In France, a founding member of the European Union, the far-right party has advanced to the threshold of the Élysée Palace, and its voice is now being heard not only at home, but around the world. Marine Le Pen has never been so close to winning the presidential election. What if she crosses the threshold?

Since the night of April 10, French politicians, academics, intellectuals, journalists, and especially President Emmanuel Macron, have been repeating both verbally and in writing: “This is a historical responsibility, it is time to unite against the extreme right!” In the Fifth Republic, when this call was first made 20 years ago, in 2002, Jean Marie Le Pen eliminated the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin, but President Jacques Chirac won the election with 82.21 percent in the second round.

In 2017, when Emmanuel Macron won 24.1 percent and Marine Le Pen 21.30 percent of the votes in the first round, the call was repeated: “This is a historical responsibility, unite your votes against the extreme right!” Although the difference was not as clear as last time, Macron came in at 66.10 percent and Marine Le Pen at 33.90 percent. Here it is, five years later, in the first round, Emmanuel Macron got 27.84 percent, Marine Le Pen got 23.15 percent, and the other two far-right candidates Eric Zemmour got 7.07 percent and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 2.28 percent.

The far right thus received a total of 32.50 percent of the votes in the first round. This time, according to various polls that see Macron ahead, the gap between the two candidates is closing and is only between 2 and 7 points.

In the last elections, the country’s traditional left and right parties had weakened in favor of Macron’s “neither right nor left, both right and left” party; this time, they were buried. Anne Hidalgo, the candidate of the socialists and the mayor of Paris, received 1.75 percent of the votes. Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the center-right party of the Gaullist tradition, Les Républicains, is crying foul because her 4.78 percent will not allow her to receive state aid, and has launched a campaign to cover election costs.

Parties that receive less than 5 percent of the votes in France are not eligible for state aid. While that is the scenery, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the ultra-leftist La France Insoumise party, who is a presidential candidate for the third time, scored unpredictably high, receiving 21.95 percent of the votes. In other words, he almost scored high enough to qualify to run against Macron for the second round, the difference with Le Pen being only 1.2 percent.

Why did the far right and the far left get stronger?

So, what happened to make the far right and far left so strong in France? Why is everyone, especially Macron, screaming that “Republican values” are under threat? Why are the leaders of the Rassemblement national (National Rally) party (Le Pen), the Reconquête (Reconquest) (Zemmour), and Debout la France (Dupont-Aignan) called far-right? Who are their enemies, what makes the far right a far right?

The economic measures of Macron’s rival, Marine Le Pen, are similar to those of the far-left and even centrist parties. She wanted to take France out of the military wing of NATO, but De Gaulle also did so in 1966. She does not say, “France should leave the European Union,” but she makes promises that will inevitably create a de facto departure from the EU. “I will recognize the supremacy of constitutional law over European law by holding a referendum,” she says.

While Macron said in his 70-minute speech on “Fighting Separatism” that “in some schools, some students want meals in the canteens based on their religious beliefs” (i.e., they do not eat pork), according to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, this was communitarianism and unacceptable. In October 2019, Macron’s former interior minister, Christophe Castaner, described having a beard or celebrating Ramadan as “conspicuous” and a sign of radicalism. These and similar absurd statements were well received by France’s elite, whose apparently influential majority is extremely Islamophobic, and became the cover story of weekly magazines.

The Imam Charter, for example, a unique state-level text on anti-Muslim hostility, was the official declaration that Muslims were a separate and dangerous entity under the French Constitution and laws, even in their very existence. Judging by the ideas and actions that the imams, and thus Muslims, were supposed to commit to never think or act, they were a community prone to committing all kinds of evils, including “discrimination against the sick and disabled.”

Indeed, Macron’s government this year even shut down the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, one of the leading anti-discrimination organizations documenting hate crimes against Muslims. Between 2018 and 2022, France rummaged nearly 25,000 mosques, schools, associations, and workplaces, and shut down 718 bodies, including more than 20 mosques. The state demonizes Muslims with its Imam Charter, Anti-separatism Law, its so-called French Islam with its fabrications and rhetoric, and portrays Islam as a dangerous religion that needs mass surveillance and oppression. Muslim French are presented as an existential threat to France’s “civilization,” “tradition,” and “values.”

