Right-Wing Extremism and Alt-Right

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Marine Le Pen Proposes Ban on Muslim Women Wearing Head Scarves

      by

      Marine Le Pen, the far-right contender, has proposed a ban on Muslim women wearing head scarves in public.PARIS — A Muslim woman in a blue and white hijab confronted Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, as she made her way through a crowd in the southern town of Pertuis last week. “What is the head scarf doing in politics?” the woman demanded.Ms. Le Pen, a nationalist with an anti-immigrant agenda, has vowed to ban the wearing of the head scarf in public if she is elected in the second round of voting next Sunday. She says that it is “an Islamist uniform,” or a sign of adherence to an extremist, anti-Western interpretation of the Muslim faith.The woman who argued with Ms. Le Pen was having none of this. Her choice to wear a head scarf was made, she said, “when I was an older woman,” as a sign of “being a grandmother.” Ms. Le Pen insisted that in many French neighborhoods women who do not wear a veil are “separated, isolated and judged.” In the country with the largest Muslim population in western Europe, what a woman wears on her head matters. France has a troubled relationship with Islam because of its colonial history in Algeria and several jihadist terror attacks in recent years. As Ms. Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron confront each other in a tight race, religious freedom, particularly for the Muslims who make up about 8 percent of the population, has emerged as a pivotal issue.Mr. Macron, who has called Ms. Le Pen’s plan “an extremist project,” has nevertheless angered some members of the Muslim community, mainly through legislation designed to combat what he calls “Islamist separatism.” That law, passed last year, has been used to close some mosques and Islamic associations accused of fostering radicalism. It was designed in part to draw right-wing voters to his centrist camp.Mr. Macron, whose lead in polls has widened slightly over the past week to 53.5 percent against Ms. Le Pen’s 46.5 percent, had his own confrontation with a young French woman wearing a hijab during a campaign stop in Strasbourg last week.“Are you a feminist?” he asked. “Are you for the equality of women and men?”President Emmanuel Macron of France at a rally in Marseille on Saturday.Afp Contributor#Afp/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen the woman answered yes to both questions, and said her head scarf was chosen, not imposed, Mr. Macron, clearly alluding to Ms. Le Pen, said this was “the best answer to all the stupidity I keep hearing.”It was another example of Mr. Macron, who scarcely campaigned before the first round of voting on April 10, adjusting his message to appeal to blocs of voters who have felt betrayed by him over the past five years — the Muslim community and the left.In the first round, about 70 percent of French Muslims voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who was narrowly eliminated, according to a study by the Ifop polling institute. Where those votes now go matters.France is a secular republic and in theory a nondiscriminatory society where people are free to believe, or not, in any god they wish. But it finds itself in a fracturing debate over Islam. A growing Muslim presence is seen by the extreme-right as a mortal threat to French identity, and this view has gained a foothold in the political mainstream.Intensely attached to its model of a secular society, known as laïcité, which is supposed to subsume all men and women into the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship, France has been reluctant to acknowledge failures that have left many Muslim immigrants and their descendants in dismal housing projects on the periphery of big cities, feeling no viable French identity or future.Since 2011 it has been illegal to wear a face-covering niqab, or a burqa covering the entire body, in public. But there is no ban on the head scarf.French laws prohibit wearing ostentatious religious symbols — the head scarf is considered one — in schools. Civil servants are also barred from doing so on the job. Debate has raged over whether parents accompanying school trips should be allowed to wear head scarves, but attempts to stop them have failed.A woman in a head scarf in Marseille on Saturday ahead of a campaign appearance by Mr. Macron.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStrongly held French feelings about the equality of men and women, about secularism, and about its supposedly colorblind society lie behind the virulence of the discussion of these issues. So does unacknowledged or overt prejudice.Mr. Macron has accused Ms. Le Pen of undermining the principles of laïcité and the Constitution itself with the proposed head scarf ban. In an interview with Franceinfo radio last week, he said she would also have to ban the use of the “kippa, the cross and other religious symbols” in public or she would be discriminating among believers.Not so, Ms. Le Pen retorted in an interview with France Inter radio. “The head scarf is in reality an Islamist uniform, it is not a Muslim uniform, and that makes all the difference. It is the uniform of an ideology, not of a religion.”She continued: “This ban is not based on the concept of laïcité. It is based on the battle against Islamist ideologies.”However, Ms. Le Pen appeared to hedge a little on Sunday, saying that the issue is a “complex problem” and that her proposed ban would be debated in the National Assembly.Whether the ban would also apply to women choosing head scarves as fashion statements à la Audrey Hepburn is unclear.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      In Call Before Jan. 6 Riot, a Plea to ‘Descend on the Capitol’

