As polls are predicting a severe defeat for President Emmanuel Macron (+/−20%) in tomorrow’s French legislative elections, and a major breakthrough for Bardella of the Rassemblement National, with as much as 36.5% of the vote, Jacques Cheminade, president of Solidarité & Progrès party, published an in-depth analysis of the ongoing elections.
The legislative election campaign focused on domestic political measures, which are demagogic because they are inapplicable in the existing system, and because none of the three “Alliances” running presented either a means or a strategy to get out of that system. All are blind to or complicit with external perils and constraints. All of them, at best, say nothing, or worse, adapt to the rules of the existing financial oligarchy. None of them, as I keep repeating, provides the means to turn France into a champion for peace, for the common salvation and against the double threat of world war and domestic civil war. All are maneuvering in the political context created by the pyromaniac at the Elysée, and none is standing up to put out the fire that is burning down our French home.
I. The National Rally (RN)
Given its electoral success, we’ll start by looking at Jordan Bardella and the Rassemblement National. What does its “de-demonization” entail?
1) Supporting the delivery of arms to Ukraine and applauding Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appearances. So, like the other two Alliances running, the RN has joined the war party. The only caveat is that they will refuse to supply long-range weapons that could reach into Russian territory, as well as the official or unofficial presence of French military personnel on Ukrainian territory.
However, this is only a statement of principle, for although Marine Le Pen once envisaged withdrawing from NATO’s integrated military command, she no longer defends that today, at a moment when NATO intends to expand into the economic field, extend its hold over the Pacific, and supports Germany’s policy of imposing an air defense shield on Europe, based on German, American and Israeli technologies. Under these conditions, to remain within NATO and claim at the same time to be maintaining France’s sovereignty and defense capabilities is quite simply to lie.
2) By abandoning almost all its social reforms, in order to reassure the markets, the RN is submitting to the domination of the financial oligarchy of the City of London and Wall Street, that rule over these markets. This oligarchy constitutes the war party, having the illusion of saving its financial speculation bubble by subjugating all those who have not rallied to it. In fact, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen have bowed to the advice of François Durvye, Pierre-Edouard Stérin and many others, such as Vincent Bolloré, who represent the identity-oriented internationalist faction of our country’s employers, i.e. the de facto collaborators of the City and Wall Street world.
3) People will say that only fools are incapable of change, but in every field, opportunism is overflowing at the RN. Let’s take two examples. Once opposed to nuclear power, Marine Le Pen then considered it a lesser evil and has become today its unabashed advocate. Clearly, this is not due to scientific competence. The RN of the “Durafour crématoire” [a famous anti-Semitic pun made by her father] and its founders, the SS and the Secret Army Organization (OAS) under Jean-Marie Le Pen, has become today ardently Gaullist and a defender of our Jewish community, and even of the current Israeli government. Clearly, it was not out of ecumenical humanism that Marine Le Pen declared on May 29 that “the National Front has always been Zionist.” While she and Jordan Bardella are in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state, they believe, like Emmanuel Macron, that it’s “not yet time to do so.” What’s more, as their opponents proclaim, it’s equally clear that many of their candidates haven’t made the required verbal turn.
4) There remains, beyond the areas mentioned above, those in which the RN has not changed: immigration and security. Posing two real questions, the RN provides incompetent or excessive answers. The fact is that these problems can only be solved within an international framework of mutual security and development. Two examples.
The RN is calling for the abolition of the state medical assistance (Aide Médicale de l’Etat), which covers health care costs for illegal immigrants, and demands it be replaced by a “vital emergency assistance scheme.” This may seem acceptable on paper, given the many abuses today, but in reality it runs counter to the Hippocratic Oath. Furthermore, it would mean that our hospitals would only receive patients suffering from more serious diseases than if they had been treated earlier, at a higher cost, thereby creating reservoirs for epidemics. Only a new international order of mutual development would make it possible to finance local health services to ensure better treatment.
The RN wants change within a financial system that blocks all change.