With a president and government that patented Islamophobia for themselves, naturally, Marine Le Pen had to go from door to door in the election campaign in order not to get euchred out of her voters. What’s more, Zemmour emerged as another candidate in the elections. “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind,” say the Turks.

In his brief 10-minute speech after the election results were announced, Macron hastily began embracing Muslims. In his refutation, he said excitedly and surreptitiously, “I do not want a France that prevents Muslims or Jews from eating as their religion dictates. No, we will not.” For the first time, Macron mentioned Muslims and Jews in the same sentence, but because of the strict laws and sanctions against anti-Semitism, no one cares about the kosher of the Jews. He could not stop himself and went on to give a message to Muslims before the second round on April 24: “Madame Le Pen says she will ban the headscarf. Then, she will not be president of all French people.”

Before that, however, Macron had said, “The headscarf contradicts our country’s civilizational understanding of the relationship between men and women, and therefore makes us feel insecure.” Each of his ministers made numerous statements on the same subject. Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate in charge of Citizenship attached to the Ministry of Interior stated, “The headscarf is a political act,” and Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer said, “The headscarf is undesirable in our society.”

The Minister of the Interior Darmanin, who opposes Le Pen today, said, “In no democratic country in the world, is there a ban on religious symbols and signs in public spaces,” the women wearing headscarf were taken hostages in accordance with traditions that are not compatible with the Republic.

While hostility to Muslims brought votes from the far right, respect for Muslims also brought votes from the far left to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. French Muslims, who had to choose between deliberate abstention and voting, gave their votes to the far-left candidate Mélenchon by 70 percent, according to polls. Many French Muslims posted the following message verbatim on their social media platforms: “I never look at the world ideologically from the same angle, but Mélenchon does not discriminate, does not point fingers, does not label us and even condemns Islamophobia.”

The legitimization of Islamophobia, which resurged in France after the colonial period, especially since the 2000s, has played a very important role in the growth of the far right. Today, it is no longer just a threat to Muslims, but it indirectly threatens the rule of law, the European Union, and even the country’s strategic choices and alliances.

In the first round of France’s presidential election on April 10, incumbent Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen came out on top, securing their places in the second round of voting, which will be held on April 24.

Macron’s result was the best first-round performance for an incumbent president since 1988. He gained more votes than in the 2017 first round. There is no doubt that his warnings of the need to hold voters back from the far right and his role in the Ukraine-Russia war both played a big part in his success.

However, Le Pen also scored higher than in 2017, especially in the last few weeks of her campaign when, instead of putting Muslims on the agenda, she focused on the high costs of living and inflation, something that concerns most voters.

Now, with all the votes counted, Macron has over 27% and Le Pen has less than 23.1%. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon came third, with close to 22% of the votes.

Although this year’s election did not exceed the 2002 record levels of abstentions, which stood at 28%, the percentage of voters who abstained this time remained high at 26% which corresponds to 12.8 million from around 49 million eligible voters. This time the abstention rate was higher than in the first round five years ago.

The abstention among the younger population was higher this year than in the previous elections. According to Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimates, the age group with most abstentions was voters between 25 and 34 (46%).

Yasser Louati, a French political analyst, believes that voters abstain from voting mainly because they don’t have faith in politicians.

“We have millions of people living under the poverty line, COVID19 killed more than 150,000 people. We have institutions that are being discredited, people don’t believe in institutions, politicians are not trusted, journalists are not trusted,” he told Politics Today.

“Instead of addressing these questions and how we can make our institutions more legitimate, how we can address poverty, we have debates over Muslims. Such as, do Muslims belong here? Are Muslims like us?” he noted.

Amal Benkerroum, a Muslim woman entrepreneur, who is thinking of leaving France, told us, “I don’t know if I will vote on Sunday. I don’t know who to vote for.” She added, “If Le Pen becomes the next president of France, I am going to leave France because that means the community that we are living in doesn’t want us and we are not welcome.”

With the second runoff only a week away, France is faced with two choices. However, most young people feel that neither Macron nor Le Pen can represent them. Four days after the first round, several hundred students took to the streets chanting “Neither Macron nor Le Pen!” Most of them voted for the hard-left leader Mélenchon, and they complain about not having a suitable candidate in the second round who represents them.

