victory for his far right. is unbearable. But all those who abstain, vote blank, or vote for Ms. Le Pen also have to be taken into account.

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The truth is that with each presidential election in France, the extremist forces are getting stronger. Jean-Luc Mélenchon received more than twice the votes than Yannick Jadot, Fabian Roussel and Anne Hidalgo. For Ms Le Pen, the weaknesses of the traditional right in France have increased her vote from 21% in 2017 to 23.15% now. So, while French political parties are not entirely dead, traditional politics in France, either left or right, has suffered a severe setback.

As a result, what draws the French to Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Melenchon is not always their programs, but their populist way of presenting them. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon both play in different ways on the register of French identity. In fact, they both invite France to reconsider the identity of France, beyond the fixed framework they are used to seeing it. This leads them to understand that French identity is always a work of change.

If they are more and more present in the hearts and minds of the French electorate, it is because they each claim another form of republican sovereignty, distinct from the traditional right and traditional left in France. Mr Mélenchon does not deny the fundamental equality of all French citizens or the secularism of the French state, but he criticizes the hegemonic terminology of French political culture by emphasizing the dangers of structural racism in France.

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Le Pen’s Discourse

In other words, according to Mr. Mélenchon and his party, La France Insomies, although France is a country where democratic processes exist, it is a national entity where political participation is not sufficiently diverse. It is interesting to see that even with Marine Le Pen, populist speech becomes the main means of communication. However, she uses French white Catholicism as an identity marker, beyond an anti-hijab secularism. His use of a hidden non-inclusive terminology overshadows a hierarchical vision of French society, which is not clearly articulated.

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However, the populist discourse of Marine Le Pen has found more resonance among the French population than it was five years ago. This is certainly a major change in the French political mindset, which was always cautious and concerned with the subtle forms of fascism, racism and anti-Semitism. This time a stunning advantage for Marine Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election shows once again that France is losing its fierce Dreyfsard syndrome.

Imports of the Dreyfus Case

What the Dreyfus case showed us for more than a century was that the principle of equality before the law was still so firmly rooted in the political conscience of the French that even a single miscarriage of justice, such as that of the Jew Alfred Dreyfus, could be passed on to the public. It goes without saying that Georges Clemenceau, mile Zola, Marcel Proust, Anatole France and many other writers, journalists and human rights advocates who defended the wrongfully imprisoned Dreyfus seek a relevant truth. were not, but adopted a universal notion of truth. This is why the French noun, ‘intelligent’, was coined and gained sociological prominence beyond the Dreyfus case.

It should be noted that Zola is never mentioned by Marine Le Pen, as she considers him too far-left and a Dreyfus supporter. Furthermore, Marine Le Pen generally rates himself as a populist, which he opposes to “the system that is evil and represents evil to the French people”. Immigration is clearly another favorite topic for Ms. Le Pen, often described as a consequence of globalism. Furthermore, against President Macron and his idea of ​​European unity, Marine Le Pen and his party, the National Rally, present a defiance to the European Union in the name of a “national sovereignty”, the framework of which has never been clearly defined. Doesn’t happen.

Even if Marine Le Pen fails to win the second round of French elections and Emmanuel Macron remains President of France for five more years, the main question that remains will be about the political mindset of French society. We are entitled to ask, morally and politically, whether the dream of Marine Le Pen has become the dream of a significant portion of the French population?

Certainly, for many French citizens today, the name Marine Le Pen is no longer seen as a threat against the historical values ​​of an egalitarian France, in a love of liberty and fraternity. For many French citizens, Marine Le Pen’s political promise to secure the priority of employment, social assistance and social housing for the French people does not call into question the great principles of equality and fraternity of the Republican Covenant.

Furthermore, given the current Ukrainian crisis and Marine Le Pen’s political closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his arrival at the Elysee Palace will mark an even more serious break with the political architecture of the European Union. The radical right in France has never been so close to victory, but French politics has never had such an uncertain future. If it ends in a victory for Marine Le Pen, nearly 130 years after the Dreyfusards’ victory at the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, the Dreyfusard adversaries would be in power again.

Ramin Jahanbeglu is the director of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the OP Jindal Global University, Sonepat, Haryana.