Dissatisfaction with President François Hollande’s tenure has spurred on a conservative movement in France. With an embarrassingly low approval rating of 19 percent, Hollande has been a huge disappointment, largely due to unprecedented levels of unemployment. Economic stagnation in various towns across France has exacerbated social tensions and xenophobia, threatening the rights and safety of millions in the name of traditional family values.
Recent parliamentary elections in France reflect this shift. While Socialist candidate Hidalgo’s victory as mayor of Paris is a bright spot for Hollande, the party has lost its grip on dozens of major towns elsewhere across France. The governing left took 38 percent of the vote, far behind the mainstream right on 46 percent, which regained control in towns and cities such as Reims, Saint-Étienne, Roubaix and Quimper. Jean Copé, leader of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, confidently pronounced, “We are today the number one party in France.” Though UMP was numerically dominant, the symbolic victor of these recent local elections was Marine Le Pen’s populist National Front (FN). The FN took at least 11 towns and cities, including the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, Béziers in the southwest and Fréjus on the Riviera. Its best previous score was just three towns, in 1995. “We have moved onto a new level,” Marine Le Pen, FN leader, claimed. “There is now a third major political force in our country.”
Le Pen’s party is founded on populist values, with staunch anti-immigrant and anti-EU platforms. Though Le Pen claims to have gone to considerable lengths to rid her party of its overt anti-Semitism and racism, the party’s fundamental conception of “France for the French” can’t shake the stench of xenophobia and discrimination. Le Pen’s condemnation of Muslims in France has led to various successful proposals to infringe on their civil liberties, ranging from the banning of the headscarf, to public prayer, to most recently, serving halal meat in school cafeterias. Since coming to power in 11 districts, Le Pen announced, “We will not accept any religious demands in school menus. There is no reason for religion to enter the public sphere, that’s the law.”
Comparisons have been repeatedly drawn with this social conservatism and the American Tea Party. Back in February, leftist Prime Minister Manuel Valls sparked a whirl of commentary in an interview, with the headline “Valls emphasises the emergence of a ‘Tea Party à la française.’” Valls was speaking after the ‘Day of Anger,’ which was a series of protests organized by conservative organizations such as Printemps Français (French Spring) and Manif Pour Tous (Protest for All).
Over 100,000 French men, women and children marched through Paris and Lyon, accusing the government of “family-phobia” for legalizing gay marriage and other planned policies they say will harm traditional families. The marchers’ denouncements of Hollande’s social policies quickly turned into hate speech; the demonstrators railed against new laws allowing gay marriage, gay adoption and in vitro fertilization (‘No unnatural families!’). Videos from the march show thousands of Frenchmen yelling “Jews, France is not yours,” while marching through Paris giving Nazi salutes. In the article, Valls reflected on the resurgent conservative movement: “We are witnessing the creation” – remember, he is calling them anti-Semitic, racist and anti-gay, the forces of darkness – “of a Tea Party to the French.”
The rejection of Hollande and rise of the FN is not grounded solely in economic worries, but in socio-politics in and of itself as well. FN supporters have various concerns, including losing jobs to immigrants, national autonomy in relation to the EU, and the general decline of traditions and values. These factors, combined with a frustration for mainstream parties, have all contributed to this shift. For instance, while satisfaction with the EU is also at an all-time low, the FN proposes to do away with the euro, exit the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone and specifically choose French over foreign applicants on the job market.
The majority of this frustration seems to be channeled into anti-immigrant rhetoric, focused largely on Muslims (a category that Frenchmen have long used to describe North Africans and Arabs as well), who are framed as outsiders of the French Republic. In a poll published by Le Figaro in October 2012, 60 percent of French people believe that Islam has become “too visible and influential” in France and 43 percent consider the presence of Muslim immigrants to be a threat to French national identity, compared to just 17 percent who say it enriches society. And while the history of anti-Muslim discrimination in France extends back to the era of Algerian colonialism, there has been a notable resurgence in recent years.
In December of 2013, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault attempted to address these reports of hostility against French Muslims. Ayrault created a panel that provided several proposals to develop an “inclusive secularism” in France by improving the integration of Muslim immigrants into France. Among a long list of recommendations aimed at “recognizing the richness of multiple identities,” the panel says that public schools in France should begin allowing Muslim pupils to wear headscarves in class (outlawed since 2004), and that courses should be taught in Arabic and African languages rather than in French.
The panel also had several recommendations on how to better recognize the “Arab-oriental dimension” of France’s national identity, such as changing street and place names, overhauling the public school’s history curriculum, and establishing a national day to honor immigrants in France. More notably, the panel proposed a new law that to make “racial harassment” a punishable offense, and to prohibit media from referring to people’s nationality, religion or ethnicity in public.
Unsurprisingly, the proposals sparked tremendous criticism. Copé denounced the proposals as “explosive and irresponsible” because they replace “the one and indivisible French Republic with a motley assembly of communities, ethnicities and groups of all kinds.” Le Pen noted that the report’s recommendations are “a very grave provocation” and implementing them would be tantamount to “a declaration of war on the French people.”
The followers of the FN and conservative thinkers more broadly have openly expressed concerned about the steady disintegration of French society due to mass immigration, and have called for the return to the traditional values of the French Republic. These ideas are powerful and attractive to disenfranchised French people; however, it seems like the poor economic climate exacerbated the division between Socialist supporters of multiculturalism in France and the Conservative republican camp. These discriminatory attitudes must be addressed and diffused in their own right, but let’s hope that economic anxieties do not irrevocably antagonize France’s Muslim population.