Paris, the city that protests against voting for Le Pen | International

Navy blue dominates the map of France after Marine Le Pen’s National Regroupment (RN) won a big victory in the first round of legislative elections last Sunday. But when you bring the magnifying glass closer, some—like Uderzo and Goscinny—come in. The exploits of AsterixIt is seen that a small portion of France, concentrated around a few major cities, has decided to protest The far right is under attack. This is especially the case in Paris, where the xenophobic party received almost 10% of the vote – compared to 33.2% nationwide – and only one of its candidates qualified for the second round. On the other hand, left-wing candidates have received the most votes in most of the electoral constituencies in Paris (and to a lesser extent in President Emmanuel Macron’s party).

Julie, a 40-year-old Parisian, an executive at a medium-sized company, and a resident of the capital’s wealthy V district, is one of the citizens who are part of the resistance to the RN. The results obtained by the training at the national level do not surprise her because she is aware of the “feeling of exclusion” that motivates that vote. In some ways she even understands it, given the hypercentrality of the French economic and political system, although for her and those around her, voting for the RN would be “unthinkable”. “It’s a question of values. Nobody around me has that anger, that fear of others,” he explains. The same is true for Yves, a 68-year-old retiree who, despite being aware, like Julie, of the benefits of living in a place where there are efficient public services and less insecurity on the streets, feels above all misery. “We have allowed the extreme right to grow without doing anything,” laments this former ministry administrator.

“There is a real urban resistance to voting for the RN. The smaller the municipality, the greater the vote for the RN and vice versa,” explains Hervé Le Bras, historian, demographer and director of studies at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), who links the result obtained by the party of Le Pen to the economic dynamics and sociology of the city, predominantly bourgeois, made up of 50% senior executives and liberal professionals, and where a large number of young people and immigrants live. “As soon as you move 30 or 40 kilometers from Paris, the RN prevails. There is basically a regional France where there is more unemployment, more young people without qualifications, more single-parent families, more poverty, and there is a France of the big cities that is doing much better,” explains the historian, who points to the feeling of abandonment and the depopulation of rural and suburban France as the main factor explaining the support for the extreme right.

Although he has no doubt that the reluctance of Parisians to support the RN is explained by sociological factors specific to the metropolis, the geographer Christophe Guillou believes that we must also take into account a cultural element related to the dominant values ​​​​imposed by the bourgeoisie of the capital, which he summarizes as follows: “Voting for the extreme right means risking being considered a social loser.” “Today, the values ​​​​that allow an individual to rise socially in a big city like Paris are ecology, feminism, anti-racism,” writes the author of No Society: The End of the Western Middle Classwhich also assumes a certain form of hypocrisy rather than sincere belief in this situation. “If you listen to the leading Parisian bourgeoisie, the black shirts will march on Paris within a week, but in reality that won’t stop them from going on holidays,” he said sarcastically.

Guillouy, whom part of the French academic world accuses of promoting theories of the extreme right for referring to a peripheral France pitted against a France of the elite in his essays, firmly believes that class contempt which he attributes in particular to the bourgeoisie is one of the main driving forces of the RN. The left-wing movement in the most disadvantaged population groups is one of the main driving forces of the RN. A point of view not shared by Le Bras, who does not believe in the alleged contempt for Parisians or the cultural or academic elite. He argues, “If there is a class contempt, it is the current government elite (in reference to Macron’s party) that considers others uneducated, that they do not understand anything, as happened during the pension reform.”

Calling Macron a “populist”, Le Bras believes the president has a deep connection with the French. By breaking the old separation between left-wing Parisians (east Paris) and right-wing Parisians (west Paris) and winning 14 out of 18 constituencies in 2017, managing to retain nine of them in 2022, the president has seen in the last elections, the New Popular Front (NFP) win 13 constituencies, ensuring that nine of its candidates were elected in the first round. “The last refuge of Macronist voters is in the very wealthy areas of western Paris, because these are people who have a certain amount of wealth and for whom the abolition of the estate tax (ISF) (approved by Macron in 2017) has been a blessing,” he says.

Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, managed to be elected in the first round with almost 51% of the votes in his constituency against the Macronist candidate and symbolizes a change of course like no one else. “Paris has a strong tradition of cosmopolitanism. Historically, it is a land that has always welcomed immigrants and where the alchemy of integration works well,” estimates the politician, who calls the president’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly “a kind of eccentric whim” that the mayor’s office would have preferred not to do so a few weeks before the start of the Olympic Games, although he confirms that “everything is ready.”

The far right has registered a significant lead in one district across the capital, going from 3.9% of the vote in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections to 10.7% last Sunday, thanks to the votes won by Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest party. In his own constituency Chic In the 16th district of Paris, Eric Ciotti, the candidate of the far-right coalition that brought together the divisions of the Republicans led by Reconquet and the RN, Louis Piquet, will compete in the second round with the Macronist candidate, Benjamin Adad. “This is a very different electorate sociologically from the RN, which is largely made up of liberal professionals who already supported Jean-Marie Le Pen in the eighties,” explains Le Bras.

There, this Wednesday, LR activist and Ciotti supporter Pascal Boiteux was campaigning in front of the market in Place Jean Laurent. “In this neighborhood there is the least reluctance to vote for the RN because what really scares people is Mélenchon’s la Francia insumissa,” says this 55-year-old businessman. Coming to him, France, a woman in her 70s who has lived in the district for more than 20 years, says she is tired of “the dirty deals of politicians” and the Republican Front, because, according to her, “a coalition of all rights will eventually be formed.” She will vote for the far-right coalition because she is convinced that “Macron will appoint a left-wing prime minister” and because the RN is “the only one who cares about immigration and security.”

A few meters from them, a market vendor where French people of mainly Maghreb origin work, and who prefers to remain anonymous, confesses that it saddens him to see how the RN is taking hold in the neighborhood. He assured that racism is still alive in the area, although “it is hidden.” “People usually say things like: your color brings us the sun, or I bet you know a lot about exotic fruits,” says this mestizo of about 40. “I still don’t feel real extremism, but I know it can come at any time.”

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