Archive of French Presidential election 2022

Christian Salmon, author of Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, on France's national myths.

Edwy Plenel, author of For the Muslims, on the opportunity for an alliance of the main left-wing parties in the 2022 French legislative election.

What is left for the left after the reelection of Emmanuel Macron in France? According to Frédéric Lordon, the French election of 2022 will not have been totally in vain if it at least allows us to disengage ourselves from electoral belief. In relation to its purpose, which is to ‘bring politics to life’, election is a fraud.

Much has been made since Emmanuel Macron's victory over far right candidate Marine Le Pen on April 24th of the scale of his victory. But as Marlon Ettinger writes, with the two previously dominant parties on their last legs, the latest French election represents merely another breakdown in the country's conventional political scene, one that could provide openings for both the left and the right.

Didier Eribon, sociologist and supporter of Jean-Luc Melenchon's campaign, on the causes of the rise of the far right, and the challenges facing La France Insoumise in durably re-establishing left ideas.

This text, written by Jacques Ranciere more than 20 years ago, seems particularly relevant in the run-up to a presidential election that is already saturated with racist ideas, nonstop polemics and the obsessions of a far right that is guaranteed media coverage whether benevolent or pseudo-indignant.

Back in February, Stefano Palombarini, co-author of The Last Neoliberal, dreamt of a second round debate between Macron and Melenchon staging a confrontation between two opposing political visions. Melenchon did not make it to the second round of the 2022 French presidential elections, but is there still hope for the anti-neoliberal left?

Emmanuel Macron's campaign to be re-elected French President has come under increasing strain in recent weeks following the so-called “the McKinsey Affair,” named after the giant American consulting firm that was paid enormous sums by the French government for reports that were often completely useless. Frédéric Lordon asks what the controversy says about the state in contemporary capitalism, and what the affair's effects on the forthcoming French elections will be.

According to Esther Benbassa and Jean-Christophe Attias, Éric Zemmour is a far-right politician who, by playing on his status as a Jew, gives the far right, which is traditionally anti-Semitic, a veneer of respectability.

Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter wrote about Eric Zemmour, the far-right political sensation currently surging in French presidential polls, in their book Reactionary Democracy (2020). Check out this extract to learn more about Zemmour and the reactionary politics he's brought to the mainstream in France.