French Municipal Elections: It’s the Demography, Stupide

You may remember Leonard Cohen’s song: “First we take Manhattan, and then we take Berlin.” Well, this is happening under our eyes, not as a lyrical metaphor anymore but as a grim political reality, all over the Western world. One by one, metropoles are falling to coalitions of Islamic supremacists and unrepentant left-wingers.London fell several years ago, along with many other cities in the United Kingdom. Manhattan, or rather New York City as a whole, fell last fall. While Berlin still holds for now, Paris and several French regional capitals may follow this Sunday, in the second round of tense municipal elections.Paris has been ruled by the Socialists and their Communist and Green allies since 2001. That means a heady mix of social engineering, cronyism, and misgovernance. Chances are, however, that a still more extreme municipal government could come next. The Socialist candidate, Emmanuel Grégoire, who takes pride in being a son and grandson of die-hard Communist militants, won nearly 38 percent of the vote in the first round, Sunday. His chief conservative contender, Rachida Dati, a former cabinet minister, came second with 25.46 percent.She was followed by a right-of-center Macronist, Pierre-Yves Bournazel, 11.34 percent, and a hardline conservative, Sarah Knafo, 10.40 percent. Since both Mr. Bournazel and Ms. Knafo stood down in favor of Ms. Dati, the actual balance of power seems to break down at 38 percent for the left v. 47 percent for the right. Everything will depend on the ultra-left candidate Sophia Chirikou, the companion of the demagogic leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the far-left party La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed. Ms. Chrikou won nearly 12 percent of the vote. She said she will run against both Mr. Grégoire and Ms. Dati.Yet she may withdraw at the last moment, thus granting Mr. Grégoire a vital reinforcement. The price for Mr. Grégoire to pay is to admit publicly he needs France Unbowed, both in the election and thereafter as a partner at City Hall. Thus, to pave the way for a Socialist–France Unbowed alliance in the presidential election next year.Mr. Grégoire has repeatedly said he would not engage in such a deal. However, he also remarked that Ms. Dati “is my only adversary,” which may be understood to suggest that, by some standards, Ms. Chirikou is not an adversary at all. Clearly, this is walking a tightrope.Opening to France Unbowed is not as arithmetically sound as it appears to be: it may turn away those of his first-round voters who supported him precisely because of his anti-France Unbowed stand. Moreover, it implies reneging on an earlier solemn promise of the Socialist party and the “democratic left” not to cooperate any longer with an increasingly fascistic ultra-left. Mr Mélenchon’s alignment, since October 2023, with radical Islam, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime, as well as its rampant antisemitism, has alarmed numbers of more traditional social-democrats and liberals. Even more worrisome was France Unbowed’s proximity with a violent leftwing group, the Young Guard, that was involved last February in the fatal beating of Quentin Deranque, 23, a rightwing student. Yet no sooner had the results come in than the Socialist Party’s first secretary, Olivier Faure, raised the possibility of “technical agreements” in the second ballot, if only to “block the far right.” This cynical about-turn threatens to drive a lasting wedge through this political camp.Whereas socialist candidates at Marseille and Strasbourg, respectively France’s second- and eighth-largest cities, rejected any deal with the Mélenchonists, their peers at Toulouse (France’s fourth-biggest city), Nantes (the sixth-largest), and many lesser places quickly surrendered. Likewise, the Green outgoing mayor of Bordeaux (France’s ninth-largest city), Pierre Hurmic, opposed the deal. Yet the Green outgoing mayor of Lyons (France’s third-largest city), Gregory Doucet, welcomes it with alacrity.The subtext is easy to decipher. Whatever its roots in the old far left, France Unbowed is turning now, above all, into the party of the “New France,” the immigrant non-European and militantly Islamic communities that have been settling Metropolitan France at a rapid pace since the 1970s.Places that are already dominated by the New French, such as Saint-Denis in Northern Paris, the burial place of the French kings for several centuries, are electing France Unbowed mayors of African or Maghrebine descent. Places where the New French are demographically dynamic are prone to alliances between the left and the ultra-left. Areas where the ancestral or cultural French still dominate stay true to what remains of the classic left and right or switch to the National Rally. This is ultimately an issue of culture and of loyalty to France as a culture, rather than of religion, skin, or birthplace, as per the Parisian candidates. Ms. Dati was born in Burgundy to a Muslim Moroccan father and a Muslim Algerian mother, but her origins never interfered with a brilliant career as a lawyer and a politician, and she now personifies the conservative camp at Paris.Ms. Knafo, a senior civil servant born in Greater Paris to Jewish Sephardi parents from Algeria and Morocco, is arguably the most eloquent conservative hard-liner in France. As for Ms. Chikirou of France Unbowed, she was born in the French Alps to Muslim Algerian parents.

French Municipal Elections: It’s the Demography, Stupide

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