      by

      Days before Jan. 6, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr. told Trump backers to make lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results feel that “people are breathing down their necks.”One week before an angry mob stormed the Capitol, a communications expert named Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., joined a conference call with a group of President Donald J. Trump’s supporters and made an urgent plea.After assuring his listeners that the 2020 election had been stolen, Mr. Sullivan told them that they had to go to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day that Congress was to meet to finalize the electoral count — and “descend on the Capitol,” according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.While Mr. Sullivan claimed that he was “not inciting violence or any kind of riots,” he urged those on the call to make their presence felt at the Capitol in a way that would intimidate members of Congress, telling the group that they had to ensure that lawmakers inside the building “understand that people are breathing down their necks.”He also pledged that Mr. Trump was going to take action on his own; the president, he said, was going to impose a form of martial law on Jan. 6 and would not be leaving office.“Biden will never be in that White House,” Mr. Sullivan declared. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”Before Riot, Operative Urged Trump Supporters to ‘Descend on the Capitol’ on Jan. 6In a conference call days before the Jan. 6 attack, Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., exhorted supporters of President Donald J. Trump to go to the Capitol that day and pressure lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results.The recording of the call, which took place on Dec. 30, 2020, emerged as the Justice Department has expanded its criminal investigation of the Capitol attack. It offers a glimpse of the planning that went on in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol and the mind-set of some of those who zeroed in on Jan. 6 as a kind of last stand for keeping Mr. Trump in office.It also reflects the complexities that federal prosecutors are likely to face as they begin the task of figuring out how much — or even whether — people involved in the political rallies that preceded the assault can be held accountable for the violence that erupted.After more than a year of focusing exclusively on rioters who took part in the storming of the Capitol, prosecutors have widened their gaze in recent weeks and have started to question whether those involved in encouraging protests — like the one that Mr. Sullivan was describing — can be held culpable for disrupting the work of Congress.Mr. Sullivan’s remarks during the call appeared to be an effort to motivate a group of people aggrieved by the election to take direct action against members of Congress on Jan. 6, presaging what Mr. Trump himself would say in a speech that day. While it remains unclear whether anyone on Mr. Sullivan’s call went on to join the mob that breached the Capitol, he seemed to be exhorting his listeners to apply unusual pressure on lawmakers just as they were overseeing the final count of Electoral College votes.In a statement provided by his lawyer, Mr. Sullivan played down the nature of the call, saying he had merely “shared some encouragement” with what he described as “people who all felt their votes had been disenfranchised in the 2020 elections.” Mr. Sullivan said he had been asked to participate in the call by a group of anti-vaccine activists — or what he called “health freedom advocate moms” — who were hosting “a small, permitted event” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.“I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” Mr. Sullivan said in the statement. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”Still, in the recording of the call, Mr. Sullivan can be heard telling his listeners that the lawmakers inside the Capitol “need to feel pressure.”“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.”As the Justice Department widens its inquiry, federal prosecutors are using a grand jury in Washington to gather information on political organizers, speakers and so-called V.I.P.s connected to a series of pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election. One prominent planner of those rallies, Ali Alexander, received a subpoena from the grand jury and said last week that he intended to comply with its requests.In the run-up to Jan. 6, Mr. Alexander publicly discussed a pressure campaign against lawmakers that was meant to stop the final electoral count, saying he was working with Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama and Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, all Republicans.“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Mr. Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope. The plan, he said, was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”It is unclear if the Justice Department is aware of Mr. Sullivan’s conference call; the department declined to comment. The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 was provided with a copy of the recording some months ago by the woman who made it, Staci Burk, a law student and Republican activist from Arizona.Shortly after the election, Ms. Burk became convinced that phony ballots had been flown in bulk into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She eventually submitted an anonymous affidavit concerning the ballots in an election fraud case filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Macron Sets Out to Build a ‘Dam’ Against Le Pen. Can It Hold?

