New Popular Front rallies French to save democracy from Macron-Le Pen coup

Demonstrators protest the Macron-Le Pen coup in Lyon, France, Saturday, Sept. 7. | Laurent Cipriani / AP

Answering the call of the New Popular Front coalition and the country’s labor unions, hundreds of thousands of people hit the streets in France this weekend. The left and workers’ organizations are mobilizing resistance to President Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of conservative Michel Barnier as prime minister.

The NPF came in first place in parliamentary elections in July, but acting on behalf of French corporations—who fear the left’s program of corporate tax hikes, social spending, and reversing retirement age hikes—Macron ignored the decision of voters and imposed what amounts to a coup-from-above.

Instead of appointing the NPF’s choice of Lucie Castets as prime minister, the president joined forces with the fascists of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, which approved the installation of Barnier, a career politician whose most recent job was Brexit negotiator for the EU.

The French Communist Party (PCF) and La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), two of the four parties in the NPF alliance, are taking the lead role in organizing the national resistance movement against the Macron-Le Pen pact.

Working in conjunction with them is the General Confederation of Labor—the CGT, France’s biggest trade union central—which has laid responsibility for Barnier’s appointment at the feet of the capitalist class.

At least 150 different protest actions were recorded in cities across the country on Saturday.

At Place de la Bastille in Paris, protesters kept their demonstration peaceful despite efforts by police to provoke violence and confrontation. Communist Senator Ian Brossat, who represents the capital city, said that the people are angry at “the denial of democracy.” He questioned why “the right governs…when the left wins the elections.”

To achieve enough votes in the National Assembly to block the NPF and impose Barnier, Macron put his party’s members of parliament into alliance with the fascists. Voters gave the NPF 180 seats in July, putting it in first place and giving it the legal right to nominate a PM. But Macron added his 159 seats together with the fascists’ 142 and Barnier’s Les Républicains’ 61 in order to steal the election from the NPF.

Le Pen and her deputy, Jordan Bardella, are relishing their new role as king-makers. They now hold the leash on both Macron and Barnier.

Reports in the media suggest Barnier was Macron’s second choice after Le Pen and the fascists vetoed his first option, Xavier Bertrand, another right-winger. He never gave any consideration to Castets, the NPF’s nominee.

The anti-immigrant stance that Barnier took while running for president in 2021, when he said immigration was “out of control,” no doubt helped convince National Rally to support him, but he will have to dance to the fascists’ tune if he wants to stay in power.

Bardella said Saturday that National Rally is keeping Barnier “under surveillance” and told the new PM that he must prioritize stopping immigration and strengthen the police and military to keep the party’s support.

PCF Sen. Brossat said that “by becoming Macronists,” the National Rally “betrayed its own voters” and proved it is not an “anti-system” party, but rather the extreme right faction of the same ruling class it claimed to oppose. Like Trump and Republicans in the U.S., National Rally has expended great effort to portray itself as a “workers’ party,” despite pursuing an agenda that caters to the ruling class.

Workers who might have been deceived into voting for the fascists, Brossat said, “must know that Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella have definitively joined the bourgeois front.”

Barnier held his first public event this weekend, meeting with healthcare workers at a Paris hospital while masses of people protested his appointment just a few streets away. He said he wanted to “listen” to the public, but he didn’t appear interested in listening to protesters.

PCF spokesman Leon Deffontaines told the left-wing daily L’Humanité: “The Communist Party calls on all forces to go and mobilize—at their place of study, in their workplace—the workers, the unions, to organize and stand together.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of France Unbowed, declared from the PCF’s platform at the Paris demonstration Saturday: “The French people are in rebellion. They have entered into revolution. There will be no pause, no truce. I call you to a long-term battle.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

C.J. Atkins

C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People's World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left.