According to Ifop pollsters, Macron is expected to receive 51% of the votes and Le Pen 49% on April 24. However, abstentions may increase in the second round mostly due to the fact that the 2022 French election has been driven by fear rather than hope. Although Macron is calling on people to vote for him in order to block the far right, the gap is very narrow and it is the first time in French history that the far right is so close to winning.

Who would have thought that French President Emmanuel Macron and the Muslim minority living under pressure in France especially during his term, would breathe a sigh of relief at the same time, for the same reason, albeit for a temporary period! The war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, on the grounds of the “demilitarizing and de-Nazification of Ukraine,” turned the political climate in France upside down.

With the biggest conventional war that Europe has seen since World War II, Russians took the place of the Muslim minority in France, who were spoken of with hostility from morning to night and subjected to legal regulations one after another. Muslims, who were the target of far-right candidates in the first round of the presidential elections, could thus partially breathe because people are now more afraid of the Russians.

On the other hand, compared to the other candidates, President Macron, whose popularity had started decreasing as far back as directly after he was elected, turned into a dignified statesman who tried to manage the crisis in his capacity as the EU term president. Naturally, he was relieved.

After three years in which the most discriminatory laws of the Fifth Republic were enacted and anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hostility turned into a state policy, “immigrants, Islam, and Muslims” were at the forefront of the propaganda during the election campaigns.

The most media-savy and strongest candidates of the election campaign, hang on to 75-year-old former socialist militant Renaud Camus, who has turned into one of the most influential figures of the far right, and his conspiracy theory called “Le Grand Remplacement” (The Great Replacement) which claims that Arabs and Muslims will seize control of France.

This infamous theory had also influenced Brenton Tarrant, who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, causing 51 deaths and 49 injuries. While the far-right Marine Le Pen has long expressed her admiration for Camus, Éric Zemmour, a far-right candidate who called for banning Arabic names, and giving employers the right not to employ Arabs/African,  has turned Camus’s theory into the central idea of ​​his media show and political propaganda.

Aside from the discussion of whether the left would be a remedy in the face of this storm, where the extreme right ideas sailed into the stern, Liberation Newspaper asks: where was the left? At the beginning of the election campaign, the newspaper asked, “Well, who will protect Muslims, women, Jews, officials, intellectuals, and other targets from this hate speech?” and argued that the left should come out with an inevitable historical mission.

However, there was no reply to this article. Could Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s coming third with 22% of the total votes be an answer? The left in France has not been able to straighten its back since the socialist François Hollande, who ruled the country between 2012 and 2017.

The Socialist Party candidate, 62-year-old Anne Hidalgo, who was elected mayor of Paris in 2014, could not exceed 2% at the polls. It is not new for the French left to lose some of the working class to the far right, and to leave others in despair and make them abstain from the elections. To some, this is a lost ideological war. In fact, no leader candidate from the left could emerge with a political agenda to meet this need at a time when social democracy is most needed because of the COVID19 crisis.

Nevertheless, not on the left but on the extreme left wing, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France insoumise (France Unbowed), was the surprise of the first round in his third run as a presidential candidate. With his promises to increase the minimum wage, to bring back a tax that was lifted for the rich, and to be positive towards the Muslim minority, he got 22% of the total votes.

Far-right ideas were seriously moving along, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine directly affected the dynamics in French politics. As Russia claimed that its purpose was to destroy the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, far-right and right-wing candidates in France that engage in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim propaganda were suddenly cornered. Le Pen, Zemmour, and even Mélenchon had to make people forget about their long-held admiration for Vladimir Putin and their various relations with him in person. Each tried to condemn Putin and Russia in their own way.

There was another important development revealed by the war: the immigrant was in disguise! He was no longer Arab and Muslim, but European. The commentator on the French television channel BFM put it thus, “They were not Syrians fleeing the bombings of the Syrian regime, but Europeans, with cars like ours, who simply set out to save their lives.” “Immigrants,” which was one of the most talked about topics for all candidates, including President Macron, in the election campaign, thus turned into a sensitive issue that have forced candidates to use a careful language.

Far-right candidate Zemmour said, “I would prefer the Ukrainians to be in Poland. Also, when the war is over, they can return home more easily: it is not good to destabilize France, which is drowning in immigration.” And after saying this he suddenly became “heartless”! His far-right rival Le Pen must have sensed the changing tide and and said that “Ukrainian acceptance is very natural.”

