Even if it is only the scum of a phenomenon that is difficult to quantify, Jewish and Arab personalities believe that the far right has mutated and no longer hesitate to join it. Analysis.

This is one of the paradoxes of a society in upheaval.  Judging by the positions of a number of prominent figures from different backgrounds, French Jews and French people of North African immigrant origin have not only ceased to fear the far right, but believe that it constitutes a cordon sanitaire against Islamism, anti-Semitism and terrorist threats.

It is as if, for them, the perception of the barrier to anti-republican formations had changed. From Malika Sorel, number two on the Rassemblement National’s list for the European elections, to Serge Klarsfeld, who wholeheartedly accepts the medal for the city of Perpignan from its mayor Louis Aliot, vice-president of Marine Le Pen’s party, claiming that the RN has “abandoned anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial”, something has snapped.

There is, of course, no question here of extending these individual choices to “communities”, a term that is rejected by those concerned. Malika Sorel, to quote another flamboyant RN recruit, is fighting against communitarianism. And the pseudo “North African Muslim community’” is being exploited by La France Insoumise, the political group that has shattered all the republican values to which these new refugees on the right could relate.

In fact, it was an LFI star, the psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, who caused a scandal in September 2023 by accusing “a large number of French Jews of having lost their moral compass” in an article in Le Monde, by consorting with Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen. Withdrawn today – because he has been charged with rape and sexual assault – Miller immediately drew a strongly-worded riposte from historian Marc Knobel, in the columns of L’Express, and from Samuel Lejoyeux, President of the Union des Étudiants Juifs de France (UEJF), in Libération.

“Where are the figures?” He criticised generalisations about the elusive “Jewish vote” aimed at whitewashing the extreme left’s denials. He accuses: “Gérard Miller and his friends have abandoned the fight against anti-Semitism out of clientelism”. The recent outrages of the much-maligned Insoumis and their lamentable use of the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas obviously prove Marc Knobel right. Samuel Lejoyeux insisted: “Jewish organisations remain at the forefront of the fight against the extreme right”, recalling that the UEJF had taken Éric Zemmour to court for his defence of Pétain.

All this is true, and probably more. But this debate, sparked by Gérard Miller’s article, took place ten days before 7 October, the existential earthquake for the Jewish world that sent the whole of France into a new phase, importing the conflict and inciting civil war by the Melenchonists and their muse Rima Hassan.

Now, for some, like the lawyer and essayist Gilles-William Goldnadel, the reactions following the 7 October tragedy have confirmed the Left’s links with the promoters of anti-Jewish hatred and hatred of the West. The success of his best-selling book, “Journal de guerre” (Fayard), written in the painful aftermath of the Hamas massacre, and the popularity of the polemicist on the CNews channel, are significant indicators.

For the others, the “empathy gap”, as Delphine Horvilleur, a left-wing intellectual who holds both rabbinical and literary posts, puts it, is such that the essayist’s break with former fellow travellers – you can guess their leanings – is described as a heartbreak in another highly acclaimed book, “Comment ça va pas ?” (Grasset).

The misadventures of the left-wing Jewish group Golem, insulted and expelled from a “debate” on Palestine on 21 May at the University of Lille, reinforce the feeling of solitude. During the march against anti-Semitism in Paris on 12 November 2023, Golem activists tried to prevent the RN from joining the march, even though the organisers and Jewish associations had not objected. The distress of these young Jewish leftists, vilified in Lille despite their pro-Palestinian stance because they were trying to raise awareness of anti-Semitism during the Gaza demonstrations, left its mark on people’s minds. “We were publicly humiliated by anti-Semites”, said Raphaël Assouline, one of the two Golem activists who were called “colonists”, “fascists” and “genocidaires”.

“I’m not as far left as they are, but inevitably their humiliation becomes mine”, says Jérôme, a 21-year-old IT security student, on condition of anonymity. He continued: “This affair confirms to me that we Jews should no longer expect anything from a certain political horizon. All my family were left-wing, parents and grandparents, a Jewish reflex against an extreme right-wing associated with collaboration during the Second World War. I changed sides a long time ago and my parents gave up voting for Raphaël Glucksmann because he called for the suspension of the agreement between the European Union and Israel. I don’t know if they’ll take the plunge, I understand that it’s problematic for them, but personally, I give my vote to the RN, which denounces anti-Semitism and supports Israel in its fight against terrorism. And I don’t give a damn about the Le Pen family’s past! Jordan Bardella is just a few years older than me…”

Ancient history: that’s how the lepenist saga is perceived, the saga of the “detail of history” and “crematory Durafour”, obscenities of the old Jean-Marie, now under guardianship, and replaced by the “Netanyahu, Nazi without foreskin” of Guillaume Meurice, the dubious humorist of France Inter.

At a time when anti-Semitism is “changing pavements”, as Gilles-William Goldnadel points out, it’s hardly surprising that memory is failing. It is another memory that is sounding the alarm, on the part of certain French people of immigrant origin. Born in Algeria, they experienced the worst of jihadist barbarity on the other side of the Mediterranean between 1990 and 2000, and say they recognise the symptoms and warning signs in their new French homeland.

It is to them that Malika Sorel’s commitment speaks. “But I didn’t wait for her to put my trust in the RN” says Aziz, 72. “I’m not an immigrant and I’ve never considered myself to be one. My children have assimilated, and thirty years ago we moved away from a neighbourhood that had become completely gangrened by Islamism and drugs. The Left has played a dirty trick on us, the free Arabs who were communists and secularists, so let them pay for it at the ballot box now!”