On May 6, 2017, the day Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France after trouncing Marine Le Pen, he made a promise to the French people: that the country would never again see a “far-Right” candidate reach the second round of the presidential election. Fast forward five years, however, and Macron is once again facing off against Le Pen. And this time, it’s bound to be much closer, with the incumbent polling at 55% to Le Pen’s 45%.
For Le Pen to narrow that gap, she must win over at least some of the 22% of voters who opted for the “Left-populist” Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round of the election. Yet Mélenchon’s position on the matter is clear: “We must not give a single vote to Le Pen,” he stated on the evening of the first round, in what amounted to a de facto endorsement for Macron. In a letter to his supporters, he clearly said that he believes the outgoing president to be the least-worst option on the table.
However, not all his voters are of the same opinion. As Alexandre, a 36-year-old who voted for Mélenchon in the first round, told BFMTV: “I am fundamentally, ideologically on the Left and I am deeply humanist, but I will vote for Marine Le Pen.” He is not alone in holding such a view: according to polling firm Elabe, a third of Mélenchon’s voters are likely to vote for Le Pen in the second round.
But we shouldn’t be surprised that a good number of Mélenchon’s supporters don’t agree with their leader that Macron is the lesser evil. Throughout his presidency, Macron has relentlessly pursued an aggressive neoliberal agenda that has dramatically worsened the conditions of the French working class, while hugely benefiting the country’s wealthy elites and corporate giants — slashing taxes for the rich and for big business, reforming the labour code to benefit employers, cutting back on welfare spending, and pursuing the “marketisation” of every area of French society.
As one French economist put it: “Macron is the candidate of the richest 1% or even 0.1%.” This is more than just a figure of speech: in his eye-opening book Crépuscule, French writer and activist Juan Branco chronicles how France’s most powerful oligarchs and media moguls literally “groomed” Macron from an early age, using all the money and influence at their disposal to help him become the country’s youngest president. It proved to be a worthwhile investment: in recent years, France has seen the greatest increase in the number of millionaires after the United States, with the richest 1% now holding 20% of the country’s wealth and seven billionaires owning more than the poorest 30%. Meanwhile, the living conditions of the most disadvantaged have worsened, and the number of French people in poverty has increased.
As if this weren’t bad enough, when France’s underclasses took to the streets to protest the president’s policies of top-down class warfare, giving birth to the Gilets Jaunes movement, Macron responded with frightening police violence, worthy of the world’s most repressive regimes, which caused protestors to lose at least 24 eyes and five hands.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe