Stop Using Jews to Launder Marine Le Pen’s Image
France’s establishment increasingly presents “Islamo-leftists” as the number-one source of antisemitism while whitewashing the far right. A French Jewish activist explains why it is dangerous to counterpose the defense of Jews with that of other minorities.
France’s political center, represented by President Emmanuel Macron, has increasingly painted the Left as antisemitic, even as the right-wing party of a convicted Holocaust denier threatens to take power. (Aurelien Morissard / POOL / AFP)
The first round of France’s snap elections on June 30 put the far-right Rassemblement National in a historically strong position. Ahead of the runoff vote this Sunday, many of Marine Le Pen’s opponents hope only to stop her from winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly. To this end, Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble and the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) have each withdrawn many of their candidates to give each other a free run in the second round.
This attempt to reconstitute a “republican front” marks a belated half-retreat for many in the political center, who’ve long argued that the NPF represents as great a threat as Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. The alliance, they have claimed, is little more than cover for a dangerous new antisemitism on the Left, of which Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise are supposedly the most vocal political agents. Allegations of widespread left-wing antisemitism surged against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war before becoming one of the main themes of France’s turbocharged snap elections. They have contributed to the normalization of Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National — a party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted Holocaust denier, and other nostalgists of the collaborationist Vichy regime.
Simon Assoun is a spokesperson for Tsedek!, a decolonial and anti-racist Jewish collective formed last spring. He sat down with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler for an extended conversation on antisemitism, the political reverberations in France of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the rise of the far right.
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