#EwoksDeLaRepublique
France’s democracy may just have been saved by short, seemingly harmless creatures who took the fight to the woods.
Six days ago, I was trying to prevent a fascist takeover in France
…and outraged reactions from followers on social media led me to write what became my first Substack post:
I will share the unsurprising addendum to my original answer below, but something way more important happened.
Two days ago, the French legislative elections results were a massive surprise
Contrary to pre-election polls, far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) did not get a majority. The Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) Left alliance came first, Macron’s Ensemble second, and RN ended up in the third place of a split parliament. Fascist takeover had just been averted.
I burst in tears, and kept crying every time I tried to finish a sentence. Tears of joy of course, but also of pure release from weeks of accumulated elections stress. Was this a slam dunk for the Left? No. But we had been promised fascism.
For weeks, both Macron and most media had accepted this as fact, and therefore had been pandering to RN voters even more than in the past seven years. From TV hosts to Macron himself, it became socially acceptable to use RN hate speech against foreigners and trans people. The new party line was clear: oppressed minorities —rather than megacorporations & racist pundits— were responsible for both inflationist price gouging and the loss of French values. As a result, racist, Islamophobic and homophobic physical assaults skyrocketed across France: first after the RN’s EU victory, worsening after the first round of the legislative elections. RN voters were confident that they were about to reach power, and even bragged about it to police officers who arrested them. Macron’s government did not condemn these assaults, and main TV channels did not even report on them: everyone was getting in line to welcome their new fascist partners/overlords.
But two days ago, at 8pm, the NFP and decent right-wingers (see below) did beat the fascists. As shouts of joy echoed through my Haussmannian street, I first celebrated by toasting a few neighbours who had appeared at their windows, Covid-lockdown style. We shared a couple songs, and I crossed the Seine to join the celebration on Place de la République. The crowd there was young, diverse, and shouted antifascist, anti-Macron, and anti-right-wing TV hosts slogans in an enthusiastic —if uncoordinated— manner. As night fell, impromptu (and yes, illegal) fireworks exploded in the sky. The high-pitch cheers among the trees, and the sparkling comets leaving a halo around the statue of the Republic instantly transported me to the final scene of Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (1983), when the Rebel Alliance celebrated the fall of the Empire in the Ewok village.
Ewoks are small woodland creatures
These short and chubby furry humanoids were neither individually strong nor scary. They didn’t have money or high tech, and were ignored by the rest of the galaxy. And yet, by banding together, they built cunning trying traps and makeshift aerial vehicles for coordinated ambushes with the help of the Rebel Alliance. Some failed miserably, sacrificing many cuddly would-be Rambos.
But in the end, they did beat up the fascist Empire. Outgunned and outnumbered, the worthy human heroes, with their lightsabers, blasters, and fancy hairdos would have never won against Imperial troops if it had not been for the Ewoks.
As the last red flare slowly died at the base of the statue on Place de la République, it dawned on me that, in France, fascism had also been averted thanks to the Ewoks of the Republic.
For decades, established parties, unions, and government-subsidized major NGOs have led the fight for social justice in France
Political parties directly receive taxpayer money and free ads on French TV. To avoid relying on billionaire donations, campaign finance rules can very different than say, in the US: RN will make millions of Euros from the state based on their number of votes (but they were also just indicted for illegal financing of their 2022 campaign). Unions have the people, the infrastructure, the lorries and PA systems for the demonstrations, the well-trained security services, and the strike funds to keep picket lines going. Because of this decades-old and well-funded machinery, anyone outside of these groups is often seen as an amateur. Especially if they are young, women, disabled, people of color and/or queer.
These were not seen as “serious” activists until this victory. Or worse, they were seen as “communautaristes”, only serving one community, one special interest. In supposedly universalist France, “true” leaders on the Left are mostly clean-cut, white middle aged men from the middle class. Even supposedly equalitarian anti-establishment anarchists are rife with macho tendencies: for many, throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police is the apex of activism, rather than, you know, convincing people to become anarchists by speaking to them. In my opinions, punching actual Nazis is always OK (RIP Julien “Ranx” Terzics) but I’m not sure what breaking windows after peaceful demonstrations are over actually achieves: everybody already made their point by showing up. To each their own, but the activist hierarchy on the Left is clear: the true heroes are Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, then maybe Leia Organa, then maybe Chewbacca - but Ewoks come last.
