Elections in France and religious-based hate incidents

By Alexandre Météreau,  

The June European elections and the June-July snap general elections in France were a decisive moment for democracy. 

But besides the general considerations for the state of democracy in France, these consecutive elections took place in a broader context of tension fuelled by religious-based hate and intolerance, exacerbated by the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict. 

In this article, we wanted to present to the public the state of French society at the moment, focusing on its most salient aspect of religious tensions. 

A short summary 

Although French society has become extremely polarised in recent years, not unlike several Western countries, the question of religion is central in its divided political landscape. 

The weeks leading to the European elections showed a worrying trend of religious-based rhetoric and acts of violence. The large victory of the far right on 9 June 2024, which gathered about 40 percent of the votes, led centrist President Emmanuel Macron to call for snap elections. 

This short campaign of two to three weeks, just two years after the last legislative elections, lengthened the political tension, while exacerbating resentment and political divide. French people were called to vote for their representatives at the Assemblée Nationale on 30 June and 7 July. 

Thanks to an alliance of the left parties into the Nouveau Front Populaire and the cordon sanitaire against the Far-right party Rassemblement National, the latter did less well than expected, although it secured the highest number of seats in its history. 

The final distribution of seats resulted in no majority, with three relatively equal blocks dividing the French parliament into diverging ideologies.  

A clear left-right divide 

It is clear that the far-left party La France Insoumise, under the guise of speaking out for Palestine, is helping to spread and trivialise hatred of Jews. Rima Hassan, a candidate in the European elections on the France Insoumise ticket, described Israel as a ‘nameless monstrosity’, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the same party, wrote on his blog that ‘anti-Semitism [...] remains residual in France’. 

Conversely, the Rassemblement National and other far-right movements, in their fear of migrants, tend to conflate Islam, insecurity, migration and terrorism, a well-known trope in anti-Islamic rhetoric. 

Sarah Knafo, number two on the list of the far-right Reconquête party in the European elections, said that ‘we don't defend the Jews when we welcome thousands of anti-Semites every year’, implying migrants. 

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In conclusion, the recent French elections have highlighted a significant division of voters into three distinct blocs. Some of the most extreme elements of this division are reflected in the hardening and trivialisation of anti-religious hatred. 

As we have seen, this takes the form, on the one hand of an amalgam between migration, Islam and insecurity and, on the other, of a rejection of Israel that can lead to acts of violence against Jews.