The sense of unease loomed over the Pride parade in Paris on Saturday, hinted at by the banner reading: “The far right is the mortal enemy of LGBTI people.”
The gloom persisted, even as tens of thousands of people turned up for the march. “We hope that this Pride march won’t be our last,” one attender told Le Monde, as organisers warned that the rise to power of the far-right National Rally (RN) could sharply curtail LGBTQ+ rights.
About 10 miles away, a similar sense of anxiety hovered over the hundreds who had gathered to remember Nahel Merzouk, the teenager shot dead at point-blank range by a police officer during a traffic check a year ago.
The timing of the tribute to Merzouk, one day before France flocked to the polls in the first round of snap parliamentary elections, was a “powerful symbol,” Assa Traoré, who has been fighting for justice since her brother, Adama, died in the custody of French police in 2016, told Reuters.
The RN has promised to overhaul the legal status of police so that, if they use their arms during an intervention, the presumption will be that the police were acting in self-defence. “We, from the working-class neighbourhoods, are the firsthand victims of these elections,” Traoré added. “We … are afraid every day that our sons, brothers, or husbands will be killed. Racism and racial profiling are our daily life.’’
While exit polls on Sunday suggested the RN had come top in the first round of parliamentary elections, with projections that the party would win about 34% of the vote, the final result, which will not be known until after the second round on 7 July, remains highly uncertain.
But three weeks after France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, announced his shock decision to call elections, divisions have deepened across France, with rights groups reporting a rise in racist, homophobic and transphobic attacks, as RN touts a programme that singles out groups such as dual nationals and those born and raised in France by foreign parents.
The undercurrent of division suggests that the decade-long effort by Marine Le Pen to soften the image of her party has been for the most part superficial – a view backed by French media outlets Libération and Mediapart. Recently, they published lists of 45 RN candidates who had expressed racist, antisemitic or homophobic views on social media, including one who called for the abolition of a law that makes it illegal to question the Holocaust and another who claimed that some civilisations remain “below bestiality in the chain of evolution”.
The RN has long been clear about its priorities should it take power, with the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, 28, using phrases such as “French people of foreign origin” – a distinction that runs counter to the French constitution – and highlighting policies that would target immigrants, practising Muslims and dual nationals.
Bardella has promised to prioritise citizens over foreigners when it comes to social housing and other welfare benefits, and said the party would seek to ban the wearing of headscarves in public places after the presidential elections in 2027.
The party also intends to introduce a law to combat “Islamist ideologies”, by making it easier to close mosques and deport imams who are deemed to be radicalised, Bardella told the Financial Times.
Other measures would include a ban on clothing that the party saw as an “affirmation” of those “ideologies”, including various types of veils and burkinis. “The veil is not desirable in French society,” he told the paper. “The battle is in part legislative, but is also a cultural battle that needs to be pursued.”
The prospect of the RN – fresh from its European elections win – being closer to power than ever before appears to have emboldened some.
This week the Collective for Countering Islamophobia in Europe (CCIE) published a note on social media that it said had been given to a Muslim man in the region of Haute-Savoie, telling him to “go back” to his country. “You are going to get fucked by Bardella soon! Get out of this residence before we make you get out!” the note read.
Hours after Macron’s surprise election call, four men assaulted a 19-year-old as he made his way home, hurling homophobic and transphobic slurs at him, and punched him in the face, according to Libération. The four, who were found guilty and sentenced after the attack, told police they were RN party members and members of the violent far-right GUD group, according to the office of the Paris prosecutor.
Anne Bachman, a municipal councillor with the Communist party in southern France, said she had gone to police after being threatened by a far-right voter. “The climate has changed. People are out in the open, they don’t hide that they are far-right, they feel strong,” Bachman told Reuters.
Amid concerns over what might lie ahead for France in the coming weeks, calls for voters to reject the far right have continued to pour in from an unexpected source: French sport stars.
On Sunday Jules Koundé, a footballer who plays for La Liga’s Barcelona and is a member of the French national team, was the latest to weigh in.
“For my part, I see that the extreme right has never led a country towards more freedom, more justice and togetherness. And I don’t think it ever will,” he wrote on social media.
“I see a party founded on the hatred of others, disinformation and whose words are intended to stigmatise and divide us,” he continued. “The RN is not a solution.”