And yet
Most traditional left wing parties, unions and NGOs have been betraying women, the working class and minorities for the past four decades. Actual far-left parties, on the other hand, have remained so “pure” that they are neither electable nor capable of an actual armed revolution. So civil society just decided to take on the mantle. After the RN beat traditional parties in the EU elections, feminist, environmentalist, antiracist social justice activist groups, artists and personalities started organizing on social media. They were not necessarily members of any party, they did not join any union, but all shared common values: the Earth was on fire, Macron’s and the RN’s rich friends were actively destroying both the environment and the social safety net. “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” was for everyone, not just middle-age white bourgeois cisgender heterosexual men.
Major TV channels did not give them significant airtime, and they had to endure the combined front of Macronist government propaganda and right-wing pundits on 24h news networks owned by Bolloré. On social media, individual influencers lost some followers following their public refusal to vote RN, and many were insulted for daring to express an opinion and not stick to entertainment, Even creative individuals with fewer followers had to face both actual French fascists keyboard warriors making rape and assassination threats against them and their families, and Putin-paid trolls farms throwing discord en masse and amplifying fake news.
But the Ewoks double-downed
They organized across small NGOs and social media accounts, each with their own specialties corresponding to various actual parts of the NFP platform —while still amplifying each other. Without the NFP party infrastructure. On their own terms. With their own styles. And the best part was they also understood the inherent weaknesses of slacktivists, people who think that liking and reposting is enough to make a difference. Ewoks were fully aware that posting “You go girl!” with heart emojis, making cute cartoons, memes and funny videos sure was important for morale and to grab attention, but would not be enough to win a whiter, straighter, more male, older demographic that lived far away from city centers, and who spent their online time —if any— in a different algorithmic bubble.
So the Ewoks went to them. In real life. Graphic designers made easy-to-read charts comparing the NFP platform with others, and people crowdfunded printing costs. Again, not using the usual logistics chains of traditional parties, or established resources like the printing presses of major unions. Indie journalists and activists teamed up to debunk the RN’s lies, exposing them for what they were: basically Macron’s capitalist policies, but with added racism, added violence, and supported by Putin.
People would meet in city centers and literally get on buses to go and help local progressives in rural locations, who were in desperate needs of undoing weeks and months of lies, but lacked feet on the ground. These locals trained them about the most-burning issues in each location, the swing constituencies that were winnable, and which neighbourhoods to target. Together, they distributed flyers to people in local farmers’ markets, filled mailboxes, and went door-to-door to inform and debate, in person.
They often faced refusals and skepticism from people who preferred to believe what the TV said
As RN voters were emboldened, campaigners even faced sexist, antisemitic, racist and Islamophobic remarks, and sometimes violent threats: not online this time, but to their faces. They had to deal with conspiracy theories in cafés, and lack of interest from those in social housing who had completely lost faith in voting. One campaigner sat for 45 minutes in a stopped convertible car to convince its driver.
Others stayed home, but politely confronted their racist uncles during Sunday lunches, and did not let go until they were heard. They posted links to facts and resources on family Whatsapp groups, exposing themselves to rejection from their closest ones. Sure, there were also some tall, clean-cut, white cishet males in these activist groups too, but many of them were young, short and chubby furry creatures, with no money, fame or technology. But together, they went to the woods, and they won. The Empire was defeated.
It was not a total victory
Those RN voters who had not just been duped by fake news, but who were genuinely racist, could not be convinced. And while most NFP voters did take one for the team and voted for the Macronists and the old-school right-wing LR candidates, the opposite was much less true. A good half of Macronists and LR voters were more than happy to let the RN candidates win by casting a blank ballot – or even directly voted for RN. So yes, right-wingers can be antifascist, but last Sunday, half were collabos. On Sunday night, there were still many Imperial Star Destroyers around, and the First Order is currently gathering forces for the 2027 presidential elections.
For freshly elected NFP MPs, the time is now for negotiations and alliances. The NFP may explode within days, and form a centrist coalition with Macron’s less rabid capitalist members. They will be called sellouts by their more leftist voters, and will be called realists by neighbouring countries who’ve had to work with coalitions for decades because —unlike France— most EU countries don’t have a presidential regime. Per the French constitution, Macron may still choose to ignore that the NFP is the number one group in parliament. He may trample the will of left-wing voters because NFP didn’t get an absolute majority. He could ally himself with the last remnants of LR that haven’t allied themselves with RN yet, to cobble together a majority and government, and keep pushing the same right-wing policies he’s been pushing since 2017. Who knows? Honestly, tonight, I don’t care.
Tonight, I just want to thank the Ewoks of the Republic.
Thanks for reading! I’d like to keep these ramblings free, so if you’d like to support my work, check out my Parisian GPS-guide audio walks. They’re off-the-beaten path, and full of history even Parisians have never heard of. You don’t even have to go to Paris: francophiles around the world just listen to them at home, like a podcast.