France is on the brink of all-out civil conflict

www.msn.com

by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

As some 500,000 Left-wingers marched in France’s cities yesterday, shouting anti-Fascist slogans, never had Lenin’s phrase seemed more apposite: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Upended by Emmanuel Macron’s decision last week to call a snap election after the hard-Right National Rally won over a third of the vote in the European elections, French politics is now in a state of chaos. Macron deliberately chose the shortest constitutionally compatible timeline, with a first round to be held on June 30, and the runoff on July 7.

Defiance, hostility and suspicion reign between adversaries, but also among so-called allies, forced by circumstances into unnatural coalitions. Parties that have just finished competing for voters in a proportional representation system now face a first past-the-post contest and have spent last week frantically cobbling together alliances.

The Left-Green alliance, calling itself the New Popular Front, coalesced under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). Its European election campaign focused on Gaza in a naked bid for votes from the young and the banlieues. They flew more Palestinian flags than French ones (and quite a few from former French colonies like Algeria and Tunisia, with explicit anti-French slogans), and more than one march ended in violence.

Now, in an election where local factors matter in each constituency, the Palestinian slogans and keffiyehs have miraculously vanished: the NPF is battling “fascism at our door”. The official party platform published on Friday is even more extreme than ever, calling for the suspension of EU treaties with Israel and taxes on everything…