The Left Defeats the Fascists in France

What can we learn?

The streets and squares of Paris flooded with people Sunday night, the masses jubilant at the victory of the French left, and at the loss of the far-right. Just one week after the first round of the French parliamentary elections made the triumph of the surging fascist party seem immensely likely, the second round concluded with the left-green coalition securing a monumental victory, the centrists coming in second, and in third the hard-right, intent on mass deportations and a white-supremacist, nationalist agenda. 

Around the world people rejoiced both at the French keeping the far-right “National Rally” fascists out of power, and in a real left-wing coalition winning. The centrists were the big losers in this election, ceding 82 seats both to the left and to the right. And that is largely what I want to focus on today. The dominant narrative has been largely about the logistics of this left coalition, which came together with stunning speed after Macron called a snap election just three weeks before the first round of voting, but there is a lot more to learn from this moment.

Don’t get me wrong, the mechanics of the left-green coalition are and were remarkable. Four left-wing parties allied almost instantly after President Macron called the election, came up with a compelling platform, and ran a tactically excellent campaign to both stop the far-right from seizing power and win considerable power themselves. The socialists, the communists, the Green party, and most prominently France Unbowed, a party labeled radical-left by most media and led by the popular Jean-Luc Mélenchon, all joined forces. They now face the difficult prospect of forming a government in France’s parliamentary system, and must navigate the fact that they have won a plurality rather than a majority. A possible step, among limited options, would be to ally with the center against the right, but while there was a substantial degree of cooperation between the two factions during the election, cooperating during government, particularly with centrist President Macron, is a different matter.

Time will tell how this next French government forms, but a few observations can be made. First, the left must find ways to work together against the rising tide of fascism, and I would argue that our factions also have to find ways to cooperate outside the times of greatest danger. Second, and relatedly, the center and the left worked together to defeat the fascists. In the multi-party French system the vote is easily split. So what many leftist and centrists candidates did was drop out if they were in third after the first round and the fascist candidate was in first. They did so knowing that most of their votes would then go to the candidate in second. Ultimately 129 members of the left coalition dropped out of their races, helping many of centrists who were in second after round one leap into first, and beat the right. Likewise, 81 centrists dropped out to allow the left the best chance of beating the right in those seats. In the end, the left and the center both won more seats than the fascists.

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

But the third, and maybe the most broadly applicable lesson, is that anyone who wants to meaningfully oppose fascism needs to present a strong, left alternative. Because it’s not as simple as saying that fascism lost in France, in fact they gained an alarming number of seats. Numerically the center was the true loser, with the left and far-right picking up the seats they ceded. But if the left hadn’t presented a compelling alternative to fascism, France would be in the hands of the despicable far-right party today. The center failed because they ran only on not being vicious fascists, something that might sound familiar to others of us around the globe. The left didn’t go with that weak message, they instead went on the offensive, attacking the right and offering concrete proposals to alleviate people’s problems at the same time.

Some of the policies that the left-green coalition wants to implement include substantially raising the national minimum wage, lowering the retirement age to 60 (contrary to the center raising the age last year), building one million affordable homes in five years, freezing the price of people’s basic needs such as food and energy, and much more. Just hours after exit polls had them winning the elections, multiple members of the left parties also spoke about recognizing the state of Palestine, dropping opposition to the ICC case against Israeli leaders, and taking further steps to stop the genocide in Gaza.

There are numerous other policy positions held by members of the coalition, both domestically and related to international affairs, but the platform they collectively ran and won on makes a clear delineation between the left and the center, and the left and right. It makes a positive case for why electing the left will help working-class people, why it’ll help just about everyone other than the super-rich. And people responded to that, in addition to being motivated by their desire to deny fascists power. Turnout for this election reached the highest rate in over four decades.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. this approach isn’t something we can just copy and paste. Despite some centrists using this moment of victory in France to talk about forming a coalition to beat the right, the reality of the two-party system combined with the center’s near-total unwillingness to partner with the left makes the sort of approach we saw in France essentially impossible. While in England leftists are already talking about forming a coalition, our takeaway in the U.S. must be different. Given our electoral system our priority must be presenting a positive vision, a compelling alternative to both fascism and late-capitalism. While Democrats must be pressured into implementing more policies that make life livable and pressured to run a viable candidate, both important ingredients to beating back fascism. Ideally they would also see from the polls that the centrist “not fascism” is not sufficiently appealing to the people of this country, but it looks almost certain that they won’t learn that lesson, and ever more likely that we have to build the capacity to help one another and present an exciting vision of what a better society could look like ourselves by building organizations and movements that wield real power on their own and provide people with a tangible glimpse of what the left is fighting for.

Photo by Duncan Shaffer on Unsplash

I wish it was easier here, but we face an uphill battle. While there has been some movement in the Democratic Party towards being more pro-labor, and slightly more oppositional to big business, there have also been horrific anti-immigrant policies and overwhelming support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. Even when it comes to domestic economic policy ideas like lowering the retirement age to 60 or freezing the price of basic necessities remain incredibly far outside the realm of possibility. That’s primarily because truly opposing capitalism is not a viable position within either of the two parties, while in France anti-capitalists are now joining parliament in record numbers. We have to face that reality before we can properly work against it. That’s not to say that the French situation is perfect, far from it. They’re due for a reckoning with colonialism and extraction, the left still has to form a government, and their fascist bloc has only begun to rear its ugly head.

Around the world the story is similar — the ruling class has made its preference for fascism clear, and is financing a global rise of horrific far-right leaders and parties. That is one of the many reasons that opposing capitalism goes hand-in-hand with robustly opposing fascism. In Latin America we see that the left is the only real alternative capable of beating back the fascist tide, and in France we see the same. While centrists in other European countries cede power to the right, the French narrowly escaped that fate for the reasons outlined above. Whenever we are, our work is to build a left capable of smashing hatred, exploitation, and fascism. That looks different in each country and circumstance, but everywhere it involves organizing, building power, and presenting a compelling vision of a future where our needs are met, the hoarding of the rich is no more, and no one is scapegoated. So let’s get to work, we have a world to win.

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P.S. If you missed my piece from this past weekend, it’s all about exactly how we can organize and build a compelling alternative from the left. I hope it’s useful!