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Marlon Ettinger is the author of Zemmour and Gaullism and the cohost of Flep24, the French Legislative Elections Podcast for 2024.
The first round of France’s parliamentary elections saw left-wing coalition NUPES come first nationally. President Emmanuel Macron’s allies reacted by tarring the Left as extremists — but Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s coalition looks closer than ever to power.
Emmanuel Macron claimed that France was missing a “king figure” — then spent five years ruling it like a monarch. His record has fueled Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s pledge to get rid of the presidency entirely and rebuild French democracy from the bottom up.
France’s center-right has long used its Gaullist origins to distinguish it from the heirs to Vichy. But today, xenophobes like Marine Le Pen are claiming de Gaulle’s legacy as they seek to overcome the historic split on the Right.