The French will vote in their presidential election this weekend, but their society is cracking apart.
When 22-year-old Thaïs D'Escufon looks out her window, she sees a France that's disappearing.
She posts provocative videos about it on YouTube — she has already been banned from TikTok — warning of a flood of migrants threatening the country.
The suburbs, she says, feel like a foreign country, and France's streets are no longer safe for white women.
More and more young people are tuning in to these views, even though they are exaggerated, or at least not based in fact.
They provide a populist answer to the insecurity about employment and the future that many of the country's young are feeling.
Racism is ramping up the temperature of the election, where the far-right presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour, has won over many young hearts, including Thaïs D'Escufon.
Mr Zemmour gained notoriety as a journalist and pundit, with a million viewers tuning in to his appearances on conservative news channel C-News.
He popularised a debunked conspiracy theory called "The Great Replacement", which claims white Europeans are being replaced by Muslims from Africa and the Middle East.
If elected, Mr Zemmour has proposed a program of "re-migration" which would see a million foreigners deported within five years.
The harder right
Such extreme views were once unacceptable and consigned to the toxic margins of French politics.
In the last election, in 2017, far-right politician Marine Le Pen campaigned on a similar platform.
She spoke against immigration and Islam, but lost to the upstart former banker, Emmanuel Macron.
Ms Le Pen is standing again and, this time, is presenting a more moderate image that is winning over voters. She's coming second in the polls — and rising.
That's allowed space for Éric Zemmour's extremist views to take hold on the political extreme right.
One in three voters are now saying they will vote for a far-right candidate when the country goes to the polls this weekend.
If no-one wins an outright majority on Sunday, then there will be another election two weeks later between the top two candidates.
Many are predicting it will be the current president, Macron, going head-to-head with a re-energised Le Pen.
Thaïs D'Escufon says Marine Le Pen is too "soft". Her moderation is a "betrayal" of her voters, she says. Thaïs wants Éric Zemmour to win the election.
"He loves France and wants to defend it," she says. "I really hope he will be elected because people just say to him, 'Please save us".
Thaïs, from Toulouse, is one of a growing band of far-right influencers trying to win over apathetic young French voters.
While surveys show most young people are concerned about global issues such as climate change and the environment, they are not engaged by the presidential candidates, and many simply will not vote.
Participation rates have been falling precipitously in recent elections, with a third of eligible voters aged 18 to 25 failing to vote in 2017.
France's youth have traditionally thrown their support behind left-wing candidates, but at the last election many flocked to the right.
Thaïs has gained a following online for her extreme views.
She was once part of the banned nationalist movement Generation Identity and has been convicted for "creating public disorder".
Yet she persists, vehemently denouncing the laws that are designed to restrain hate speech.
"I want to defend my identity as a French person," she says. "This is considered you are a racist, the worst thing you can be, just for saying that you love your country and want to defend it."
In one YouTube video, she argues "white privilege" has driven much of the world's progress over the centuries.
And she continues to rail against what she describes as "mass immigration", despite no such program currently existing in France.
Stoking old divisions
Journalist and filmmaker Rokhaya Diallo rejects the arguments of the far right as nonsense.
"This theory of the 'Great Replacement' is insane," Rokhaya says. "It's insane because the reason why my parents migrated to France is because they were colonised first."
Rokhaya is one of the few prominent commentators in France from an African origin.
The daughter of parents who were from the French colonies of Senegal and Gambia, Diallo spent her teenage years living at La Courneuve, a predominantly migrant suburb on the outskirts of Paris.
She felt an "uncrossable border" between herself and European French people living mainly in wealthier parts of the country.
People from La Courneuve "know there is a stigma attached to how they look and how they speak," she says.
"It's difficult because they're made out to be the problem and they're stigmatised constantly by certain candidates for the presidency."
She says France — where everyone is supposed to be equal — has avoided reconciling its colonial past. This includes a suspicion of Muslims.
The country was shocked by a spate of deadly terrorist attacks in 2015 and in following years, which attacked core freedoms of speech and behaviour.
Widespread fear of Islamist militancy has been exploited by the far right, and applied broadly to people from Muslim backgrounds, even though they were also terrorist targets.
Rokhaya worries that Éric Zemmour has pushed the boundaries of political discussion.
What was considered repugnant five years ago is now being discussed openly.
"It will take a lot of work to make people understand that racism really affects the lives of millions of people every day."
Understandably, France's estimated 6 million-strong Muslim community is increasingly anxious, and the focus once again of political heat.
Heightened tensions
Vaulx-en-Velin, on the outskirts of Lyon in France's south-east, became notorious in 1990 when a young man was killed in an accident with police.
It triggered days of rioting and fires.
Ahmed Chekhab, who grew up in the area and is now the Deputy Mayor, wanted to show us another side to the neighbourhood.
Families are raising children and making a go of life, but stigma and racism make it difficult for them to break through, he explained.
"For me, it's a kind of intellectual weakness," Ahmed says. "I can't conceive of someone not liking someone because they're Australian or Senegalese. I find this stupid."
He feels no hatred towards people who espouse racist views, only pity.
"The whole world has been made up of mixtures and migrations since the dawn of time," he says.
When he takes us for a tour of the area, our cameras provoke a hostile reaction.
Groups of young people keep lobbing pebbles at us.
Ahmed tries to explain to them that we are from Australian TV, not French TV, which has made sensational stories about the crime and drug problems here.
It's a sign of the heightened tensions caused by the election rhetoric.
Ahmed says the far right have the same aim as terrorists: to divide the country.
President Emmanuel Macron is likely to win the election, but the France he leads has changed.
The nation that was forged on the Enlightenment ideals of "liberty, equality and fraternity" is fracturing along the fault line of race.
Éric Zemmour is unlikely to prevail at the polls, but with help from influencers like Thaïs D'Escufon, he has cemented US-style culture wars into the fabric of the Republic.
Watch 'March to the Right' tonight on Foreign Correspondent, 8pm on ABC TV and iview, and streaming live on YouTube and Facebook.