      by

      After Sunday’s vote, when nearly a third of ballots went to the extreme right, a united front of mainstream voters looked more precarious than ever. PARIS — A day after Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, emerged as his challenger for the final round of France’s presidential election in less than two weeks, President Emmanuel Macron immediately set about on Monday to build the “dam.”Dams are the mainstream French voters who, time and again, have put political differences aside in the second round and voted for anyone but a Le Pen in a so-called “Republican front” to deny the far right the presidency.But after Sunday’s first round, when 32 percent of French voters supported candidates on the extreme right — a record — the dam may be more precarious than ever.Mr. Macron, widely criticized for a listless campaign, moved quickly Monday to shore it up, directly challenging Ms. Le Pen and her party, the National Rally, in the economically depressed north where she dominated Sunday.In Denain, a city won by Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Macron spoke of the worries of the youth in Denain and other social issues. He tried to remind voters of the extremist roots of Ms. Le Pen’s party, referring to it by its old name, the National Front.At a campaign stop of her own in a rural area, Yonne, Ms. Le Pen said that the dam was a dishonest strategy to win an election, adding that “it’s a way to save yourself when you don’t deserve it.’’In a triumphant speech against the majestic backdrop of the Louvre Museum five years ago, Mr. Macron had launched his presidency by pledging to unite the French so that there would be “no reason at all to vote for the extremes.’’But in addition to Ms. Le Pen’s second-place finish, with 23 percent of the vote, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist veteran, won 22 percent of Sunday’s votes to finish a strong third. Mr. Mélenchon’s supporters — split in their attitudes toward Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen — could now help determine the election’s final outcome on April 24.Outside a small market in Amiens, France, in March. Mr. Macron quickly moved Monday to challenge Ms. Le Pen in the economically depressed north where he lost to her even in Amiens, his hometown.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAfter five years of Mr. Macron, who trounced Ms. Le Pen in the 2017 runoff, the far-right leader emerged stronger than ever. She has softened her image in a successful process of “undemonizing’’ and focused relentlessly on ordinary voters’ economic hardship.In Yonne, Ms. Le Pen hammered away at the themes that carried her through to the second round. Meeting with a cereal farmer, she spoke of how rising prices of fuel and fertilizers following the war in Ukraine would raise the cost of staples at supermarkets and hurt the most vulnerable.The far right’s record performance on Sunday resulted from a combination of factors, including Ms. Le Pen’s own efforts to revamp her image, a successful cultural battle waged by conservative forces in recent years, and a series of Islamist attacks in France since 2015. But critics say that it also reflected Mr. Macron’s continued strategy of triangulating France’s electoral landscape. While Mr. Macron was regarded as a center-left candidate five years ago, he shifted rightward during his presidency, sensing that his main challenge would come from Ms. Le Pen. That shift was embodied by a series of laws toughening France’s stance on immigration, empowering the police, and combating Islamist extremism. Many working French also felt that his economic policies unfairly favored the rich and have left them more adrift.If Mr. Macron’s intention was to defuse Ms. Le Pen’s appeal by stripping her of her core issues, critics say the approach backfired by ushering the talking points of the far right deeper into the mainstream political debate. Then, Ms. Le Pen also shifted her message to pocketbook issues that have now resonated even more broadly as energy prices spike because of the war in Ukraine.Sacha Houlié, a lawmaker and a spokesman for Mr. Macron’s campaign, said that the president was aiming to strengthen the dam strategy. He acknowledged that there have been “some mistakes” and “blunders,” noting that some government ministers had picked up themes and expressions promoted by the far right. Supporters of Ms. Le Pen singing the national anthem at her rally after voting results were announced on Sunday. Mr. Macron has described the far-right leader as a danger to French democracy.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut Mr. Houlié denied that Mr. Macron had normalized far-right ideas, saying his government had mainly tried to respond to people’s growing concerns on crime and immigration. “We cannot sweep the dust under the carpet,” he said, referring to the issues. But many, especially Mr. Mélenchon’s supporters of the left, feel so betrayed that Mr. Macron may have a harder time in this next election persuading them to join his call for unity by building a dam against Ms. Le Pen, whom the president has called a danger to democracy. Alexis Lévrier, a historian who has written about Mr. Macron’s relations with the news media, said that as Mr. Macron tried to reshape French politics around a strict divide between his mainstream movement and Ms. Le Pen, he “contributed to the rise in power of the far right.” Unwittingly, “he’s a pyromaniac firefighter,” Mr. Lévrier said.A resident of Guyancourt — a well-off, left-leaning city southwest of Paris where Mr. Mélenchon came in first Sunday — Stéphanie Noury said that, in 2017, she gave Mr. Macron her vote as part of a dam against the far right. But this time, she planned to stay home for the final round.