WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - IDEAS AND STRUGGLES: How Fascism is Winning France (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 A Resistible Movement or Not? ---- Thus, we should no longer speak of

the rise of fascism, but of a conquest of power in France that would no
longer be a sinister fantasy but a certainty. Ugo Palheta, in his book
How Fascism is Winning France, from Macron to Le Pen, published by La
Découverte, believes that this is a "process already underway and the
concrete possibility of a state of open war against minorities, the
working classes, the left, and social movements." However, he considers
that the outcome is possible but "resistible, provided that the danger
is recognized in time and fought with determination, unity, and
strategic sense." ---- The book aims to explain how, after the
peremptory assertions of "never again" or the slogans of the
demonstrations, we can refer to the famous phrase of Bertolt Brecht:
"The womb is still fertile from which the foul beast will emerge."
Vigilance is constant and in areas that are not limited to caricatured
organizations. There is a whole series of structures, ideological,
societal, institutional developments that are imperceptibly transforming
the State in an authoritarian and racist or at least xenophobic
direction, a form of creeping fascism. Thus, let us go back in time, if
only to 2019 and note the coercive measures imposed on the inhabitants
under the cover of a health crisis. The process is admirably described
in Théo Boulakia and Nicolas Mariot's book, L'attestation, Une
expérience d'obedience de masse (The Certificate: An Experience of Mass
Obedience), Spring 2020, Ed. Anamosa, 2023. It's a trivialization, the
acceptance of vocabulary, procedures persisting just in case... The
institutional left had no reaction, even if only one of distrust.

The Choice of Words

Be careful with the choice of words, and Ugo Palheta takes care to
distinguish fascism from populism. Fascism: a mass movement that claims
to work for the regeneration of an imaginary community considered
organic and whose disappearance or at least decomposition is feared.
Current neoliberalism, neither right nor left, for which everything is
equal, leads to the end of ideologies, demobilization, the degradation
of social rights, and the reinforcement of inequalities.

Ugo Palheta paints a picture of the political developments of the last
fifty years to re-establish responsibilities for the rise of the extreme
right with security laws, social violence in businesses, the increasing
power granted to capitalist finance, and the circumvention of the people
with the complicity of the media. All political leaders, from the left
to Emmanuel Macron, are taking the blame, even if some are forgotten.
Certainly, Ugo Palheta attributes to Nicolas Sarkozy the responsibility
for the radicalization of the right, both in the vocabulary used and the
proliferation of laws relating to nationality and security. The FN/RN
has fed off these developments; its discourse was taken up in the media
and by political leaders. Thus, this opposition between Them and Us is
asserted in the political landscape. The "real French" in opposition to
the "paper French"! The France that rises early and the France that
rises late...

Political debate opposes, rejects, and accuses Others.

Instead of uniting people, political debate opposes, rejects, and
accuses. Thus, this National Front (FN)/National Front (RN) creates the
illusion of a popular party, while its leaders constitute a quasi-family
caste. The discourse is extremely violent, with France "submerged,"
"occupied," "colonized" by "anti-nationals," "unassimilable." And a
minister recently spoke of "barbarians"...

This re-examination of words and behaviors prevents the reader from
being guided solely by current events. This is an interesting synthesis
of recent political history and that of this conglomerate party that has
never denied its origins.

At the end of this journey, the author seeks effective proposals and
argues for them. The reader is the judge. Certainly, analyzing the past
allows us to understand individuals and events. Yet, as Ugo Palheta
asserts: "It's probably not the fascist past of the National Rally that
should worry us, but its fascist future once it has seized power."

* Ugo Palheta
How Fascism is Winning France
 From Macron to Le Pen
Publisher: La Découverte, 2025

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8498
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