RG

Today there is a bedrock of voters in France, a very coherent vote, that explains the problems of society by saying there are too many immigrants. Theirs is quite a simple analysis: if the immigrants weren’t here, there would be more work for me, my children, etc.

There are other themes put forward by Marine Le Pen such as the critique of the European Union, competition from Eastern countries, the euro question. But the critique of the European Union exists among other candidates too, including ourselves. Ultimately what makes the Le Pen vote is the question of xenophobia, a certain conception of the nation as an ethnic rather than civic question. This idea that we cannot make a people together with Muslims, or anyone not descended from what a Frenchman was “across the ages.” These are mythologized concepts — after all, there is no French ethnicity.

They really are populists in that regard, in the sense that Laclau and Mouffe give that word. They construct a “them” and an “us,” and it is very clear what that is. The “them” are the refugees who arrive fleeing war, the economic immigrants, the Muslims with their demands to be able to worship, etc.

There are people in France who agree with that. I would not say it is 20 percent of voters. When they get high percentage scores, for example at the European elections, that corresponds to disastrous levels of abstention. At the European elections they got 25 percent. That is a very strong score. But there were four million FN voters out of sixteen million. I really think that the challenge is turnout. They thrive on civic apathy.

So it is in their interest that there is no campaign. That those who are disgusted by politics remain disgusted. The context looked OK for them: there was a situation on the Right where the candidate is mired in scandal, the Socialist Party (PS) was a totally off-putting spectacle, with its betrayals and its unkept promises. So they thought that they, too, will abstain. People were watching all this at a distance and thinking, what a horrible spectacle, I will stay at home. That was the FN’s campaign. It does not go to the people to campaign, it does not stimulate debate, it has no event to gather the people. It has a strategy to make its significance felt, to give its own solid base more relative importance. And that base is ideologically solid.

There has always been a far right in France. And yes, it is strong right now. But our task is to drown out these people with the non-fascist votes. And that is what we are seeking to do. As we have spoken not to the Left but to all those who are disgusted, as we have opened the campaign, we have built an effective antifascist strategy.

As a campaign we orient towards the independents, the “disgusted,” we have to speak to them. For example, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the only candidate who talks so much about work. Really, about the fact, quite simply that as we live our lives, there are things that are made by human beings — workers. That is work. From this point of view Jean-Luc Mélenchon has a discourse very much connected with the working class. But we do not speak to them as the Left, we speak to them as the working class. Speaking about the Left is not the same as talking about work. The word “left” is not present in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s discourse. But he does talk a lot about the working-class condition.