“Macron played into the hands of the extreme right,’’ said Ms. Noury, 55, a human resources manager who voted Sunday for Mr. Mélenchon. “He told himself that he would always win against the extreme right.’’Compared to 2017, Ms. Le Pen’s share of the first-round vote went up by a couple of percentage points despite the direct challenge of a new rival, the far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who urged his supporters to vote for Ms. Le Pen in the upcoming showdown.On Sunday, Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour and a third far-right candidate, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, together got 32 percent of the vote. In 2017, Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Dupont-Aignan collected 26 percent in the first round.Ms. Le Pen meeting supporters at a rally in Stiring-Wendel, France, on April 1. The far-right candidate has sought to soften her image.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesVoters first formed a dam against the extreme right in 2002 when Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked the political establishment by making it into a runoff against Jacques Chirac. Another dam helped defeat Ms. Le Pen in 2017.To gain credibility on the right, in 2019, Mr. Macron gave his first long interview on the sensitive issues of immigration and Islam to Valeurs Actuelles, a magazine that straddles the right and far right.“By talking to us, Emmanuel Macron came to seek some legitimacy on these subjects, from right-wing people who felt he was doing nothing,” said Geoffroy Lejeune, the publication’s editor. “He knows that by doing this, he’s sending a big signal.” Aurélien Taché, a lawmaker once allied with Mr. Macron, said the president was elected in 2017 thanks to voters who put aside their political differences and united against Ms. Le Pen. He said Mr. Macron should have taken those votes — mainly from the left — into account in his policies afterward.“He did not consider them,” he said, adding that Mr. Macron instead worked to “set up this cleavage’’ between him and Ms. Le Pen, leading to a “high-risk rematch.”“There have been, on a whole range of topics, very strong concessions made to the far right,” Mr. Taché said, also citing tougher immigration rules and the application of a stricter version of French secularism, called laïcité.A migrant family waiting for emergency accommodation with a host family in front of the Paris City Hall last year. Some allies distanced themselves from Mr. Macron after he toughened his stance on immigration.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut Mr. Taché, who quit Mr. Macron’s party in 2020 over the president’s shift to the right, was especially critical of the government’s landmark law against separatism, which has been criticized inside and outside France, including by the U.S. envoy on international religious freedom. The law amounted to “making Islam and Muslims invisible,” Mr. Taché said. Some academics, political opponents and Muslim organizations have also criticized the law as discriminating against French Muslims by leading to the widespread closing of mosques, Muslim associations and schools.That resentment may now also complicate Mr. Macron’s dam-building effort. To be re-elected this time, for instance, he will have to persuade voters in places likes Trappes, a working-class city with a large Muslim population southwest of Paris, to join the dam against Ms. Le Pen. A longtime stronghold of Mélenchon supporters, Trappes strongly backed Mr. Macron in the 2017 runoff. But comments by voters Sunday suggested that the dam might not be as effective this time. Frédéric Renan, 47, a computer programmer, said he would abstain or cast a blank vote in a showdown between Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.“Macron opened the door to the extreme right,’’ Mr. Renan said, adding that the president’s economic policies hurt the poor and fueled the rise of the far right. “I don’t see how voting for Macron is a vote in a dam against the extreme right,” he said. “Some people will say that not participating in the dam against the extreme right is irresponsible, that the threat of the extreme right is greater than what Emmanuel Macron proposes, but I’m not convinced.’’The Islamic Center of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in Trappes, a Paris suburb, on Sunday. To be re-elected, Mr. Macron will need to woo voters in places likes Trappes, a working-class city with a large Muslim population.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAdèle Cordonnier More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Macron to Face Le Pen for President as French Gravitate Toward Extremes

