In France, The Rise Of The Far-Right Grows Ever More Violent

It was a chilly February night in Bordeaux when a young activist took a few steps away from the entrance of a local university.

Angry about planned cuts to higher education and the university’s continued ties to arms manufacturers supplying Israel, students had been blockading the institution for a number of days - a time-honoured form of protest for young people keen to resist against encroachments on their right to education and what they perceived to be their university’s complicity in war crimes. Yet the activist had only distanced himself from the group for a few moments when he was jumped upon by three members of a local white supremacist group, who appeared to have been lying in wait for a victim. The men filmed the violent attack before fleeing the scene in a get-away car.

This was not an isolated incident - far-right and nationalist violence has been on the rise in France. As of 2024, only Sweden surpassed it in the number of far-right attacks against political opponents in Europe, and whilst it is comparable to the other European countries in relation to the total number of incidents of racist violence, this number continues to rise in France while declining elsewhere. 

As Loïc Sipié, one of the lead organisers of the group to which the young man belonged, the Jeunes Insoumis.e.s de Bordeaux (JIB, a youth branch of the major left-wing party LFI), made a point of highlighting, the incident in Bordeaux occurred mere days after a violent  attack on a Kurdish Centre in Paris, carried out by a different far-right group. Lone wolf attacks have been on the rise as well, these being almost always motivated by racial and religious hatred. In April, a man stabbed a worshipper to death in a mosque. Just last month, the hairdresser Hichem Miraoui was shot dead by his neighbour who targeted him for being North African (and by extension, the attacker presumed, muslim). Shortly before and after the murder, the attacker - 53-year-old Christophe Belgembe  - published a number of videos on social media in which he encouraged others to follow his example.

What is behind this rise in violence? Loïc points the finger in large part at the role of prominent right-wing ministers and politicians in normalising racial and religious hatred. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau’s cry of “down with the veil!” at a meeting ‘against islamism’ in Paris, in which he tied the participation of hijab-wearing athletes in competitions to a plot to spread the seeds of islamic fundamentalism in French society, is simply one of the many examples of this. Over a third of violent racist attacks over the last few years targeted muslims in particular (the rest usually being carried out against those perceived as migrants or asylum seekers).

Discourse which others French muslims, presenting them as belonging to a culture hostile to French values, is rife in French politics and media (just as it is becoming increasingly rife in Britain) - and the recent electoral gains exhibited by parties spouting this message gives those with racist dispositions more confidence to express their views violently. The National Rally (RN) - which came first in the European elections, and is also now the single largest party in the French Parliament - ran on a platform of barely-veiled xenophobia and islamophobia, and whilst it has attempted to distance itself from its neo-fascist roots in the public eye, scandal after scandal has proven this to be little more than a PR stunt.

Even more to the right of the RN is Éric Zemmour’s even more virulently racist and misogynistic ‘Reconquest’ party. While this group does not pose a threat at the ballot box, its status as a registered - and heavily platformed - political party further legitimises racial hatred, and also gives right wing extremists an opportunity to organise without being monitored by the police (the monitoring of party members in this way being officially prohibited). 

Indeed, this heavy platforming of far-right ideas reveals another side to the problem. More and more media outlets, such as CNews, have been producing a continuous stream of sensationalist far-right content which spends an inordinate amount of time spreading fear about muslims and the Left, often under the influence of far-right billionaire and media mogul Vincent Bolloré (a sort of French Rupert Murdoch). Key to much of this ‘reporting’ is the notion of ‘islamo-leftism’, which has now become a household concept - this is the idea that there is alliance, whether or not the former is cognisant of it, between ‘the Left’ and ‘radical Islamists’, which aids in the diffusion of a deeply conservative and dangerous form of Islam in French society.

This form of reporting, unconscionable as it is, has a wide audience. It is largely for this reason that, as Loïc Sipié points out, even more supposedly centrist outlets have recently been dropping the long-respected cordon sanitaire - an agreement not to platform the far-right in order to not give legitimacy and publicity to egregious views - in order to compete. 

All this explains why those who already harboured racist sentiments or animosity towards democracy are more likely to feel comfortable expressing this violently. But there is also a sense that racism is becoming more widespread in France more generally. In the face of a cost-of-living crisis, the collapse of the traditional political parties, and a government that most French people feel cares little about them, many are desperate for change. The far-right promises a solution to this desperation, offering a radically different vision of the future - if one only agrees to accept the ‘foreigner’ and the ‘anti-French’ Left as sacrificial lambs (whilst conveniently passing over the much realer role of members of the ruling class such as Bolloré in causing the current crisis).

For now, far-right attacks don’t show signs of stopping. While the decision of the national anti-terrorist prosecution service to investigate the murder of Mr Miraoui as an act of terrorism (a first when it comes to an offence committed by the far-right) may have given some hope that the state is finally beginning to take far-right violence more seriously, it is too soon to claim that this marks a real change. With the RN being likely to win the presidency in a couple of years, and even centrist parties adopting increasing hardline tones in order to appeal to far-right voters, there are many causes for concern.

Yet all is not lost. Whilst the RN is the single largest party in Parliament, they still won fewer votes than the left-wing coalition in 2024, the success of which defied all expectations. There is still a strong political movement in France which, despite all its internal problems, is fiercely opposed to all forms of discrimination and exploitation. Another future really is possible.

Image: Flickr/Mikael Marguerie

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