And President Macron, whose support went down right after he took his seat in the Elysée Palace, who had to struggle with the consequences of the Yellow Vest protests all over the country, who had to deal with the weaknesses in the health and industry sectors caused by the COVID19 pandemic, announced his candidacy for the elections on March 3, just five days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

His tactic was to watch the opposition candidates from the stage and turn the first round of elections into the opposition’s primary election. Although this situation was criticized as a “democratic deficit,” he was redressed as a candidate who sought a solution to the Ukraine crisis before the Russian invasion, who tried to persuade Putin, and gave the image that he strove for peace. Thus, he assumed the most reasonable role as both the French president and the president of the EU Council.

Macron broke away with his closest rival Le Pen, passed her by 4.7 points, and got 27.8% in the first round. Macron’s claim was to fill the seat of European leadership left vacant by Merkel and to foster France’s role in finding solutions to the problems of the European Union. Although this was opportunism and was criticized as such, until the war, the French elections were publicly discussed with headlines such as “Will Europe win the elections?” The Russia-Ukraine War changed the country’s priorities.

Macron’s famous opinion that “progress in the common defense capacity is of critical importance to ensure the sovereignty of the European Union,” which he frequently emphasized, now gained a special meaning during the war. Macron defines himself as “a defender of democracy against populism” and the only candidate who could find answers to questions such as: What red line will be drawn against the dictator who tries to seize European order? What weapons will be used to resist since there is no one ready to die for Ukraine in the European Union? What should be done for France to gain its sovereignty industrially, strategically, and militarily?

Political commentators in France put it all down to the lack of alternatives. Now the question is whether there can be a surprise in the second round.

France was shocked when Jean Marie Le Pen, who was the leader of the far-right party and never invited to be on any television channel in France, went into the second round against Jacques Chirac with 16.86% of votes in the 2002 presidential elections. Expectedly, Chirac was elected president with 82.21% in the second round; meanwhile Le Pen could only increase his vote to 17.79%.

But, according to the newspaper headlines, this was a shameful event and a great disaster for France! This was because Le Pen, who was prosecuted for inciting xenophobia and for his statement that gas chambers were “a mere detail” in the history of World War II, achieved a great success considering he could only win 0.74% of votes in 1974 when he first ran.

That’s all water under the bridge now. Over the last 20 years, far-right ideas have flourished and bloomed. They have even ceased to be “far-right ideas” as they have become pretty common. An ambiguous xenophobia against Africans, Arabs, and sometimes people coming from countries in the European Union was replaced by an overt hatred of Islam and hostility towards Muslims. This new xenophobia moved to the center of politics and gained serious ground in both left-wing and right-wing politics.

French Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal, who gave an interview to CNews channel after Blanquer, said, “Islamo-leftism causes social collapse and I think universities as a part of the society are not free of its grip.” Not only that, Vidal also called on the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) to conduct a study on the “Islamo-Gauchisme [French term of Islamo-leftism] effect and its impact on studies on the decolonization process” in universities.

There are many examples of the so-called valorous breakthroughs in the name of Islamophobia that started in the 2000s. An influential figure in left-wing politics, feminist intellectual and philosopher Élizabeth Badinter, in an interview to the newspaper Le Monde during socialist President Hollande’s incumbency stated, “Don’t be afraid of being accused of being Islamophobic; I’m not afraid, no one should be afraid.” She had also secured the support of Prime Minister Manuel Valls at the time.

Before that, one of the founders of the highly circulated right-wing magazine Le Point, Claude Imbert said in slightly more timid words, “To be honest, I’m a bit Islamophobic,” while Françoise Laborde, a former Radical Party of the Left senator who later joined Macron’s party, said, “Frankly, I like being called Islamophobic.” These are only a taste of what’s going on.

With his talent as a writer, Zemmour expresses in a vulgar but impactful way what others could only whisper or insinuate. He is a republican after all, albeit being “radical” or “overzealous” for some. In France, the definitions of secularism, republicanism, and “Civilization” – whether used together or separately – are extraordinarily useful euphemisms for anti-Islamic sentiment and hostility towards Muslims. When it comes to Muslims, Zemmour’s far-right ideological position of “Civilization and the Republic,” Marine Le Pen’s emphasis on “Secularism,” and a socialist or a right-wing politician’s discourse of “Republicanism, Secularism” or “Civilization” are not different at all.