      by

      President Emmanuel Macron and the hard-right leader Marine Le Pen will compete for a second time in a runoff on April 24.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections.With 92 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Macron, a centrist, was leading with about 27.4 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 24.3 percent. Ms. Le Pen benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points.Marine Le Pen speaking after the first-round results were announced on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe principled French rejection of Ms. Le Pen’s brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a “land of immigration.”Ms. Le Pen’s ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down. This month, she was quick to congratulate Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist and anti-immigrant leader, on his fourth consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.“I will restore France to order in five years,” Ms. Le Pen declared to cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called “a choice of civilization” in which the “legitimate preponderance of French language and culture” would be guaranteed and full “sovereignty reestablished in all domains.”The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between “division, injustice and disorder” on the one hand, and the “rallying of French people around social justice and protection,” she said.Mr. Macron told flag-waving supporters: “I want a France in a strong Europe that maintains its alliances with the big democracies in order to defend itself, not a France that, outside Europe, would have as its only allies the populist and xenophobic International. That is not us.”He added: “Don’t deceive ourselves, nothing is decided, and the debate we will have in the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe.”A polling station in Pontoise on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesLast week, in an interview in the daily Le Parisien newspaper, Mr. Macron called Ms. Le Pen “a racist” of “great brutality.” Ms. Le Pen hit back, saying that the president’s remarks were “outrageous and aggressive.” She called favoring French people over foreigners “the only moral, legal and admissible policy.”The gloves will be off as they confront each other over the future of France, at a time when Britain’s exit from the European Union and the end of Angela Merkel’s long chancellorship in Germany have placed a particular onus on French leadership.Mr. Macron wants to transform Europe into a credible military power with “strategic autonomy.” Ms. Le Pen, whose party has received funding from a Russian and, more recently, a Hungarian bank, has other priorities.The runoff, on April 24, will be a repeat of the last election, in 2017, when Mr. Macron, then a relative newcomer to politics intent on shattering old divisions between left and right, trounced Ms. Le Pen with 66.9 percent of the vote to her 33.1 percent.The final result this time will almost certainly be much closer than five years ago. Polls taken before Sunday’s vote indicated Mr. Macron winning by just 52 percent to 48 percent against Ms. Le Pen in the second round. That could shift in the coming two weeks, when the candidates will debate for the first time in the campaign.Reflecting France’s drift to the right in recent years, no left-of-center candidate qualified for the runoff. The Socialist Party, long a pillar of postwar French politics, collapsed, leaving Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left anti-NATO candidate with his France Unbowed movement, to take third place with about 21 percent.Supporters of Mr. Macron in Paris on Sunday.James Hill for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen, who leads the National Rally, formerly the National Front, was helped by the candidacy of Éric Zemmour, a fiercely xenophobic TV pundit turned politician, who became the go-to politician for anti-immigrant provocation, which made her look more mainstream and innocuous. In the end, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign faded, and he took about 7 percent of the vote.Mr. Zemmour immediately called on his supporters to back Ms. Le Pen in the second round. “Opposing Ms. Le Pen there is a man who allowed 2 million immigrants to enter France,” Mr. Zemmour declared.The threatening scenario for Mr. Macron is that Mr. Zemmour’s vote will go to Ms. Le Pen, and that she will be further bolstered by the wide section of the left that feels betrayed or just viscerally hostile toward the president, as well as by some center-right voters for whom immigration is the core issue.More than half of French people — supporters of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour and Mr. Mélenchon — now appear to favor parties that are broadly anti-NATO, anti-American and hostile to the European Union. By contrast, the broad center — Mr. Macron’s La République en Marche party, the Socialist Party, the center right Republicans and the Green Party — took a combined total of about 40 percent.These were numbers that revealed the extent of anxiety in France, and perhaps also the extent of distrust of its democracy. They will be more comforting to Ms. Le Pen than to Mr. Macron, even if Mr. Mélenchon said his supporters should not give “a single vote” to Ms. Le Pen.He declined, however, to endorse Mr. Macron.At Ms. Le Pen’s headquarters, Frederic Sarmiento, an activist, said, “She will benefit from a big transfer of votes,” pointing to supporters of Mr. Zemmour, but also some on the left who, according to polls, will support Ms. Le Pen in the second round.Immigrant families awaiting emergency accommodation outside the Paris city hall last April.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“I am very worried, it will be a very close runoff,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “Many on the left will abstain rather than vote Macron.”Mr. Macron gained the immediate support for the second round of the defeated Socialist, Communist, Green and center-right candidates, but between them they amounted to no more than 15 percent of the first-round vote. He may also benefit from a late surge in support of the Republic in a country with bitter wartime experience of extreme-right rule.In the end, the election on Sunday came down to Mr. Macron against the extreme right and left of the political spectrum, a sign of his effective dismantlement of the old political order. Now built essentially around a personality — the restless president — French democracy does not appear to have arrived at any sustainable alternative structure.If the two runoff qualifiers are the same as in 2017, they have been changed by circumstances. Where Mr. Macron represented reformist hope in 2017, he is now widely seen as a leader who drifted to the right and a top-down, highly personalized style of government. The sheen is off him.On the place of Islam in France, on immigration controls and on police powers, Mr. Macron has taken a hard line, judging that the election would be won or lost to his right.Addressing his supporters after the vote Sunday, he said he wants a France that “fights resolutely against Islamist separatism” — a term he uses to describe conservative or radical Muslims who reject French values like gender equality — but also a France that allows all believers to practice their faiths.A polling place at the Versailles town hall.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHis rightward shift had a cost. The center-left, once the core of his support, felt betrayed. To what extent the left will vote for him in the second round will be a main source of concern, as already reflected in Mr. Macron’s abrupt recent catch-up paeans to “fraternity,” “solidarity” and equality of opportunity.Throughout the campaign, Mr. Macron appeared disengaged, taken up with countless telephone calls to Mr. Putin that proved ineffectual.A comfortable lead in polls disappeared in recent weeks as resentment grew over the president’s detachment. He had struggled during the five years of his presidency to overcome an image of aloofness, learning to reach out to more people, only to suffer an apparent relapse in the past several weeks.Still, Mr. Macron steered the country through the long coronavirus crisis, brought unemployment to its lowest level in a decade and lifted economic growth. Doing so, he has convinced many French people that he has what it takes to lead and to represent France with dignity on the world stage.Ms. Le Pen, who would be France’s first woman president, is also seen differently. Now in her third attempt to become president — Jacques Chirac won in 1995 after twice failing — she bowed to reason (and popular opinion) on two significant fronts: dropping her prior vows to take France out of the European Union and the eurozone. Still, many of her proposals — like barring E.U. citizens from some of the same social benefits as French citizens — would infringe fundamental European treaties.The leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, toned down her language to look more “presidential.” She smiled a lot, opening up about her personal struggles, and she gave the impression of being closer to the day-to-day concerns of French people, especially with regard to sharply rising gas prices and inflation.But many things did not change. Her program includes a plan to hold a referendum that would lead to a change in the Constitution that would ban any policies that lead to “the installation on national territory of a number of foreigners so large that it would change the composition and identity of the French people.”She also wants to bar Muslim women from wearing head scarves and fine them if they do.Polling booths in Trappes on Sunday. The first round of voting saw the highest abstention rate in decades.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe abstention rate Sunday, at between about 26 and 28 percent, was several points above the last election. Not since 2002 has it been so high.This appeared to reflect disillusionment with politics as a change agent, the ripple effect of the war in Ukraine and lost faith in democracy. It was part of the same anger that pushed so many French people toward political extremes.Aurelien Breeden More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Emmanuel Macron Is Playing a Dangerous Game

