This text, which follows Nos Révolutions à la Nos Révolutions' participation in the European meeting on the fight against the far-right at the Festa Realitat in September 2024 in Barcelona, was published in Catalan on the website of La Realitata newspaper of Catalan communists..
June 2025. Two years before the presidential elections, the far-right has never seemed so close to power in France.This ascent is no accident. It is the result of a structural crisis of capitalism, a disintegration of progressive forces, and an assumed strategy of state fascisation. The danger is not merely electoral: it is cultural, institutional, policing, and affects all dimensions of social life. The anti-fascist struggle must therefore be rooted in a global analysis and a response commensurate with the threat.
State of Play
The far-right came out on top in the European elections and snap legislative elections of 2024, and only the left's vote prevented its accession to power.The upcoming municipal elections could again benefit it and strengthen its local structure. In parallel, it can count on a consolidated apparatus, an expanding trade union network (particularly within the police), and an effective normalisation strategy. It is currently supported by a flagship, the Rassemblement National (National Rally), and an ecosystem of radical groups. The entry into government of a radicalised right, close to the identitarian movement, notably with Bruno Retailleau as Minister of the Interior, allows it to influence national debates.
The discourse of the far-right is omnipresent: private media, social media, popular culture. Themes of immigration, security, and Islam are approached through a reactionary prism that has become almost hegemonic. Very powerful capitalist empires, with billionaires Bolloré and Stérin, have placed their fortunes at the service of this ideological struggle. This battle is particularly waged on social media where Jordan Bardella, leader of the National Rally, is a true star, especially among the youngest.
This progression of far-right ideas is accompanied by right-wing drifts of the central state. Little by little, the bourgeois bloc is abandoning its liberal software to promote measures restricting individual liberties.It is no longer just the far-right that threatens: it is the neoliberal order itself that is becoming fascistic. For example, Paris Saint-Germain's victory in the Champions League, and the ensuing unrest, led to the development of an "internal enemy" rhetoric. Minister Retailleau then described young people who committed vandalism as "barbarians," as if to mark their radical and almost ontological difference from "true French people." A part of the left is starting to succumb to this pressure, for example, conceding to the idea of a "savagisation" of society, without denouncing the effects of capitalism as a catalyst for violence.
Jordan Bardella visited Israel in spring 2025, pursuing a now well-honed strategy of international rehabilitation and ideological blurring.This visit aimed to strengthen the National Rally's image of respectability, by being the party that most supports the State of Israel, to better conceal its antisemitic and Vichyist roots. In reality, this trip is part of an attempt at political legitimation on the international stage by mimicking the codes of state diplomacy, while consolidating an alliance with authoritarian right-wing parties globally. This manoeuvre also aims to fracture political memories: instrumentalising the fight against antisemitism to silence critics, while allowing structural racism against Arabs, Muslims, Black people, Roma, or migrants to proliferate. As always with the far-right, this is not a turning point but a mask that, by implication, reveals the centrality of ethno-nationalism in its societal project.
The only victory for the left in 2025 was the condemnation of the RN and Marine Le Pen in March for embezzlement of public funds. But this conviction was turned into an instrument of political communication: victimisation strengthens their "us against them" posture.Here again, a part of the left subscribed to the National Front's discourse by denouncing the superiority of judges over politics, and the attempt at political destabilisation by the current power via the public prosecutor's office.
The Structural Causes of the Rise: A Marxist Reading
Faced with the ecological crisis, inflation, deindustrialisation, and rising social anger, the ruling classes are adopting increasingly authoritarian modes of governance.Parliament is bypassed by decrees and Defence Councils, the judicial repression of mobilisations is becoming systemic, and the executive power no longer hides its proximity to security doctrines. In this context, the far-right is not an anomaly, but a functional cog of capital. It allows for the redirection of anger towards the most precarious, to naturalise the social order, to make racism a tool of government.
The parliamentary left, meanwhile, oscillates between calls for republican reason and postures of moral opposition.Its inability to propose an offensive strategy of transformation fuels confusion and abstention. But the deeper root of its powerlessness lies in the very structuring of French political life around the presidential election. This deadline, which crystallises individual ambitions and media power dynamics, prevents any lasting gathering dynamic. It imposes a vertical rhythm, an imaginary of the leader, a logic of competition, where the left should be rebuilding common ground, social conflict, and popular alliances.
The entire left political spectrum seems trapped in cycles of positioning, of tactical calculations, without ever building a project of popular emancipation commensurate with the threat.Denunciations of the far-right follow one another, but without making it the structuring axis of a clear and lasting political strategy. The link with concrete struggles—strikes, battles against factory closures or police violence—too often remains superficial or instrumentalised. Some foster artificial oppositions between two supposedly distinct Frances: the France of towns and the France of towers. These discourses divide the class struggle and never place common interests at the centre of the political game.
