In the wake of French President Emmanuel Macron’s victory at the ballot box, securing a second term in office until April 2027, far-right rival Marine Le Pen stood proud of the election turnout for Le Front National, the party she leads. Despite a defeat, the margin was much slimmer than what people witnessed in 2017 — a 17% gap separated the incumbent President from his competitor — and Le Pen hailed her political campaign as a “resounding victory” and the source of “a great sense of hope” for the future of her party. Since the days of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, spearheading the party’s aims through Islamophobia, nativism and extremist perspectives, Marine Le Pen has spent over a decade sculpting a carefully calculated image of her political motives. She has removed her father from the organization altogether and prioritized issues such as rising living costs and welfare for French citizens, which has undeniably softened the edges of a group once perceived as neo-Nazis. Today, its direct implications on a national and continental scale can be witnessed firsthand. France’s political system has normalized far-right ideals, amassing hordes of voters toward FN values and guiding future generations down a path of ethnonationalistic plight.
As Le Pen’s best election campaign to date came to a close, the ideals she presented mainland France remained centered in the limelight. Far-right pundit, television celebrity, writer and historian Éric Zemmour, the French equivalent of Donald Trump, wasted no time surfing on a wave of right-wing popularity to his advantage. Unafraid of discarding values of political correctness and stirring up controversy regardless of consequence, Zemmour’s transition from media celebrity to political candidate at the dawn of the 2022 race added an extra dimension of choice for right-leaning voters. He possessed radical world views regarding Muslim immigration, an issue of constant recurance dating back to post-World War II decolonialism, and has propagated neo-Nazi conspiracy theories and pushed towards historical revisionism. This has unintentionally framed Le Pen as far more of a centrist candidate than in actuality, as reported by
The Atlantic
.
Moreover, Zemmour’s undeniable talent at dividing both sides of the political spectrum has progressively built up a cascade of news sources flocking towards reporting his increasingly outlandish, provocative statements, thus giving him more air time. Research conducted by French media watchdog Acrimed concluded that in Sept. 2021, Zemmour’s name was Googled upwards of 5,000 times, equating to 139 searches per day. Furthermore, they discovered that abetted by this outpouring of provocation, Zemmour received over 11 hours of airtime on French mainstream outlets such as BFMTV and CNEWS. Investing this much mediatic attention to a figure as spectacular as Zemmour allows much of his discourse to live in French minds rent-free; when not in complete support of his arguments, French voters can simply turn toward Le Pen, who is perceived as taking on a much more neutral stance, all to her advantage.
On Oct. 14, 2022, Parisian police discovered the body of 12-year-old Lola Daviet, mutilated and folded up inside a plastic suitcase in northeast Paris. Having most likely been victim of asphyxiation, rape, torture and sexual abuse, France grappled with the gruesome reality of an innocent girl brutally killed before their eyes. Who was the perpetrator of this heinous act? That would be twenty-four year-old Algerian Dabhia B., who had been residing in France despite her expired student visa and most likely suffered from psychiatric problems. Soon after her announcement as primary suspect in the murder, Le Pen lost no time expressing resentment. “Once again,” she stated to the Parliament of France, “the suspect of this barbaric act should not have been in France. What are you waiting for to act so that this out-of-control illegal immigration is finally stopped?” Zemmour followed suit to Le Pen’s declarations, starting a hashtag trend on Twitter: “#ManifPourLola”, translating to “#DemonstrationforLola.” A report by
The New York Times
concluded that in 2021, only 6% of the 62,000 people residing in France illegally actually left the country, an alarming fact throwing Macron’s cabinet and the French government into significant turmoil. How weak does a country’s government have to be in order for its immigration laws not to be enforced properly? Right-wing politicians are asking themselves these same questions.
Days after Lola’s death, far-right demonstrators took to the streets of Paris, notably holding a sign reading “L’État M’a Tuée,” or “The State Killed Me.” Backers of both Le Pen and Zemmour gathered en masse across the nation in a public display high in sadness and anger; the former given the tragic circumstances, and the latter towards an inexcusable government blunder. Combined, they form the cocktail recipe for a new movement of sociopolitical change inching closer toward shattering the very foundations of French society.
Ever since Lola’s murder, the term ‘francocide,’ also coined by Zemmour, has circulated across social media platforms;
The Atlantic
has defined this term as denouncing “any attack or crime perpetrated by a non-French migrant against a French person.” While not evidently apparent, the underlying assumption that French equates to whiteness, and immigrant equating to non-white is inherently problematic. Not all French are white; similarly, not all immigrants are non-white. Falling victim to this mindset of tokenism or basing generalized perceptions on individual cases, rather than recurring instances, promotes ethnonationalist thinking detrimental to immigrants grouped into these generalizations against their will. Italy’s recently elected, hyper-nationalist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, stands as the embodiment of a similar imminent geopolitical shift toward right-wing radicalism. While it is former U.S. President Donald Trump who exemplifies for many the steady rise in hard-line right-leaning rhetoric across the world, it is Europe, dealing with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and France’s Le Pen, who will more likely than not struggle to contain the ramifications from a tidal wave of political discord in the coming years.
