A quick summary about the demonstrations which took place last Saturday in France against the far right, and more specifically against the presence of Marine Le Pen in the second turn of presidential elections.
There were between 13,000 and 150.000 demonstrators in France (police account or organisers account). In my city (Lyon) there were between 2000 and 3000 demonstrators, which is really low because all the left called for this demo. For the far right this is the election where the possibility of being elected is the most likely. For example, one third of people who voted for Jean Luc Mélanchon (between far left and socialists, who did 22% on the first turn) wants to vote for Marine Le Pen (this pool was among those who were sure about what they'll do for second turn, it was one third for Macron and the last third will not vote). A lot of people won't vote for Macron again, after these last 5 horrible years. So there is a chance that Marine Le Pen is elected. If it is the case, I think there will not be a lot of people in the street, or not enough, because the last demonstrations against far right were very weak. So we are quite pessimistic about a general uprising (in the revolutionary sense in general) if Le Pen is elected.
The funny thing is that Macron and Le Pen are luring voters from Mélanchon, and are like "I'm more social than you", because Mélanchon did big numbers (there was a call on the left to vote for him, to not have again Macron against Le Pen, even some anarchists or autonomous voted for him), so it's important for them to look like the more "socialist".
Anyway, these next 5 years will be hard for the worker class, no matters if it is Macron or Le Pen, but of course for people who are not white, or who are LGBT or in the revolutionary movement, it will be really hard if it is Le Pen, because we fear that Nazis will armed themselves with guns and kill people with impunity (and even police because she wants to facilitate self defence for them).
We'll see next Today !■
Pinou
Fédération Anarchiste
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