As a matter of fact, Macron’s “Anti-Separatism Bill” was renamed “Principles Strengthening Respect for the Laws of the Republic” after receiving backlash across the world for being Islamophobic; however, it retained its content. In other words, the state does not openly say “give up your Islamic identity” like Zemmour, but does its best to make Muslims live their faith in their inner world and make their physical attachment to their religion invisible.

The French public is subject to constant manipulation; the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), one of the leading research institutions in France, for instance, published a survey last month based on students’ responses to the question “Have you observed any behavioral patterns at school that show signs of religious belonging?” Zemmour, then, justified his thesis through this survey.

Horrendous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed being projected on government buildings or Muslim children being forced to look at these cartoons as a part of their education, and two 10- or 11-year-old students who refused to look at these cartoons being taken from their homes with their families and being subjected to investigation is not dissimilar to what Zemmour promises.

Eric Zemmour announced and propagated this discourse and his racist comments by writing for mainstream media outlets like Le Quotidien de Paris and Le Figaro, along with appearing on prime-time shows on channels such as RTL and France 2. Although he faced trial and was convicted twice, it is not possible to claim that he has faced a hostile response to his person. In the last 20 years, he has become a celebrity in political and economic circles. For two years, he was working at CNews, the news channel controlled by the Catholic businessman Vincent Bolloré, who previously supported Macron.

Eric Zemmour announced and propagated this discourse and his racist comments by writing for mainstream media outlets like Le Quotidien de Paris and Le Figaro, along with appearing on prime-time shows on channels such as RTL and France 2.

Despite all this, there is something about Zemmour that renders him unique. Born in 1958 to an Algerian Jewish family, at his first official political rally on December 5, 2021 he boasted of his minority background, describing himself as a “little Berber Jew from the other side of the Mediterranean.” Zemmour, who was educated at a private Jewish school located in a Parisian suburb, says he practices his faith but does not consider himself Orthodox. However, this is not what makes him unique – he is accused of turning historical events on their head, while some describe him as an “anti-Semitic Jew.”

Indeed, Zemmour claimed that “Dreyfus may not be innocent,” [referring to the political scandal riddled with anti-Semitism known as “Dreyfus affair”] and Philippe Petain, who was president during the Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1944, was actually watching over the French Jews! Shocking at first glance, Zemmour’s connection to anti-Semitic history seems to be his far-right ideology, and the anti-Semitic vein at the base of the far-right may have tactically compelled him to make such comments. Indeed, 93-year-old former far-right party leader Le Pen also declared that he supports Zemmour instead of his daughter. “The only difference between Éric and me is that he is a Jew. It’s hard to call him a Nazi or a fascist. It gives him more freedom,” Le Pen said.

On the other hand, there may be another element to explain his shocking historical “revisionism.” In France, there is a publication called Causeur, which was first established as a website by the Sephardic Jewish journalist and writer Élisabeth Lévy. Causeur has been publishing as a monthly magazine for several years now and is deemed a right-wing and far right-wing publication. Alain Finkielkraut, another one of the magazine’s founders, is one of the country’s most influential and prominent philosophers and of Jewish origin, who is known for being “just like Lévy, but more of an Islamophobe.”

Lévy, in the article titled “Salomon, Will You Vote for Zemmour?” states that Zemmour is the talk after synagogue services. She relays that while part of the congregation says, “aren’t you be ashamed to support him, so you’re going to vote for a Petainist,” others say “Zemmour is our savior.” Due to France’s foreign policy discourse or despite the protection offered by legislation against anti-Semitism, the rise of Islamophobia causes tensions between Arab and Jewish children in the suburbs, especially in Paris. Lévy extracts that while many institutions and organizations of the Jewish community condemn Zemmour for his views and allegations, Jewish families residing in the suburbs see him as a “savior” or even as the “last exit before exile.”

According to polls, with 14-17% of the vote, Zemmour is unlikely to become president. However, in a country where far-right parties and ideas are indisputably on the rise, he will retain a significant voter base and will continue to inflame the debates along with consolidating the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim rhetoric.