Heads out of the Sand: Why is fascism on the rise (not only) in France?

In 2018 French sociologist – and former IFE teacher – Ugo Palheta published La Possibilité du Fascisme in which, Cassandra-like, he analyzed and foretold the future of trends in French policy and society, a future that unfortunately is now. In 2021 with contemporary historian Ludivine Bantigny he wrote Face à la Menace Fasciste (In the Face of the Fascist Threat), and in 2022 Ugo widened the scope to look at La Nouvelle Internationale Fasciste (think Musk goes to Hungary), and the seeming paradox of a global network of xenophobia. We can't say we weren't warned. Now, Palheta has coordinated an effort by a dozen and a half French scholars to analyze the “resistible rise of the extreme right” (Extrême Droite: La résistible ascension), to be published this summer in English as Why Fascism is on the Rise in France (Verso Press).

The extrême right is not an alternative – despite its populist insinuations – to the neo-liberal steamroller; it is the neoliberal steamroller in its new, openly authoritarian emperor's clothes. As the contributors to Why Fascism show in detail, there was nothing inevitable about this transformation; if the folks who brought us thatcherian social injustice had seen fit, far right demagoguery could have been disarmed. In a brilliant short introduction, well-known historian of Nazism Johann Chapoutot summarizes the recent history of the French left, and notes the extent to which the New Popular Front that coalesced in 2024 has triggered the same venomous reaction on the right – the same spectrum from bourgeois to fascist – as did the original Popular Front in 1936. Raising the minimum wage in the world's sixth richest economy as suggested in 2024 met with the same portends of disaster as did the 1936 policy of paid vacation.

Contributions are organized by three themes. In the first section, the shifting political composition of the Rassemblement National (né le Front National – RN-FN) is examined along with the inevitable internal tensions due to the conflict of bourgeois cupidity with the interests of lower-income quintiles squeezed by the neo-liberal policies required to satisfy the former. The RN-FN's increased electorate is heteroclite, like the appeal of fascism historically (and like Italy's current neo-fascist regime, a fragile construction of center right and extreme right, examined in this section). A lower level of education is a predictor of a vote for the extreme right, whereas the prevalent income level of the RN-FN is lower-middle, with stable jobs and possible home ownership in sight. The low unstable income vote tends well to the left and, significantly, is disdained by the RN-FN's lower middle as “assisted”, a racialized other, even when possessing citizenship.

The second section sheds the light of day on the racism, transphobia, rearguard anti-feminism (“femonationalism” as the new feminism), and so-called family values all of which structure the social program of the RN-FN. Far right ecology consists of vaunting an imagined Belle France unstained by housing projects full of immigrants. As the several studies in this section show, the program behind the program has not changed: racism as the chief means toward social control, social division and liberty brought low.

The third section lifts the hood on the mechanisms of authoritarian force already operative in France (and elsewhere) due to gains by the extreme right in developing complicity with various sectors. In finance, the emergence of a “libertarian-authoritarian” financial power funded – often – by tech billionaires; in policing, the State's felt need to rely on enforcement in the face of unpopular policies opening the door for extreme-right dominated police unions to build a state within a state; in media, audiences surge with flamboyant and controversial fake news, especially with ideologically-driven owners at the helm. Finally – and ominously – the FN-RN maintains largely hidden ties with a neo-nazi fringe of groups known for violent tactics, repudiated publicly, tacitly encouraged.

Most contributions include proposed road-maps for countering the rise of the FN-RN with an authentic alternative based on the detailed analysis provided including identifying the movement's feet of clay. Informed strategic action is also the theme of the postface by Clémence Guetté, co-president of La Boétie Institute, the think-tank of La France Insoumise political party, which instigated the present volume.