Even in 1936, a year which saw the victory, in the face of fascism, of the Front Populaire alliance of Socialists and Communists and the appointment of Léon Blum as prime minister of France, anti-Semitism was not a major theme in the electoral campaign. That goes to show how serious the current situation is: With just a week to go before an election that could tip France to the far right, public debate, electrified by the rape of a Jewish teenager in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, is degenerating into controversies on anti-Semitism. This observation alone shows the extent to which the political world has lost its bearings, with some parties having no qualms about exploiting the prejudices that led the world to catastrophe in the 20th century.
The first manifestation of this great misguidance is the leadership of the Rassemblement National (RN), consolidated since its victory in the European elections. The RN is heir to a party, the Front National, co-founded by a former member of the Waffen-SS and Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted anti-Semite and denier of the Holocaust's gas chambers. None of the maneuvers designed to "de-demonize" the RN can erase the anti-Semitic roots and racial obsessions of a movement whose new self-proclaimed philosemitism is merely a screen for its hatred of Muslims.
The keystone of the RN's policy platform is the concept of "national priority," undermining the constitutional principle of equality. The fact that Jordan Bardella – who in November 2023, before retracting his statement, denied Jean-Marie Le Pen's anti-Semitism – is now publicly withdrawing the nomination of a candidate who made a dubious tweet about the gas chambers shows the ambiguities of the proclaimed spring cleaning.
Strategy of chaos
Against this facade, the left must oppose its historical intransigence by emphasizing its historical intransigence, from the Dreyfus affair to Vichy, towards all forms of racism and anti-Semitism. Instead, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, himself accustomed to nauseating innuendos and reviving old leftist flaws, is trying to exploit the anger linked to the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza to win over voters from immigrant backgrounds. He denies the surge in anti-Semitic attacks and the fears of many Jews, shrugging off his critics because of presumed Jewishness or belonging to a "colonial left." In doing so, he is only adding fuel to the fire, essentializing every French Muslim as a Palestinian victim and every French Jew as a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. What is he waiting for to withdraw his nomination of candidates who call Raphaël Glucksmann a "Zionist" or equate Hamas with a "resistance" movement?
This strategy of chaos is as deliberate as it is deadly for the left, whose facade of unity, built in record time since the dissolution decided by President Emmanuel Macron, is cracking in the worst way. This strategy benefits the RN, as witnessed by the terrible change of heart from the exemplary Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who has said he would be prepared to vote RN. It compromises anti-racism and the fight against anti-Semitism as the glue holding the left together and the gateway for generations of young people to its ideal of equality. But this desire to define people by their community is also disastrous for French society, which, with Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim populations, risks being plunged into violence by importing the Middle East conflict.
Wherever it comes from, from the far right or the left, anti-Semitism is both a sign of social and political crisis and a tragically destructive weapon. Whatever its propagators or alibis, it is a poison to be fought without truce or concession.