"Factious groups", "ultra-left", "far left", "chaos", "bordering", "weakening of the Republic", "undermining our institutions". These terms have been repeated in a loop since the first wild demonstrations and the use by Elisabeth Borne of 49.3, Thursday, March 16, to pass the pension reform. They are pronounced by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, his Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and several members of the government, with one objective: to demonize the left.

The latest example to date, Tuesday, March 28, at the National Assembly. "What happened on the left to confuse thugs and policemen? (...) What happened on the left to confuse a forbidden demonstration with an authorized demonstration? What happened on the left to make us no longer respect the uniform of the Republic? (...) What happened on the left to make us hate the police?" said Gérald Darmanin to the ecologist deputy Sophie Taillé-Polian, who accused the minister, during questions to the government, of instrumentalizing the police to embody order.

What happened on the left to confuse thugs and policemen?
What happened on the left to make us no longer respect the uniform of the Republic?
What happened on the left to forget Clemenceau, Mitterrand, Chevenement, Joxe, Cazeneuve, Valls? pic.twitter.com/nmI3iHb5XN

— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) March 28, 2023

An attack repeated a few minutes later, this time in response to a question from the deputy Les Républicains Eric Ciotti: "When the extreme left and the ultra-left have mixed since March 16 with the wild undeclared demonstrations (...), then yes, chaos seeks to settle, said Gérald Darmanin. What I regret like you is that there is no unanimity in the political class to denounce these factious groups who want to bring down the Republic. The ultra-left does not want to attack the pension reform. She wants to attack the Republic. The ultra-left does not want to attack the government. She wants to attack the police."

"Yes, chaos is trying to set in," says @GDarmanin. "What I regret like you, Mr Ciotti, is that there is no unanimity in the political class, to denounce these factious groups who want to bring down the Republic." #DirectAN #QAG pic.twitter.com/ueeqPKxhqG

— LCP (@LCP) March 28, 2023

A discourse that mixes the parliamentary left, the far left and the ultra-left, using almost each of these qualifiers interchangeably, and that sows confusion in public opinion.

The line was set at the highest level. During his interview on March 22 at 13 p.m. on TF1 and France 2, Emmanuel Macron denounced the "factious" and "the factions". The head of state spoke then of "groups resorting to extreme violence because they are not happy with something". And he drew parallels between the savage protests against pension reform and the assaults on the Capitol in Washington or the Brazilian Parliament in Brasilia.

🔴 DIRECT: "We cannot accept either the factious or the factions", President E. #Macron 🇫🇷 returns to his remarks before the Assembly yesterday, where he declared that "the crowd has no legitimacy in the face of the people who express themselves through these elected representatives"pic.twitter.com/XQx28O4uyf

— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_fr) March 22, 2023

Two days later, Gérald Darmanin took up the expression. "The country must wake up and condemn the far left and the factious," he said Friday, March 24, on CNews.

Differentiating left, far left and ultra-left

Then Emmanuel Macron drives the nail, Monday, March 27: in front of the leaders of the presidential majority and the tenors of the government gathered at the Elysee, he says that "there is a real political project led by the insubordinate France that tries to delegitimize the reasonable order, our institutions, its tools".

"We feel in the government's rhetoric that beyond the ultra-left and the far left, it is all the forces of the Nupes that are targeted, and in the first place La France insoumise, because it is both the hegemonic force and the most radical force," said Ugo Palheta, a lecturer at the University of Lille and author of several books on the rise of fascism. including "The possibility of fascism: France, the trajectory of disaster" (La Découverte, 2018).

>> Read also: Pension reform: the untruths of Emmanuel Macron

However, if the parliamentary left, the far left and the ultra-left have in common their opposition to pension reform and the denunciation of police violence, they must be differentiated.

"The parliamentary left is represented in the National Assembly by parties – La France insoumise, the Socialist Party, Europe Écologie-Les Verts, the Communist Party – which play the game of institutions. The other two are extra-parliamentary lefts that have much more radical political orientations," explains Isabelle Sommier, professor of political sociology at the University of Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, specialist in social movements and violence, author of "Political Violence in France" (Presses de Sciences Po, 2021).

>> Read also: Megabasins: the family of an injured protester files a complaint for attempted murder

"The far left corresponds to political formations of Marxist-Leninist obedience that accuse the PCF of having become too soft. Its representatives are the Revolutionary Communist League, Workers' Struggle, the New Anti-capitalist Party and Permanent Revolution, the expert continues. As for the ultra-left, it is a libertarian, anarchic nebula that broke into France in the 1970s and has experienced a growing dynamic since the 2000s with the challenge to the CPE [first job contract] in 2006 or the labor law in 2016."

However, if the ultra-left is indeed involved in violence against the forces of order and public and private property, this is not the case of the parliamentary left. It is also divided on the attitude to adopt vis-à-vis this violence: some elected officials condemn it without prevarication, while others pay lip service, and still others refuse to do so.

"A strategy that tends to redefine the Republican arc"

It was enough for the executive and the presidential majority to seize this opportunity to put ultra-left, far left and parliamentary left in the same bag, letting print the more or less subliminal message that left-wing deputies call for violence, or even participate themselves in this violence.

"It's a strategy that tends to redefine the Republican arc," says Ugo Palheta. Emmanuel Macron is playing a rather dangerous game which consists in reducing the political battle to a face-to-face with the far right that ousts any kind of option to his left. But the emergence of the left-wing Nupes coalition, which is fueling the social movement opposed to pension reform, represents a viable alternative option and therefore a threat to the president. It is therefore a question for him of discrediting and disqualifying this left, while gradually and quietly integrating the National Rally into this republican arc."

>> Read also: On pensions, the strategy of the double game of the National Rally

A political maneuver that is illustrated in particular when the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, judges Marine Le Pen, in Le Monde, "much more republican" than the elected representatives of the Nupes after the latter gave him its support at the time when the LFI deputy Aurélien Saintoul had called him a "murderer". A statement that perfectly suits the will of the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen to take a new step in its normalization.

According to Ugo Palheta, "the presidential majority and the far right are responding to each other, each making the other its best enemy, all with a common hatred of the left."

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