      by

      In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was “a meteor born under a lucky star.” A former banker without experience in elective office, he benefited during his first presidential campaign from President François Hollande choosing not to seek re-election, while the conservative candidate and front-runner, François Fillon, faced an embezzlement charge.In 2022, the planets appeared to align once more, this time on account of international circumstances rather than national dynamics. As president of the European Union since January, Mr. Macron has enhanced his status as a legitimate interlocutor with Vladimir Putin, even if his attempts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been unsuccessful. All opinion polls have shown Mr. Macron leading in Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, but his lead has been swiftly declining.In his first campaign, Mr. Macron claimed to be “neither left nor right,” a slogan that had seduced many who are weary of the old political divisions. Once elected, however, he quickly revealed what that meant in practice. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, shrinking the welfare state and hollowing out democracy, Mr. Macron drifted rightward, to the point of shocking some members of La République En Marche!, his party.Far from changing course, Mr. Macron appears to be doubling down. In recent months, his appeal to the right-wing electorate has become ever more explicit, orienting his platform around two of the right’s traditional themes — control of immigration and stiffening of secularism. It may deliver him another victory. But Mr. Macron is playing a dangerous game. By absorbing his opponents’ views into his own platform, he risks bringing about a political landscape hazardously skewed to the right.Among Mr. Macron’s first decisions in office was the abolition of the wealth tax and a flat tax on capital income, which benefited the rich. At the same time he pursued a reduction in the housing allowance for the poor and a reduction inpensions for retirees. Halfway through his first year in power, he had become the “president of the rich.” The image stuck, burnished by his reform of labor law, which limited workers’ rights and weakened representative organizations, curtailment of unemployment benefits and diminution of employers’ social security contributions.During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Macron did show a different face. Having ordered a lockdown of the population, he decided that the state would generously bail out companies, which salvaged many of them and avoided massive layoffs of workers. The act, though broadly in line with governments across Europe, was undoubtedly helpful. All the same, Mr. Macron’s first term tended unmistakably to widen inequalities, as shown in surveys.In parallel, there has been a disquieting democratic decline. During 46 of the past 78 months, France has been under a state of emergency, a record in Europe. It was declared by Mr. Hollande after the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, then under Mr. Macron at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Confronted with similar challenges, Germany never used such extreme measures. Moreover, two days before the end of the first state of emergency, at Mr. Macron’s initiative, various emergency statutes were integrated into the common law by his party-dominated Parliament. Since then, six laws restricting the rights of asylum seekers, protesters, prisoners, labor unions and nongovernmental organizations have been enacted.The prerogatives of the police have also significantly been expanded at the expense of the judiciary, notably for search warrants and stop-and-search. The permission to use guns by the police has increased. During the Yellow Vest movement, 2495 protesters were wounded, 30 lost one eye, five had their hand blown off. Asked about the damage caused by so-called sublethal weapons prohibited in most European countries, the president declared that speaking of repression or police violence was unacceptable under the rule of law.Mr. Macron’s combination of neoliberalism and authoritarianism has deepened inequality, diminished the welfare state, weakened democracy and aggravated the mistrust of politics, resulting in unprecedented abstention rates in regional elections, especially among the youth. Under the Fifth Republic, in place since 1958, it is a unique record.There is one domain in which Mr. Macron had raised more optimistic expectations: climate change. In 2018, Minister of Environment Nicolas Hulot detailed an ambitious plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. A year later, as it became clear that the administration was not complying with its objectives, the popular Mr. Hulot resigned in protest. A year later, Mr. Macron convened The Citizens’ Convention for the Climate to provide proposals to mitigate global warming, which he promised to follow. But his government abandoned some of the most significant ones and watered down others.Yet the most revealing sign of Mr. Macron’s political drift to the right has been his placing the control of immigration, implicitly from the South, and the regulation of religion, tacitly Islam, at the center of his politics.On immigration, Mr. Macron has become ever more hard-line. In the past five years, the unprecedented repression of migrants and refugees at the border with Italy, in informal camps around Paris and above all in the so-called jungles of Calais, from where exiles try to reach Britain, has been denounced by human rights organizations. As incoming president of the European Union, he announced that after the drowning of 27 people in the English Channel in November, border policing by the European agency Frontex should be reinforced, disregarding the higher risk for migrants.Earlier in 2021, Mr. Macron had a bill voted on by his parliamentary majority against the alleged “separatism” of Muslims, who have been deemed a threat to republican values. Criticized by religious groups and advocacy groups as an attack of civil liberties, this law has already allowed the government to dissolve several nongovernmental organizations.The xenophobic and Islamophobic notes in Mr. Macron’s policies may come as a surprise from a candidate whose constituency is mostly composed of middle- and upper-class voters as well as retirees for whom immigration and secularism rank far lower as priorities than purchasing power, the health system and the environment. But with the left candidate of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, polling third in the first round, Mr. Macron appears to have assumed that he would win the presidential election on his right, against Républicains’ Valérie Pécresse, Reconquête’s Éric Zemmour, and above all, Rassemblement National’s Marine Le Pen, in second place, with a constituency attuned to her nationalist program.It’s been done before. In 2002, Jacques Chirac adopted a similar approach in a runoff against Jean-Marie Le Pen. Ahead of the vote, Le Pen warned that “voters always prefer the original to the copy.” He was wrong, and lost by about 60 percent. In mid-March, when his daughter Marine was polling between 16 and 22 percent behind Mr. Macron in the second round of the election, it seemed like his prediction would continue to fall short. But now, when the difference between the candidates has plummeted to as little as 2 percent, it looks close to coming true.During his 2017 campaign, Mr. Macron presented himself as a renovator of politics and a rampart against the far right. Today, he appears to be something very different: a traditional politician, offering a bridge to the far right. For a president who promised to remake France in his image, it is a worrying legacy.Didier Fassin, an anthropologist and physician, is the James D. Wolfensohn professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He works on moral and political issues and on crisis in contemporary societies. He is recently the author of “The Will to Punish,” “Life. A Critical User’s Manual,” and “Policing the City. An Ethnographic.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      How Marine Le Pen Threatens to Upend French Elections

      by

      The far-right presidential candidate has opened up about her personal life and tweaked her policies to gain sympathy and credibility among more mainstream voters.STIRING-WENDEL, France — Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader making her third attempt to become president of France, already had the backing of voters who came to listen to her recently in Stiring-Wendel, a former coal-mining town struggling to reinvent itself.But after a 40-minute speech focusing on the rising cost of living, Ms. Le Pen succeeded in doing what even few of her supporters would have predicted just months ago: impressing them. Voters trickling out of an auditorium into the cold evening said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and “self-assured” — even “presidential.”“She has softened, she is more composed, calmer, more serene,” said Yohan Brun, 19, a student who grew up in Stiring-Wendel and had come to listen to Ms. Le Pen because “she cares more about the French people than the other candidates.”As France votes on Sunday, polls are predicting that this election will be a rematch of the previous one, pitting Ms. Le Pen against President Emmanuel Macron in a second-round showdown. But that does not mean that precisely the same Ms. Le Pen is running.Ms. Le Pen has revamped her image since the last election five years ago. She has pragmatically abandoned certain ideas that had alienated mainstream voters. She has held on to others that certify her far-right credentials. And she has shifted emphasis toward pocketbook issues.Some who attended Ms. Le Pen’s speech in Stiring-Wendel said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and even “presidential.”Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut as important, she has self-consciously sanded the rough edges off her persona in an effort to make herself appear more presidential and voter-friendly.The makeover is part of a long and deliberate strategy by Ms. Le Pen to “undemonize” herself and her party, and ultimately gain the French presidency. While the effort remains unconvincing to many who consider her a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it has nonetheless succeeded in giving her a last-minute surge in the polls before Sunday’s election that is worrying Mr. Macron’s camp.“Marine Le Pen appears more sympathetic than Emmanuel Macron,” said Pierre Person, a national lawmaker of the president’s party, adding that he was worried that she could win. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Even Before France Votes, the French Right Is a Big Winner

