Nine years ago, on April 13th, 2015, overturning the result of the referendum that he himself had provoked, the leader of the Greek (and European) “radical left”, Alexis Tsipras, capitulated ingloriously in Brussels, to the general astonishment of the Greek people and of world public opinion.
It was an extremely serious blow to the credibility of the Greek and global left, to Greece and its people, to the prospects of a democratic Europe. That same evening, Marine Le Pen declared from Paris that ‘Tsipras has betrayed’. In other words, ‘don’t trust the left, trust me, trust the far right, which will not betray you’.
The Greek crisis was only the first so serious among the many that the system of “Euro-liberalism” must undergo. The way the Greek crisis was “solved” in 2015, without being solved in reality, initiated this oscillation between the radical left and the far right characteristic of the inter-war period, setting the stage for the great conflict that we see currently unfolding in France.
The following article, published in Greece and translated here from the Greek, is a commentary on the elections in France written for the Greek public by a Greek journalist, former member of the leadership of SYRIZA Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, on July 9th
France – fake election results to create false impressions
By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
I am listening to a major news radio station in Athens. The “international news director” of the radio is speaking. He says that Le Pen’s far right got 11 million and the Popular Front of the Left got seven million votes. He omits to explain to his listeners that the results he is speaking about do not reflect the real rapport de forces between the Left and the Far Right.
This kind of “news”, “information”, dominates today in Greece and beyond.
Such is the usually concealed sympathy for the far-right and the hostility against the left that we have had, in Greece, in France and internationally, a systematic attempt to inflate the electoral results of the Far Right while underestimating those of the Popular Front and also distorting the meaning of the French vote.
(There is already, according to all indications, a “conspiracy” unfolding in France itself, an attempt to overturn the result of the election, with some kind of defection. Among the scenarios “in play” are the assignment of the Prime Minister’s post to a person outside “France Unbowed”, which is the largest force of the New Popular Front ; this could be the leader of the Socialist or the Ecologist party, or even former President Hollande, the whole accompanied by possibly splitting the Popular Front and towing part of it into Macron’s camp. At the same time, the barrage of attacks on the leader of the Popular Front by almost all the media continues).
When Macron dissolved the French National Assembly on May 9th, everyone expected an electoral triumph for the “National Rally”. This was probably precisely the aim of those who pushed Macron to dissolve the National Assembly. Now that all predictions have been refuted and, instead of a triumph for Le Pen, we have had a great political-electoral victory for the Left under Jean-Luc Mélenchon, they are just short of telling us that the Popular Front has lost !
The victory of the Popular Front, a victory, unprecedented with contemporary standards leftist (moreover not a “sold-out” leftist, at least as far as “France Unbowed” is concerned) force in a major European country, is almost considered a non-victory, almost “stolen” from the far right. They say it is not due to the enormous popular and to a large degree spontaneous mobilization of millions of people. And every now and then there is a reminder of the chaos France is going into, as if it would not go into chaos with the fascists in power or with Macron winning, as if it is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s fault that there is chaos! They keep saying that the Ecologists, the Socialists, Glucksman, all are ready to “sell” him; as if the planned defection were not by itself a proof that Mélenchon is really worth something!
Of course the position of the Popular Front is not the easiest in the world. The French establishment wants to break it up and squeeze a part of it to ally with Macron’s bankrupt “extreme centre”, ultimately strengthening Le Pen herself. France Unbowed itself has not yet acquired the characteristics of a massive, democratic and collective party, ready to successfully fight the big battles ahead. Unfortunately, there is also no the necessary leftist political alliance at the European level, much less after the very big defeats of the left and the European peoples in Greece in 2015 and in Britain in 2019.
These two heavy defeats of the European left have undermined seriously its credibility and led its parties (like Linke) to serious crises. The alignment of a very large part of European leftist forces with NATO’s positions regarding Ukraine and Russia, their practical solidarity with the war of US Imperialism against Russia in Ukraine has not helped things and has contributed, sometimes, to the Far Right appearing as a pro-peace force!
