Cow to explain the extreme right-wing nature of the French political landscape? Even though the question is complex and admits of multiple answers, there is little doubt that the experience of macronism bears an overwhelming responsibility.
Let us be clear: the dispersion of candidatures on the left and the discouraging effect produced on the voters also help to explain this situation. However, this explanation is insufficient. If we add up all the left-wing candidates (socialists, ecologists, “rebels”, communists, etc.), we arrive with difficulty, according to the last survey carried out by The world in December, to 27% of the voting intentions in the first round of the presidential election scheduled for April 10, 2022, against 29% totaling the two far-right candidates (Zemmour and Le Pen), 17% for the right-wing candidate (Pécresse) and 24% for the outgoing president, who, to put it simply, can be placed in the center right, and is more and more seen as such by voters. Nowhere among our neighbors do we observe such a weakness of the left. The Social Democratic, Socialist, Labor or Democratic parties are in power in Germany and Spain, or in a position to return to them in the next elections in the United Kingdom and Italy.
It must certainly be taken into account that the Socialist Party has been in power in France for twenty years over the past forty years, which may have fueled particular weariness. By comparison, the Social Democrats were in power only seven years in Germany and the Labor Party thirteen years in the United Kingdom. It is only in Spain that the Socialists have been more in power, which has also ended up fueling a split within the left, with the emergence of Podemos, which the two parties have had a lot of. hard to overcome, to finally govern together. In France, the center-left might have needed to admit its mistakes in power and look more to France rebellious after the debacle of 2017. It might not have been enough, but there is still time to try.
Virulence
The extreme right-wing nature of the French political landscape can also be explained by other specific factors, starting with a particularly virulent postcolonial and Franco-Algerian trauma in France. Nostalgia for French Algeria and the xenophobic breeding ground that surrounds these still vivid wounds thus played a central role in the emergence of lepenism as well as of zemmourism.
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