The truck rumbled through the streets of Montpellier, eliciting insults and bursts of applause as it made its way through the French city. As it rolled past onlookers, the giant screens on its sides scrolled through various pieces of legislation that the far-right National Rally (RN) had voted against, from measures to combat domestic and sexual violence to providing meals and school supplies for children in need.
It was one of dozens of grassroots efforts that have sprung up in recent weeks as France hurtles towards the second round of snap parliamentary elections that could see Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party form a government in a historic first.
“This is the country we love. It’s built us up; it’s made us who we are,” said Akli Alliouat, one of the organisers behind the Montpellier truck. “And I find it hard to accept that this France of ours is tipping into hatred, contempt and inequality.”
After the RN emerged as the most voted-for party in the first round of the elections, Alliouat and about 70 others in the city scrambled to figure out what they could do. During a two-hour meeting, they pieced together a picture of the RN’s support, homing in on nearby constituencies where the race had been tight and putting plans in motion.
“Our backs are against the wall,” said Alliouat, who heads Kaina TV, a Montpellier-based association that promotes culture and inclusion and seeks to tackle discrimination. “It’s very often in these dramatic moments that people wake up, organise and become aware of what’s going on.”
Just how dramatic the moment is in France was hammered home soon after the country was plunged into snap elections, with 250,000 people taking to the streets across the country in a show of strength against the surging RN.
In the background, grassroots groups were already working frenetically to highlight what was at stake. From Finistère, in western Brittany, to Marseille, volunteers rolled out campaigns that ranged from door-knocking to dance-offs.
Their efforts were heightened by some of the country’s most influential intellectuals, artists and sports stars. Among those who added their voices this week was Aya Nakamura, the French pop star who was targeted by racist abuse after rumours she was going to sing at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
Describing herself as “well placed” to understand racism in France, Nakamura said she had long been “discreet” on the issue. “Now I understand that my position as an artist requires me to speak out, because this is an important moment for all of us,” she wrote on social media. “So on Sunday we are all going to vote, and against the only extreme that should be condemned, because there is only one.”
The message was echoed by Kylian Mbappé, the captain of France’s national football team, who this week reiterated his previous call for voters to stave off the threat of the RN.
“It’s an urgent situation,” he said. “We cannot let our country fall into the hands of these people. It is pressing. We saw the results; it’s catastrophic. We really hope it’s going to change: that everyone is going to rally together, go and vote, and vote for the correct party.”
Launched in the early 1970s as the National Front, the party once included in its ranks former members of a Waffen-SS military unit under Nazi command during the second world war.
Rife with antisemitic, homophobic and racist views, the party was widely regarded as a danger to democracy. While Le Pen has spent much of the past decade working to soften the party’s image, the party’s deep vehemence towards immigrants remains.
The party has long targeted Muslims. This week, leaders in the community called on people to cast their votes against the far-right’s promises to bar dual nationals from certain jobs, scrap nationality rights for children born and raised in France by foreign parents, and work to ban headscarves in public places.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, wrote an urgent missive, citing the “menacing shadow of the extreme right, personified by the National Rally, that is spreading over our nation in an alarming manner”.
The far right had consistently shown that it aimed to divide the country, he added. “History has shown that when we remain silent in the face of injustice and hatred, the consequences can be disastrous. Let’s not allow the shadow of the far right to darken our future.”
His warning came after 10,000 Christians signed a column calling for people to reject the RN. “It can be tempting to look for a scapegoat. The extreme right feeds our fear of a foreigner who would put us in danger,” the column noted.
While the problems facing citizens, such as economic and social difficulties, were very real, the solutions offered by the RN were “nothing but manipulation and illusion”, it added. “Let us not fall into its trap.”
On Saturday, 1,000 historians from across France published a letter in the Guardian, warning that “for the first time since the second world war, the far right is at the gates of power in France”.
The alert added to the concerns recently expressed by 100 lawyers in France, who called for a “legal brigade” against the far right. “Today, we are mobilising to affirm that the National Rally is a danger to our society because it is a far-right party that advocates a racist, antisemitic and supremacist ideology,” the lawyers said.
Even as many across the country frantically worked to push back against the rise of the RN, others were seemingly emboldened by their advance, with rights groups reporting a rise in racist, homophobic and transphobic attacks during the campaign.
On the outskirts of Paris, an RN supporter allegedly unleashed a barrage of racist abuse at a school bus driver before deliberately hitting him with his car, while in northern France, people in a small town were left reeling after leaflets calling on authorities to “stop the Blacks” were left around town.
In Montpellier, Alliouat cited a recent attack on a 19-year-old who said he was jumped by four men who threw him into a nearby canal, repeatedly forcing his head underwater as they insulted his Arab background and told him he had “no business being here”.
“These are things that are happening now – that’s my and everyone’s fear,” said Alliouat. “This isn’t the France that I know and I don’t want to accept it this way.”