The two defeats (Greece and Britain) have also helped to turn the whole axis of the “contestation” of the European and western system to the right and limited the left’s ambitions. Both Mélenchon and Le Pen were discussing the issue of the Treaties of the EU and of the Euro until 2017-18, then they stopped. This helped Le Pan also shift the focus. If we can’t take on those “above” (big financial capital and the EU) it seems perhaps more interesting to take on those “below” (French people of non-“French” origin and immigrants). In the absence of the possibility to really change the system, why not give a few extra crumbs to the “whites” instead of “les Arabes” who are in danger of suffering quite some persecutions. (It should be noted that all this constitutes a complete reversal of Gaullism and one wonders what the consequences will be for French interests throughout the Arab-Muslim world). Why also, instead of claiming independence from the US and NATO, not make a War on Islam, as Huntington has explained and theorized and Netanyahu is doing?
Truth be told, the road ahead for the French Left and above all for France Unbowed is not paved with rose petals, just as it is not paved with rose petals for all of Europe, the West and the whole world. We are going into deeper and deeper crises and Mitterrand-type “experiments” are not repeatable today. The electoral percentages obtained by the far right and the far left testify to this. Even if Mélenchon were not yet right in saying, as he did on the night of the second round, that “there is nothing between us and the far right”, we are rapidly approaching this very point. The French electoral statistics are similar to the Republic of Weimar’s statistics, albeit in a much milder, for the moment at least, way than the original, but they are not “force tranquille” statistics any more.
The Center is collapsing as the situation itself demands more and more radical solutions.
But it is equally true that, thanks to the admirable and to a large degree mobilization of the French people and the handling of the leadership of France Unbowed, there has been a complete reversal of the situation and a great victory for the Left, which is the best possible “opening” move for the upcoming “battle”.
Bile for the left
So here come intellectuals who may have been left-wing two hundred years ago, but who have not seen fit to tell us that they have ceased to be or have become right-wing, and they are competing in wit and trying to find, on the eve of a great political victory of the French left, the reasons why the left is not pulling through! I wonder what they would write if Le Pen won? It probably doesn’t occur to them that they themselves are just such a reason. There’s no harm in looking through a magnifying glass for any real or imagined flaws of the left. It is better though to work to correct them, if one claims to be a leftist, and to produce, if one is a scientist and intellectual, analytical work on the problems of one’s country and the world, instead of just spouting bile and giving high (and void) lectures.
On the evening of the first round of the parliamentary elections we heard that Le Pen was getting 33% and the Popular Front 28%. In fact, the media had added the results of the “National Rally” and another politically related party, the “Union of the Far Right”, which got almost 4%, to create an impression. On the French Interior Ministry’s website, Le Pen gets 29% and the Popular Front 28%. Presenting the result as 33% to 28% creates a stronger impression in favor of the far right.
But this is not the most important thing compared to the poaching that took place with the result of the second round. The (malevolent) analysts who want to reduce the importance of the Popular Front’s victory by force point out that the far right got just over 11 million (the sum of the “National Coalition” and the “Union of the Far Right”) compared to 7 million or so for the Popular Front. It should be noted that many of them are often annoyed because Le Pen is often labelled far right, as indeed she is, and are anxious to find another adjective to classify her, but they add her votes to those of the “Union of the Far Right” with the greatest ease!
The real power of the far right and the left
Except that the comparison constitutes misleading and foolish poaching. For in the second round of the elections the Popular Front withdrew its candidates from many constituencies. Only by comparing the results of the first round can one draw conclusions about the real strength of political formations. These results are as follows with regard to the far right and the left
– 9.379.092 29,26 % National Rally
– 1.268.822 3,96% Union of the Extreme Right
Sum of extreme right-wing
– 10.647.914 33.31%
New People’s Front
9.024.485 21.28%
That’s the real balance of power, not 10 or 11 million versus seven.
“A very interesting fact is also that the Left has an absolute majority among the young people who are the future of France.
