An increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron has warned the public that “civil war” awaits France if they fail to vote for his brand of centrist neo-liberalism in the upcoming legislative elections.
Voting for either of the “two extremes” of the populist right-wing National Rally or the leftist-socialist New Popular Front will lead to “civil war”, Macron said in an interview in which he castigated the leadership of the two main opposition parties “and those who follow them”.
The embattled French leader, who’s party is trailing in third place in the snap elections he called, said that the “response of the extreme right” to France’s current problems would lead to insecurity “because it refers people to a religion or an origin, that is what divides them and pushes them towards civil war,” Le Figaro reports.
On the other hand, Macron said that the agenda of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) the leftist party at the head of the New Popular Front electoral coalition proposes a form of “communitarianism”, which he said also has a form of “civil war behind it”.
The hyperbolic comments from Macron were backed up by his second in command, 35-year-old Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who said on Monday: “La France Insoumise feeds the National Rally and the National Rally feeds La France Insoumise with speeches of division, hatred, stigmatisation, which feed off each other.”
“In our country, some people have hatred, impulses, desires to attack certain communities or certain French people… Probably the victory of the extremes would release these impulses and could lead to violence.”
The president of the National Rally and the populist party’s candidate for prime minister in the snap legislative elections, Jordan Bardella said that Macron’s heated rhetoric was dangerous in and of itself for the country, while stating that civil unrest was already a feature of Macron’s presidency.
Bardella referred to the racially-inspired riots which broke out throughout France last year following the police shooting of an Algerian-heritage teenager who attempted to flee from arrest. The shooting sparked weeks of BLM-style riots, which resulted in over $1 billion in damages, over 800 police officers injured, over 5,000 cars set on fire, and more than 3,300 people arrested.
Bardella said: “They are the ones who scare the French! We are in June, one year since the riots that hit the towns and villages of France. I want to respond to a demand for authority. A President of the Republic should not say that.”
While the riots were perhaps the most fierce of his presidency, Macron’s tenure in office has been consistently marred by chaos in the streets, from the Yellow Vest uprisings of 2018 and 2019 against his green agenda-inspired energy tax hikes to the mass strikes and protests last year over his government’s move to bypass the French National Assembly and push through a reform of the state pension system, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Mr Bardella also stressed that — despite the histrionic warnings of the return of “fascism” or the rise of the “far-right” from the media and political class — his party’s agenda is firmly in the mainstream focussing on cutting immigration and inflation, both of which are clearly priorities of a large percentage of the public given his party’s big victory in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.
“I have indicated my priorities very clearly: purchasing power, the restoration of security, and the control of immigration. I wish to embody unity, coming together, and I aspire to be the prime minister of the French, even for those who do not vote for the RN,” Bardella said.