The organisation of the march against antisemitism on Sunday, November 12th in Paris, which was intended to bring together the entire French political class, sparked controversy over the legitimacy of the Rassemblement National’s participation. The left-wing party La France Insoumise has announced that it would boycott the march. Antisemitism, as at other times in French political history, acts as a dividing line between who is agreeable and who is not, but this time, the border crosses to the Left.
A little over a month after the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the presidents of the two French assemblies called for a major march against antisemitism to be held in Paris on Sunday, November 12th from the Palais Bourbon, home of the National Assembly, to the Palais du Luxembourg, home of the Senate, in presence of the Prime Minister. They invited “all those who identify with the values of our Republic” to take part. What was supposed to be a great moment of national unanimity on a unifying cause was transformed in a few hours into a gigantic political pugilism.
The Rassemblement National called on its members to take part in the demonstration, a few days after the party’s current president, Jordan Bardella, intervened to remind the public that his movement had broken with the excesses of its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom Bardella considers “never to have been antisemitic.” Éric Zemmour, president of the Reconquête party, and Marion Maréchal, head of the Reconquête list for the European elections, also announced their intention to take part in the march.
The arrival of the RN was not to everyone’s taste. Government spokesman Olivier Véran took issue with the participation of Bardella and Le Pen’s party. He believes that the Rassemblement National “has no place there,” given its history and the repeated convictions in the past of its founder for antisemitism.
Véran’s attitude, which in the past would have met with unanimous approval, is not necessarily well received today, at a time when the Rassemblement National has for many years been sending out many signals of a break with its provocative past. The government spokesman was accused of political opportunism, and of breaking the consensus that should be built in a troubled context around the cause of combating antisemitism.
According to Elisabeth Lévy, editor-in-chief of the conservative monthly magazine Causeur, this ostracisation by the government spokesman is ill-timed, as she explained on X:
It should be explained to Olivier Véran and his boss that if Jews are leaving France, it’s obviously not out of fear of the RN, which has broken with its past and its founder, but because of the Islamo-Antisemites that he and his friends have forced us to import en masse and their Insoumis allies.
The La France Insoumise party, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, vigorously made its disapproval known and did not intend to march in a demonstration featuring representatives of the Rassemblement National, so it announced it would boycott the march, in a polemical tweet from its president: “You can’t fight antisemitism and racism in confusion. Friends of unconditional support for the massacre have a date,” he wrote, referring to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
In a statement, the Insoumis party denounced the “ambiguity of the objectives” of this demonstration, which “allows the most unbearable support.” Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel, for his part, adopted a more balanced median position: taking part in the march, but without marching “alongside” the Rassemblement National.
The presidents of the Senate and of the National Assembly eventually communicated the same line: the RN would be there, but they would not walk side by side with their representatives. In other words: we can’t avoid their presence, but we also want to escape it. This doesn’t seem to bother Marine Le Pen, who said she would even walk at the back of the cortege if needed, as long as she was there.
So there would be those who take part in the march on November 12th, and those who wouldn’t. A demarcation line between a camp of good and a camp of evil, but one that doesn’t cross where it used to.
This is not the first time in French history that such a situation has arisen. While the division between Left and Right historically dates back to the French Revolution, around the issue of the royal veto— supporters of the partial veto on the Left versus supporters of the absolute veto on the Right—a major reconfiguration of the political spectrum occurred at the end of the 19th century, during the Dreyfus Affair. This political scandal, surrounding the alleged spying of Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus on behalf of Germany, left deep scars on the French political mindset. It was during this crisis, a few years before the First World War—Dreyfus was condemned for the first time in 1894—that the concept of the engaged intellectual, so characteristic of French political life, was born, as well as the emergence of the notion of “human rights” as a key political concept.
The League of Human Rights was founded in 1898 to defend the innocence of Dreyfus, while, in 1899 the Action Française League was created to defend the national interest, the army and the raison d’État. In January 1899, the National Assembly held a major vote on the revision of the officer’s trial. A dividing line emerged that would leave its mark for decades, renewing the traditional dichotomy between Right and Left. There were those who voted for the relinquishment—the antidreyfusards, the Right, the camp of evil—and those who voted against it—the supporters of Dreyfus, the Left, the camp of good.
Until the 1930s, the right-wing parties that had historically voted ‘wrongly’ on that day in 1899 were accused of antisemitism, which led them to be excluded from the famous ‘republican arc’ that is still cited today by the censors of French politics. Their members were not called upon when governments were formed. Other MPs were reluctant to form any kind of alliance with them. The opprobrium that has befallen the Front National since it was founded is the legacy of this attitude.
However, the last few weeks have shown that the lines can move, and the controversy surrounding the march on November 12th is interesting in this respect. Not so long ago, there would have been a general consensus to exclude the Rassemblement National, and in opposition to those excluded, there would have been a satisfied grouping of the holders of official morality.
Today, this division is blurred, and for the first time in perhaps a long time, it is a left-wing party, in this case La France Insoumise, which finds itself on the other side of the fence because of its outrages and its objective complacency towards Muslim antisemitism. The controversy surrounding Jordan Bardella’s remarks, which we reported on here, proves that the media and the Left are trying to defend themselves, but the reign of the correct-thinking obviousness seems to be wavering. This is one thing about which we should rejoice.