At the same time, mechanisms of solidarity and collective conflict are collapsing. Old politicisation structures—trade unions, parties, community organisations—are disintegrating, affected by precarity, the individualisation of career paths, or even by far-right entryism. Fear of the other replaces anger, hatred replaces hope. The far-right capitalises on this void, rehabilitating a discourse of dignity through work, based on exclusion: glorification of "little French workers," denunciation of "dependents," stigmatisation of foreigners. This nationalist narrative of work, mendacious but effective, is rooted in the ideological abandonment of the question of work by a part of the left.
The generalised precarisation, the Uberisation of jobs, suicides at work, endless redundancies, have not led to a structured political counter-offensive.Worse: the closure of the last French steel mills—of which ArcelorMittal is the symbol—marks not only an industrial decline, but a political dispossession. In these devastated territories, the far-right thrives, in the absence of an alternative. As long as the left does not rebuild a labour policy based on ecological planning, the collective reappropriation of production tools, a massive reduction in working hours, and democracy in the workplace, it will leave the field open to social fascisation.
This dynamic must be placed within France's specific historical configuration. A central capitalist country, a neocolonial power with disproportionate military and diplomatic influence, France is not merely a national state in crisis: it is a former imperial power in a phase of retreat.The current crisis cannot be understood without this colonial legacy, whose imaginaries of domination, racial superiority, civilising mission, and hierarchy of populations the far-right seeks to reactivate.
In France, the class struggle is therefore inextricably a struggle against the legacies of empire, against contemporary forms of racialisation, and against class inequalities that manifest spatially and economically. Working-class neighbourhoods, deindustrialised areas, and the overseas departments and territories are the concrete places where the combined effects of economic domination and colonial heritage are forged.
The French bourgeoisie has never broken with the strong, authoritarian, repressive, technocratic state. The post-war Fordist compromise, based on wage labour, growth, and the relative integration of the middle classes, has broken down.Today's French capitalism relies on the exploitation of the most precarious, on rent, on the expulsion of working-class people from urban centres, and on a massive security apparatus. Understanding the rise of the far-right therefore requires linking the analysis of classes to that of colonial history, and drawing the consequences for a rooted, popular, and internationalist anti-fascist strategy.
A Fragmented but Living Anti-Fascism
May 1st demonstrations, commemoration of Clément Méric's murder, mobilisations against freedom-restricting laws: anti-fascist resistance exists, but it struggles to structure itself nationally.Yet, social tensions and far-right violence show the urgency of a broad front. The attack on the bar Le Prolé in Alès by far-right activists is not an isolated incident: it embodies a strategy of intimidation against popular social spaces. These aggressions are part of a climate where police impunity, political repression, and the media normalisation of hatred facilitate acts of violence. They also demonstrate the radicalisation of a part of the youth towards the far-right.
In this context, local collectives, trade unions (Solidaires, CGT), associations (LDH, Attac), anti-fascist groups, feminist, environmental, and anti-racist movements have begun rebuilding on the ground.In this sense, what happened on June 9, 2025, in Montargis represents a pivotal moment. A working-class town heavily marked by social struggles, Montargis was chosen by the National Rally to organise a large-scale international meeting with Orbán, Salvini, and Abascal. This political provocation aimed to establish itself in a popular stronghold, to implant an authoritarian vision of power there.
The response was massive. A united, inclusive, popular mobilisation loudly affirmed that the struggle is still alive. More than 4,000 people in a town of 15,000 inhabitants marched at the call of the CGT, the PCF, France Insoumise, and numerous left-wing organisations.This demonstration of strength shows that anti-fascism, far from being a defensive reflex, can once again become an offensive project, articulating the issues of work, equality, and popular sovereignty.
In the same movement, the solidarity expressed towards the Flotilla for Gaza, violently repressed by the Israeli army, demonstrates an internationalist anti-fascism.It affirms a clear consciousness: the struggle against the far-right is not limited to national territory. It implies a global rejection of imperialist, racist, and security-focused logics.
Anti-fascism can no longer be content with denouncing: it must rebuild. This requires a strategic articulation between the memory of struggles, social conflict, territorial anchoring, internationalism, and the conquest of power. For this is also what the left lacks: thinking of access to power not as a solitary electoral artefact, but as the continuation of a process of mobilisation, politicisation, and collective awareness. The battle will not only be moral or symbolic: it will be organisational, social, and political. This requires that everyone on the left takes their place in the gathering.
The fascisation of French society is not a spontaneous phenomenon: it results from a political, cultural, and economic process.The anti-fascist struggle cannot be reduced to a moral posture: it must be rooted in the reconstruction of a class-based political strategy, linked to work, direct democracy, and popular ecology. The battle for 2027 begins today, on the ground, in neighbourhoods, in businesses, and in the battle of ideas.
Illustration image: "Manifestation féministe contre l’extrême droite en France. Paris. 23 juin 2024", photograph by Paola Breizh (CC BY 2.0)
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