      by

      The dominance of right-wing ideas in France’s presidential election campaign follows years of cultural wars waged successfully by conservatives on television, in social media and in think tanks.PARIS — With just days to go before the first round of France’s presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron is still the odds-on favorite to make it through the political juggernaut and win a second term. But even if he does succeed, and before a single ballot is cast, another clear winner has already emerged from the race.The French right.Despite a late surge by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading left-wing candidate, virtually the entire French campaign has been fought on the right and far right, whose candidates dominate the polls and whose themes and talking points — issues of national identity, immigration and Islam — have dominated the political debate. The far right has even become the champion of pocketbook issues, traditionally the left’s turf.Mr. Macron himself has pivoted to the right so consistently to confront the challenge that there is even discussion now of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president, though he emerged from a government run by the now-moribund Socialists in 2017.In a tightening race, the candidate he is most likely to face in a runoff two weeks from Sunday’s initial voting is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Rally, according to polls. It would be her second consecutive appearance in the final round of the presidential election, cementing her place in the political establishment.“The great movement to the right — that’s done, it’s over,” said Gaël Brustier, a political analyst and former adviser to left-wing politicians. “It won’t set off in the other direction for 20 years.”Ms. Le Pen is the candidate most likely to face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff two weeks from initial voting, according to polls.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen and her party for decades softened the ground for the growth of the right. But the right’s recent political ascendancy follows many years in which conservatives have successfully waged a cultural battle — greatly inspired by the American right and often adopting its codes and strategies to attract a more youthful audience.Not only has the French right in recent months wielded the idea of “wokisme” to effectively stifle the left and blunt what it sees as the threat of a “woke culture” from American campuses. But it also has busily established a cultural presence after years with few, if any, media outlets in the mainstream.Today the French right has burst through social barriers and is represented by its own version of a Fox-style television news channel, CNews, an expanding network of think tanks, and multiple social media platforms with a substantial and increasingly younger following.These things “did not exist in France or were at the embryonic stage” just a few years ago, said François de Voyer, 38, a host and financial backer of Livre Noir, a year-old YouTube channel focusing on politicians on the right and far right.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.Suddenly Wide Open: An election that had seemed almost assured to return President Emmanuel Macron to power now appears to be anything but certain as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen surges.The New French Right: A rising nationalist faction has grown its coalition by appealing to Catholic identity and anti-immigrant sentiment.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in Mr. Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put Mr. Macron on the defensive.“We told ourselves, ‘Let’s do like CPAC in the United States,’” said Mr. de Voyer, referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics.So he did.In 2019, Mr. de Voyer co-organized “The Convention of the Right,” a one-day conference that featured leading figures of the right and the far right. It constituted a political launchpad for Éric Zemmour, the TV pundit and best-selling author.Mr. Macron has consistently pivoted to the right, so much so that there has been discussion of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMore than any other presidential hopeful, Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.In his best-selling books and on his daily appearances on CNews, Mr. Zemmour over a decade became a leader of the new right-wing media ecosystem that painted France as being under an existential threat by Muslim immigrants and their descendants, as well as by the importation of multicultural ideas from the United States.Though he has now receded in the polls, to about 10 percent support, Mr. Zemmour’s meteoric rise last year captured France’s attention and ensured that the presidential campaign would be fought almost exclusively on the right’s home turf, as he successfully widened the boundaries of what was politically acceptable in France.Mr. Zemmour brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, said Raphaël Llorca, a French communication expert and member of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute.The “great replacement,” as the theory is called, was later picked up as a talking point even by Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the establishment center-right Republican Party.Such penetration into the mainstream is the result of a decade-old organizational effort by the right.Thibaut Monnier, a former councilor for Ms. Le Pen’s party who then joined Mr. Zemmour’s movement, said that in the mid-2010s conservatives like him set for themselves a “metapolitical” project of creating new political institutions and their own media.Éric Zemmour, right, and a French TV host before a French political show in February. Mr. Zemmour has embodied the effects of the right’s cultural battle on the campaign.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2018, along with Marion Maréchal, the niece of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Monnier co-founded a conservative political institution in Lyon called Issep, or the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences. The school is an alternative to what he describes as higher-education establishments dominated by the left.But even as it elbowed its way into the educational establishment, the far right also succeeded in a parallel campaign to spread its ideas on social media to make itself appear attractively transgressive.Central to Mr. Zemmour’s cultural battle has been his command of social media and pop culture codes, Mr. Llorca said.The far-right candidate is very active on networks like TikTok and Instagram, where he posts daily messages and videos aimed at a younger audience. His YouTube campaign-launching video, riddled with cultural references, drew millions of viewers.Mr. Llorca said that Mr. Zemmour had successfully waged a “battle of the cool” designed to “play down the radical content” of his ideas without ever changing their substance. He has been helped by a network of internet users who defuse with humor the violence of his extremist ideas. On Facebook and Instagram, accounts followed by tens of thousands of people frequently post lighthearted memes about Mr. Zemmour.Mr. Zemmour has received support from far-right YouTube influencers mocking everything from feminism to veganism to trade unions. One such influencer, Papacito, whose videos sometimes reach one million views, endorsed Mr. Zemmour recently.Families waiting for emergency accommodation in Paris. Mr. Zemmour has brought into the mainstream a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“Our goal is really to make a countercultural Canal+,” he told the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, referring to the entertainment TV channel that dominated the progressive cultural scene in the 1980s and 1990s. “One that is just as fun, but carrying patriotic and more reactionary ideas.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      French Election Opens Up as Marine Le Pen Surges

