Is the French government becoming fascist?

The French government has deployed the army to monitor the protests scheduled to take place later today. At the same time, it is mounting a media manipulation campaign to make people believe that an “enemy within,” affiliated with a social-democrat party, is coordinating the protests that are sweeping France. These two elements are reminiscent of certain methods used by the fascist regimes of 1930s Europe.

In an interview with The North Star, Léa La Salle, a Quebecois studying in Bordeaux for the semester, sums up the political atmosphere in France: “It’s scary.” She feels that the country is sinking into authoritarianism and militarism.

Army in the Streets

For her, it came as a shock to realize that there are armed soldiers on the streets in France. It’s even part of everyday life. “There are groups of soldiers marching in groups of about ten, in military uniform with their little berets and machine guns, conducting inspections,” she describes. These patrols, known as “Vigipirate,” are present in French cities under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

She adds that the CRS, the French riot police, are everywhere in the city. “I don’t know if you’ve seen how the CRS are dressed, but they look a lot like stormtroopers,” says Léa. They were stationed throughout the city to control the crowds of pedestrians all week.

In addition to more than 70,000 state police officers, military personnel are deployed by the Ministry of the Interior in anticipation of the October 24 demonstrations. These demonstrations were called not only by high school students but also by the labor movement and the Yellow Vests, a movement against the high cost of living that emerged in 2018.

Curfews and Demonstration Bans

Curfews were imposed in at least a dozen French cities during the week. The specifics varied by location. In Bordeaux, for example, only minors were required to observe the curfew. In Paris, it was limited to certain areas but applied to adults as well.

As for the protests, most have been banned since October 17. Formally, the French government and city halls have shown a willingness to negotiate protest routes to make them legal. In practice, however, these negotiations do not appear to have yielded results. The unions organizing the protest in Paris announced yesterday that they will demonstrate illegally.

Creating an Enemy Within

On the evening of October 17, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu alluded to a “far-left network in which La France Insoumise plays a significant role.” Lecornu and the rest of the government accuse this “network” of planning acts of violence.

According to the French media outlet Médiapart, the French intelligence service is also said to have participated in fabricating this narrative, even though its agents in the field deny the veracity of this propaganda. In an internal memo, the “Territorial Intelligence” asserted that the “far left” had “5,000 activists in France, capable of organizing and carrying out offensive actions targeting the symbols of the state, capitalism, and the military-industrial complex.”

Lecornu and intelligence officials also reportedly claimed in late September that the far-left was behind the thousands of student blockades paralyzing the French education system. A territorial intelligence commissioner, for his part, claims he was asked to fabricate the story that the La France Insoumise (LFI) party was behind the social movement rocking France.

Banning Political Opponents

LFI is a social-democratic parliamentary party that holds 12% of the seats in the National Assembly. In an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro, Senate President Gérard Larcher opened the door to the government dissolving this party.

“LFI is a political party that contributes to the nation’s voice. I understand that. But it bears a large share of the responsibility for hate speech,” he had argued. Members of the Les Républicains party also supported the idea of dissolving the party.

France’s Internal Security law does indeed allow the government to dissolve a political association, even if it is a political party. In recent years, for example, the French government has dissolved the group “Collectif Palestine vaincra,” the environmental organization “Les Soulèvements de la terre,” the anti-fascist group “La Jeune Garde,” and the so-called conspiracy theory group “Killuminateam.”