Can right-wingers be antifascist?
No time for introductions: I am trying to prevent a fascist takeover in France, and my readers have questions.
When you’re known online as the immortal Comte de Saint-Germain, and you create audio tours about the history of Paris, people make certain assumptions about your political leanings. They then realize that you’ve been on the revolutionary side since 1789, that Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are not empty words for you, and that you clearly intend to finish what the Paris Commune started. And the moment you call out various accomplices in the rise of far right party Rassemblement National (RN), the more conservative members of your audience start sending you messages full of acrobatic double-negatives such as “not being left-wing doesn’t make me a fascist!”. So you write a group reply as a wall of text on Instagram, finish it in the comments, and conclude that it would just fit better on that Substack you were meant to start anyway.
I am not saying that all right-wingers are fascists.
Some right-wingers are actually very effective antifascists, see below. I am also saying that some people who call themselves "centrist" or "moderate" are directly responsible for the rise of fascism in France.
Allied soldiers who landed on French beaches during WWII were violent, armed antifa.
Even Resistants that did not fire a single shot took direct, illegal action to get rid of two fascist regimes: Nazi occupiers & Vichy government collaborators, collabos in French. Some of these antifa were very right-wing.
General Charles de Gaulle was a conservative. And yet he allied himself with Communists, because he knew that disagreeing on economics and religion was less important than getting rid of a regime that classified some ethnic groups as inferior.
Philippe de Hautecloque, before he became General Leclerc, was a Royalist who read an antisemitic daily newspaper, who loved the army and hated the French Republic. And yet he deserted while the French army was still in place, and fled to London rather than collaborate. He followed de Gaulle's orders to attack French collabos first, then Italian fascists, then German Nazis. His soldiers were first African colonial troops, and later on included the Spanish Anarchist & Leftist squad that was the first to enter Paris. All these soldiers were on the other side of the racial, religious, national and political spectrum, and they made him realize that his far-right views were misguided. He remained right-wing, but drew the line at fascism.
Closer to us, no one has perfect antifa credentials.
Socialiste President Mitterrand maintained close personal ties with a fascist antisemite, long after WWII. Throughout his career, Mitterrand kept the fascist Front National (now RN) alive to divert some right-wing votes away from Chirac. President Chirac himself tried to appeal to racist voters by talking about "the noise and the smell" of immigrants during an infamous campaign speech. But they both agreed that you needed to set aside your differences when it came to preventing fascists from ruling France.
Mitterrand and Chirac are dead, but at least two of Chirac's ministers, Dominique de Villepin (who famously refused to invade Iraq based on American lies) and Jacques Toubon (who regularly calls out systemic racism in France) are still alive, and still Conservatives. And yet, after the first round of these elections, they immediately called for everyone to rally behind the candidate, any candidate, left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) included: anyone who had the top score against the RN candidate.
Compare and contrast with supposed centrist Macron:
For 7 years, he implemented classical right-wing policies: tax cuts for the rich & cuts to public services, including reducing healthcare, education & benefits for the poor.
He added police violence not seen in 50 years against anyone who protested, and normalization of far right rhetoric by reusing RN hate speech against immigrants, trans people, Muslims etc.
He painted LFI as "Far Left", which is a blatant lie: LFI policies are less left-wing than Mitterrand's in 1981, and even the official French authority Conseil d'État confirmed that LFI is just Left, whereas RN is Far Right. But Macron has powerful allies, with voices that are louder than facts: friendly state-owned media and far-right 24h news networks owned by billionaires like Bolloré.
The result is an unprecedented rise of fascism in France.
Macron made people angry, then used minorities as scapegoats, and welcomed RN with open arms to the French Parliament. RN got more than 10 times the number of MPs they used to have before Macron. This Sunday, RN may triple that, or even get absolute majority, i.e. form a government.
Unlike de Villepin & Toubon, Macron refused to explicitly ask everyone to vote against RN even if the candidate was LFI. Some of his main leaders still paint LFI and RN as similar. Dozens of Macronist MP candidates who came third refused to step down, even if it would mean that, by running, they would split the second round votes and RN would win.
Over the past few days, thousands of people were outraged, and directly DMed these Macronists and other candidates to step down, so we could all stop fascism, together.
Many stepped down.
Not all. These still identify as "centrist", "moderate", "conservative", "reasonable", "defenders of the republic".
I identify them as collabos.
History will not judge them kindly.
Yes
I could’ve wrote this myself. I agree on everything. Great stuff