Unrest in France: Could the far-right benefit from riots?

The violence on the streets seems to be gradually dying down, but in many French cities, life is still not back to normal. Anger at the state and its institutions exploded around the country after police shot dead 17-year-old Nahel during a traffic stop in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. The situation deteriorated further after a video appeared on social media which insinuated that the police officer was not acting in self-defense.

However, not all political parties have shown unreserved solidarity with Nahel’s family. Eric Ciotti, president of the conservative The Republicans (LR) party, tweeted his “support,” but also expressed his confidence in the police, saying that people should await the findings of the investigation before condemning the officer. Two days after the incident, he called on the government to declare a state of emergency in response to the unrest. This would grant authorities far-reaching powers, such as the ability to restrict freedom of assembly, or search people’s homes.

With this, Ciotti went much further than Marine Le Pen, the RN candidate in the past two presidential elections and current head of the party’s parliamentary group in the French National Assembly. Le Pen described President Macron’s comments as “excessive,” and she, too, stressed that people should await the results of the investigation. However, she believed that a state of emergency should only be imposed if the situation continued to deteriorate.

Benjamin Morel, a lecturer in public law at Paris Pantheon-Assas University, calls this a “suit-and-tie strategy.” The National Rally has been trying to come across as moderate for years now, he said. “They wear suits and ties everywhere — in the National Assembly, for example — and don’t call attention to themselves the way they used to do, with very radical statements,” he explained in an interview with DW. “In the current crisis, the RN is adopting almost the same line as Macron.”

However, Gilles Ivaldi, a political scientist at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris (CEVIPOF), pointed out that some members of the RN are in fact driving a harder line. He cited the RN party leader Jordan Bardella as an example.

The 27-year-old Bardella, himself from an immigrant family, has spoken of the “growing savagery of society resulting from a completely insane immigration policy,” and promised to expel all “foreign criminals” from France if the RN wins the presidential elections in 2027.

“The party is pursuing a dual strategy that plays both to its traditional, extreme voters, and to potential new voters who are worried about security and see the RN as a party that Le Pen has seemingly made acceptable, and that will restore order,” Ivaldi told DW.

The National Rally still has a racist manifesto, says Sylvain Crepon, a political science lecturer at the University of Tours in central France. “The party wants to end all immigration from outside Europe, and is clearly opposed to the values of integration and equality,” he told DW. It was a fact so well known, Crepon believed, that the party no longer needed to mention it aloud.

“Even if Marine Le Pen doesn’t mention it explicitly, everyone knows that, according to her party, it’s always immigrants who are to blame for crime in France. When other politicians like Ciotti say the same thing, it only helps the RN, because voters would rather vote for the original than a copy,” Crepon says.

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle