By Ludo De Witte, Published in Dutch by DeWereldMorgen.be on 1 November 2026
With just under six months to go before the first round of the French presidential election (a two-round election, with voting on 18 April and 2 May 2027), it is time to take stock of the situation and outline some possible scenarios.
The enthusiasm generated by the La France insoumise (LFI) campaign is evident: more than 460,000 people have already pledged their support to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s presidential candidacy, and that number continues to rise. This is hardly surprising: LFI is a movement committed to breaking with the existing order and setting the country on the path towards ecosocialist transformation. Its programme is not ‘revolutionary’, but it goes beyond both conventional environmentalism, which is often resistant to planning and anti-capitalism, and traditional social-democratic reformism, bringing them together in a synthesis at a higher level. LFI promises to establish a new Sixth Republic, in which the population will be able, through successive referendums, gradually to shape a ‘citizens’ revolution’. Thus, for the first time, a distinctive mass movement generating enthusiasm and hope is emerging at the very heart of imperialism. But the road ahead remains long and the obstacles numerous.
Weaknesses and dangers
The determination with which the French bourgeoisie seeks to demonise LFI is unprecedented.
For years, a campaign to demonise Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI has been orchestrated by both the private media (90% of which are in the hands of billionaires such as Vincent Bolloré) and the public media. Two examples will suffice. France Culture star presenter Guillaume Erner broadcast a manipulated version of one of Mélenchon’s speeches in order to portray him as an antisemite. Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice leaked details of an investigation targeting LFI’s leading figure, Rima Hassan, to journalists, claiming that drugs had been found in her bag, when in fact they were medicines. Today, this campaign of demonisation is entering a new phase, on the pretext that LFI is behind acts of vandalism committed by rioters.
This has not succeeded, however, following Mediapart’s revelation that the government had instructed the intelligence services to claim that LFI was responsible for the damage caused on 17 October, on the sidelines of the major demonstrations demanding greater purchasing power and quality education. A Territorial Intelligence commissioner protested: ‘There are things that cannot be said openly, but when we are explicitly asked to write that LFI is behind the movement, even though the almost unanimous view of the territorial services is that this is objectively false, these are clearly political decisions.’ (Note of 18 October sent to Mediapart.)
Following demonisation comes the threat of criminalisation. Prime Minister Lecornu and the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, are considering banning La France insoumise, no longer on the grounds that it instigates violence, but because it allegedly inspires the ‘ultra-left’, whatever this term may actually encompass. It makes no difference that LFI leaders regularly place themselves between peaceful demonstrators and the security forces, or that Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls almost daily for peaceful demonstrations, reminding people that violence benefits only the government and the far right. Nor does the indisputable fact that this demonisation campaign benefits Marine Le Pen’s and Jordan Bardella’s National Rally (RN), which presents itself as a ‘reasonable’ force and ‘the party of law and order’, appear to matter. This evidently poses no problem for the bourgeois bloc, which increasingly regards the RN as a ‘normal’ party and, implicitly, as a bulwark against LFI.
The current demonisation of LFI is merely a foretaste, a preparatory exercise for what awaits the movement should an electoral victory begin to look possible. Financial and economic power accepts democracy as long as its fundamental interests are not called into question. When such a risk emerges, it resorts to every means at its disposal: capital flight, higher interest rates, employer lockouts and, if necessary, acts of sabotage organised by the upper echelons of the state bureaucracy, which are closely linked to the dominant classes. Not to mention the diktats of neoliberal Europe. Would LFI be capable of building, in the streets, in workplaces and within the public administration, a favourable balance of forces in the face of an offensive by capital?
So far, LFI has remained essentially a movement organised around electoral contests, with relatively weak links to trade unions and civil society organisations. In its present form, it seems unlikely to be capable of imposing a successful counter-mobilisation. Similarly, there is no guarantee that a Jean-Luc Mélenchon presidency would succeed in generating sufficient European solidarity to put Ursula von der Leyen’s Europe and the European Central Bank (ECB) on the defensive. Might an electoral victory in 2027, then, come too soon? And might it lead to a traumatic defeat, along the lines of Syriza’s experience in Greece in 2015?
The National Rally: a breeding ground for fascism
If Marine Le Pen were to become President, other dangers, equally considerable, would arise.
The National Rally is not, strictly speaking, a fascist party, because fascist movements generally mobilise desperate sections of society and channel them towards extra-parliamentary terror. This violence seeks to restrict democratic rights and freedoms through attacks on meetings, demonstrations, strikes and activists, thereby demoralising and dismantling the workers’ movement and organised civil society. Its aim is to restore order and stability in a period of crisis, for the benefit of the dominant classes. As Ernest Mandel wrote:
‘The historical function of fascism’s seizure of power is to bring about a sudden and violent change in the conditions of production and realisation of surplus value [profits] in favour of the decisive groups of monopoly capital.’
The emergence of a genuine fascist party, or the transformation of the RN into such an organisation, is not currently on the agenda. The crisis of the French political regime has not yet reached a sufficient level of intensity, and broad sections of the population continue to believe that they can express their discontent and desire for change through the ballot box, whether by voting for the RN or for LFI. Nevertheless, the potential for an authoritarian dismantling of the rule of law exists.
The RN remains a far-right party that tolerates or accommodates fascists and fascist groupings within its ranks, particularly within its security service (Département Protection Sécurité, DPS), as well as through its links with private security companies and other service businesses controlled by neo-fascists, such as the Paris-based GUD Connexion network. Several RN officials, candidates and elected representatives have had, or continue to have, financial or personal ties with groups belonging to the fascist movement.
In this context, it is significant that on 24 October, in around fifteen cities, including Nancy, Rouen, Montpellier and Nice, fascist groups attacked demonstrations by secondary-school and university students, supported by trade unions and the Yellow Vests, while the security forces looked on favourably. When demonstrators fought back, the police and riot police intervened to protect the fascist attackers.
Equally revealing was the sermon, accidentally filmed, delivered by a military chaplain before paratroopers of the prestigious 3rd RPIMa regiment in Carcassonne Cathedral. To applause, he warned against the ‘Great Replacement’ of France. This theory, widely disseminated by the far right and neo-fascist circles, claims that mass immigration would enable Muslims to take control of the country.
According to this analysis, there are therefore structural links between the RN, fascist groups and certain sections of the French repressive apparatus, both within the police and the armed forces, which could be activated if Marine Le Pen were to take up residence at the Élysée Palace.
A bourgeois order in crisis
The centrist parties and the old left, which for a long time acted as guarantors of the bourgeois order, are disintegrating or appear disorientated, inert and incapable of generating enthusiasm.
The Lecornu government’s response to the mass mobilisation of secondary-school and university students, education workers and trade unions over the past six weeks has exposed the utter emptiness of Macronism. For a month, the government’s only response to the entirely legitimate demands of the education community, meeting which would require €10 billion in the short term, was repression, more repression and yet more repression. The first proposal recently put forward by the executive has been rejected by demonstrators, who consider it wholly inadequate.
To save the education system, the government refuses to provide €10 billion, even though, like its predecessors, it distributes almost €200 billion every year in subsidies and tax exemptions to businesses, not to mention the hundreds of billions promised to the military-industrial complex in the years ahead.
At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that, in the event of a victory by a ‘normalised’ RN, Macronism would throw itself into Marine Le Pen’s arms. A President Le Pen would, in fact, continue the neoliberal submission to market diktats. Moreover, new parliamentary elections would not guarantee the RN an absolute majority, making an agreement between it and the bourgeois bloc likely. Such a development would destabilise the RN’s support base and make LFI the principal pole of opposition. In this scenario, an increase in extra-parliamentary mobilisation, together with an intensification of state violence, seems likely.
For the time being, the bourgeois centre still hopes to prevent both Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon from reaching the Élysée. Figures from the Macronist galaxy (such as Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal), the social-liberal Raphaël Glucksmann, as well as the ‘white rabbits’ who will undoubtedly emerge, hope to achieve a better result than Mélenchon in the first round, so that they can face Marine Le Pen in the second and defeat her.
Is a ‘Macron Mark II’ possible in 2027? This is a highly uncertain scenario, given that years of radicalisation towards the right (RN) and the left (LFI) among the popular classes, which have moved away from the decade dominated by Macronism, have profoundly reshaped the political landscape.
That decade was marked by 13,300 wealthy individuals paying no tax, a net minimum wage capped at around €1,450 a month, 1.5 million additional people living in poverty, 4.5 million part-time workers and an increase in the statutory retirement age.
But even if such a scenario were to materialise, this bourgeois centre would, following new parliamentary elections, be confronted with a Parliament dominated by the RN and LFI. It would then have to choose between governing with the RN and prolonging the current deadlock – in other words, deepening the crisis of the political regime even further.
In short, whether the presidential election is won by LFI, the RN or a candidate from the bourgeois bloc, the regime crisis shaking France is very likely to erupt in its full magnitude only after the April–May 2027 elections.
European progressive forces therefore face an urgent task, in what amounts, for the left, to a race against time: to publicise the programme of La France insoumise, forge links and prepare solidarity initiatives. For the French ‘left of rupture’ is today on the front line in the struggle against neoliberalism, militarisation, war and ecocide.
Given France’s political and economic weight as a founding member of the European Union, a nuclear power, the EU’s second-largest economy and the world’s seventh-largest economy, developments there will inevitably have a decisive influence on all neighbouring countries.
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