I’m talking to you about a time that those under twenty cannot know. At that time, Aznavour was already an old man, but we were still far from celebrating his hundredth birthday. Françoise Hardy was alive and well. She sported a gorgeous pixie cut and sang Leave anywayin which the characteristic synthesizers of that era covered the sweet timbre of his voice a little too much.
This time is the end of the 1980s, in France. My friends and I, then little Parisian teenagers, proudly wore a yellow badge – in Quebec, we would have called it a macaroon – in the shape of a hand on which was written: “Don’t touch my friend”. The word buddy is used here as a colloquial synonym for friend or buddy. This pin and especially this slogan quickly became the emblem of our fight against racism. It is to the SOS Racisme association that we owe this genius idea which unites all young people. The president of SOS Racisme, Harlem Désir, is charismatic and he organizes concerts which we attend in jubilation, convinced that our generation will win the fight against hatred and xenophobia.
Then, in 1988, in the first round of the presidential elections, the National Front obtained a vote that we then considered serious and worrying. We redouble our ardor. We demonstrate by chanting the songs of our favorite punk group, Bérurier noir. We scream at the top of our lungs, Hi to you or better yet the chorus of the song Pigsty, whose words leave little room for interpretation: “The youth piss off the National Front! » Most of us don’t even have the right to vote, but we consider it our duty to be outraged by the rise of the far right.
We have to admit that we haven’t stopped anything at all. Thirty-six years later, the National Front, now the National Rally (RN), continues to gain popularity. The most surprising thing is that today’s youth seem more inclined than ever to follow the march of this far-right party. According to an article from Parisianpublished on June 10, no less than 30% of young people voted RN.
In my book, as someone else would say, youth are more naturally open to change and humanism, some would also say that they are more utopian. Let us think of the Peace and Love generation, which, in the 1960s, denounced the war in Vietnam and opposed the prevailing social and clerical conservatism. This movement, through its significant demographic weight, has made it possible to advance many causes such as feminism, racial struggles or worker solidarity. In France, we still talk with nostalgia about May 68 and the way in which the movement shook the pillars of the State.
How then can we explain that the grandchildren of the counterculture are today turning towards the extreme right? In the Arte report aptly titled The youth no longer bothers the National Front, we make an incursion into the lives of young RN activists. We discover them articulate, fervent, but losing their bearings and worried about their future. Withdrawal into oneself and identity-based nationalism are therefore part of a simple, even simplistic, strategy intended to reassure them. Moreover, in this report, we can see the crowd rising when the RN slogan is pronounced, “France is coming back, Europe is coming back to life”.
It doesn’t matter if the party’s program on immigration is almost unrealizable from a legal point of view, it allows the discontent of new generations to be channeled.
Through the images in this Arte document, we also better understand the cult of personality maintained around President Jordan Bardella. We can guess that the young politician, skilled orator and fine strategist, has succeeded where the “old parties” have failed: reaching young people through social networks. The 28-year-old political leader managed to exceed one million subscribers on TikTok. The hashtag #vivementle9juin has gone viral and we are jockeying to get a selfie with him.
Water has flowed under the bridges, in Paris and everywhere else in the world, since I was a teenager. Migration dynamics have evolved, we face new integration challenges. Social inequalities have widened and current inflation is only exacerbating them. The intensifying climate crisis will amplify these phenomena in the decades to come. But, I remain convinced that the solutions proposed by the extreme right will not be able to resolve anything. Worse, they risk accentuating our divisions.
As evidenced by the vast demonstration against the far right which took place in Paris on Saturday June 15, I am not the only one to believe that it would be harmful to allow the RN to take power. We could also see the return of the yellow hand of SOS Racisme on signs and badges sewn on jackets. However, it will take more for President Macron’s Renaissance party and the New Popular Front (the union of left-wing parties) to find a way to regain the votes of young people. They will have to propose lasting and pragmatic solutions and, above all, they will have to succeed in creating a real feeling of belonging that speaks to young people.
In closing, I would like to steal these words from a song by Françoise Hardy (adapted from English by Serge Gainsbourg): “under no circumstances / do I want / to have a reflex / unhappy”. Here, the unfortunate reflex would be to choose the rejection of the other and climate denial as bulwarks against the challenges of the 21st century.e century, whether we are in France or elsewhere.