The 2015 French local and regional elections marked not only the government’s defeat and the Left’s collapse, but also the National Front’s (FN) breakthrough. The far-right party didn’t win any regions, but when compared to 2010, it tripled its vote count in the first-round elections and even won new voters between the first and second rounds. Between these results and polling, many expect the FN to perform much better than in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election.

The FN has consolidated the most reactionary elements of French society and is attracting a growing segment of the population. Should it attain power, it will likely not only legitimize the systematic racism that pervades French society but also, in order to satisfy its activist base, intensify already existing policies that target Muslim, Roma, and immigrant communities.

Indeed, this is already happening in Calais before the demolition of the camp where thousands of immigrants were living and facing regular assaults from far-right groups. The FN’s electoral success has stoked some parts of the population, and solidarity with immigrants is barely organized. Additionally, small, violent groups have begun to grow, most notably the Identity Bloc (BI), which is close enough to the FN that they share members, including anti-Muslim activist Philippe Vardon, who’s now an elected member of the FN but has been sentenced to six months of prison for an assault against nonwhite people in 2014.