Data from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The alleged “theft” of victory
You will tell me that the electoral law makes the relative majority a minority.
Doesn’t 60% of those who vote in Greece, i.e. half of the Greeks, become an absolute majority in the Parliament that does what it likes, even at the expense of the established will of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people? Why have the analysts who use this argument never gone to the bars to say anything about the rigged system that imposed Mitsotakis on Greek people? Why do they defend tooth and nail the enhanced proportional representation and the monstrous bonuses? Why didn’t they blame Macron and the British conservatives for being elected by completely undemocratic majority systems?
So the only time they were bothered by the electoral law of an EU state is when, against all odds, a left-wing force, and not a “sold-out” left-wing force, won a relative majority of seats?
Obviously the French electoral law is rigged, as are many electoral laws. But even if it were a system of proportional representation, the National Rally would still not have obtained a majority of seats. Those who complain that Le Pen did not win the elections would like the rigging mechanism of the French majoritarian electoral system to work, so that the extreme right, being a minority in the electorate, would become a majority in parliament and take over the government!
In fact, under the pressure of the French people’s rebellion at the prospect of the “fascists” ruling the country, the alliance of the New Popular Front and the Macronists partially balanced the undemocratic character of the French electoral system by asking the French people the question “Do you accept a government of the Far Right?” and they overwhelmingly answered ‘No’, to the extreme displeasure of many domestic ‘analysts’.
So it would have been better if they had not done so and we now had a far-right government in France based on one third of the French and opposed by two thirds? What would happen in such a case?
The fact that more than 10.5 million French people voted for the far right is not insignificant and shows how close to the abyss we have come. But the far right and the fascism contained, even as a possibility or possibility within its ranks, has not yet been defeated. Nine million votes of the left is not a small number. And its radiance is greater, since it also forced the Macron camp to agree to mutual resignations (an agreement it did not keep in the end when the presidential candidates were pitted against “France Unbowed”).
It is not only the threat of a slide towards a neo-fascist regime. After all, there is not only “black” totalitarianism, there is also “white” totalitarianism, the totalitarianism of the extreme centre. A crucial dimension of the French elections is that Mélenchon is the only frontline politician in a great European country who is not controlled by Money, NATO and/or Israel and its lobbies https://www.defenddemocracy.
The Lady has already made her compromises with the French bourgeoisie, the Bollorés and Netanyahu’s Israel and has put water in her economic and Ukrainian wine by referring to Russian imperialism https://www.defenddemocracy.
P.S. 1. Between the first and the second round, many of the “National Rally” took off their masks and incidents were reported from all over France where citizens of Arab origin started to be harassed and “warned” about what would happen to them after the elections. France is home to five million French citizens of Arab-Muslim origin and five hundred thousand Jews. One understands what will happen if the French far right descends from the level of high rhetoric to a “civil war of civilisations” or rather a “war against civilisation”. ‘ As well as what impetus can be given to Netanyahu’s dangerous plans for wars throughout the Middle East with the far right in the government of France.
PS 2. French scholars and politicians are divided as to whether or not to use the term fascism to describe the current movements of the European far right. It is true that they draw their historical origins from the currents of European fascism and have within their ranks people with a clearly fascist mentality. On the other hand, we are not – at least not yet – in the situation we lived in a century ago. In the case of France, there are violent gangs operating on the periphery of the ‘National Coalition’ and supplying it with cadres, as it has no ideological mechanism for producing cadres.
What is certain, however, is that Mrs. Le Pen’s party, whether one calls it far-right or fascist, coming that near to power, in a country like France, constitutes a major milestone in modern European history and possibly symbolizes the beginning of the end of the period founded on the victory over Nazism in 1945. A victory for the French far right would eventually involve elements of “regime change”, i.e. a replacement of the bourgeois-democratic regime with something else.
Translated from Greek by Christos Marsellos
Also read
From Germany in 1933 to France in 2024. The deception of Marine Le Pen