      by

      President Emmanuel Macron’s belated entry into the campaign and his focus on Ukraine have left him vulnerable to a strong challenge from the right.PARIS — At last, Emmanuel Macron stepped forth. The French president entered a vast arena this weekend, plunged into darkness and lit only by spotlights and glow sticks, before a crowd of 30,000 supporters in a domed stadium in the Paris suburbs.It was a highly choreographed appearance — his first campaign rally for an election now less than a week away — with something of the air of a rock concert. But Mr. Macron had come to sound an alarm.Do not think “it’s all decided, that it’s all going to go well,” he told the crowd, a belated acknowledgment that a presidential election that had seemed almost certain to return him to power is suddenly wide open.Saturday’s campaign rally was Mr. Macron’s first for an election that is now less than a week away.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe diplomatic attempt to end the war in Ukraine has been time-consuming for Mr. Macron, so much so that he has had little time for the French election, only to awaken to the growing danger that France could lurch to the anti-immigrant right, with its Moscow-friendly politics and its skepticism of NATO.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with the millions of French people struggling to make ends meet after an increase of more than 35 percent in gas prices over the past year.The most recent poll from the respected Ifop-Fiducial group showed Ms. Le Pen gaining 21.5 percent of the vote in the first round of voting next Sunday, almost double the vote share of the fading extreme-right upstart Éric Zemmour, with 11 percent, and closing the gap on Mr. Macron with 28 percent. The two leading candidates go through to a runoff on April 24.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMore worrying for Mr. Macron, the poll suggested he would edge Ms. Le Pen by just 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent in the second round. In the last presidential election, in 2017, Mr. Macron trounced Ms. Le Pen by 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent in the runoff.“It’s an illusion that this election is won for Mr. Macron,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “With a high abstention rate, which is possible, and the level of hatred toward the president among some people, there could be a real surprise. The idea that Le Pen wins is not impossible.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians. Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put President Emmannuel Macron on the defensive.Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister in Mr. Macron’s government, warned this past week that “of course Ms. Le Pen can win.”A migrant family waiting for emergency accommodation with a host family last year in front of the Paris City Hall. With Ms. Le Pen gaining momentum, there are fears that France could lurch toward the anti-immigrant right.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThis notion would have seemed ridiculous a month ago. Ms. Le Pen looked like a has-been after trying and failing in 2012 and 2017. Mr. Zemmour, a glib anti-immigrant TV pundit turned politician with more than a touch of Donald Trump about him, had upstaged her on the right of the political spectrum by suggesting that Islam and France were incompatible.Now, however, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign appears to be sinking in a welter of bombast, as Ms. Le Pen, who said last year that “Ukraine belongs to Russia’s sphere of influence,” reaps the benefits of her milquetoast makeover.Mr. Zemmour may in the end have done Ms. Le Pen a service. By outflanking her on the right, by becoming the go-to candidate for outright xenophobia, he has helped the candidate of the National Rally (formerly the National Front) in her “banalization” quest — the attempt to gain legitimacy and look more “presidential” by becoming part of the French political mainstream.Mr. Macron has fallen two or three percentage points in polls over the past week, increasingly criticized for his refusal to debate other candidates and his general air of having more important matters on his mind, like war and peace in Europe, than the laborious machinations of French democracy.A front-page cartoon in the daily newspaper Le Monde last week showed Mr. Macron clutching his cellphone and turning away from the crowd at a rally. “Vladimir, I’m just finishing with this chore and I’ll call you back,” he says.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen sticking campaign posters next to those of Éric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, in Vigneux-De-Bretagne, in western France. Jeremias Gonzalez/Associated PressWith a colorless prime minister in Jean Castex — Mr. Macron has tended to be wary of anyone who might impinge on his aura — there have been few other compelling political figures able to carry the president’s campaign in his absence. His centrist political party, La République en Marche, has gained no traction in municipal and regional politics. It is widely viewed as a mere vessel for Mr. Macron’s agenda.His government’s wide use of consulting firms, including McKinsey — involving spending of more than $1.1 billion, some of it on the best ways to confront Covid-19 — has also led to a wave of criticism of Mr. Macron in recent days. A former banker, Mr. Macron has often been attacked as “the president of the rich” in a country with deeply ambivalent feelings about wealth and capitalism.Still, Mr. Macron has proved adept at occupying the entire central spectrum of French politics through his insistence that freeing up the economy is compatible with maintaining, and even increasing, the French state’s role in social protection. Prominent figures of the center-left and center-right attended his rally on Saturday.Over the course of the past five years, he has shown both faces of his politics, first simplifying the labyrinthine labor code and spurring a start-up business culture, then adopting a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the coronavirus pandemic. His handling of that crisis, after a slow start, is widely viewed as successful.“He absolutely proved up to the task,” Mr. Tenzer said.Mr. Macron adopted a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the pandemic.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesStill, much of the left feels betrayed by his policies, whether on the environment, the economy or the place of Islam in French society, and Mr. Macron was at pains on Saturday to counter the view that his heart lies on the right. Citing investments in education, promising to raise minimum pensions and give a tax-free bonus to employees this summer, Mr. Macron proclaimed his concern for those whose salaries vanish in “gasoline, bills, rents.”It felt like catch-up time after Mr. Macron had judged that his image as a statesman-peacemaker would be enough to ensure him a second term. Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice, said of Mr. Macron that “his choice to remain head of state until the end prevented him from becoming a real candidate.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More