The municipal elections were marked by the worrying emergence of community and ethnic issues in French political life. What does this portend for the future of the country?
The municipal elections of March 2026 marked, in the eyes of all, at least for those who were willing to see it, the emergence of the ethnic fact in French political life. Not that it was absent before, but the dominant sociological software made it invisible, or at least scandalous, and therefore inadmissible. Or, we spoke modestly of communitarianism. The most daring even whispered a few words about demographic changes. LFI has freed those who want it from this false modesty by leading an openly racialist campaign, which took over from the Islamo-leftist European campaign of 2024. Many candidates pleaded for the election of “racialized” mayors, supposed to represent a population “Racised” too. A revolutionary racial consciousness had to emerge. Jean-Luc Mélenchon made a project of it, by positively claiming the reference to the “great replacement”, and by repeatedly speaking ill of the native French, “all white, all ugly”, as he added a few days before the second round. This was not his first declaration of this kind: hadn’t he already confessed to feeling bad when he was surrounded by blond people with blue eyes.
Everything came to fruition on the evening of the first round in Saint-Denis, which became the capital of New France with the election of Bally Bagayoko. In a surprising declaration, he came to the defense of the “historical population of Saint-Denis”, thereby designating the new people resulting from immigration – others, more daring, even speak of counter-colonial conquest. on the scale of history, it is indeed such a movement that we are talking about: LFI is the political expression of demographic change which will result over time in the multiplication of small ethno-Soviet republics in France, as there are in the United Kingdom and in Belgium. There are ethnic ghettos on French territory where the French are. “In the old way” are simply no longer welcome. This is how the conquests play out on a historical scale. One city falls, then another: it is Saint-Denis and Roubaix. Other cities are besieged: these are the ones where the LFI score is significant, without being yet. hegemonic. We will however note the breakthrough of the Mélenchonist party in the big cities, where it finds both its “racialized” electorate, but above all, the “native” intellectual youth marked very left, often composed. of elements poorly integrated socially, compensating for their social or economic failure with ideological radicality In any case, on the scale of history, this election will have made visible the process of counter-colonial conquest which is hitting France, and we do not really see how it could. reverse.
Big cities, left-wing fortresses
These elections also confirm, as we saw exceptionally clearly in Paris, the transformation of large cities into left-wing fortresses. Rachida Dati wanted to believe that she could win in Paris. Beyond the personal rejection which struck her, we must above all note that the sociology of Paris is now refractory to the bourgeois right, and even to the right in general. Right-wing voters, generally, the middle classes as well as the natives, have gradually been replaced in the big cities (one could also say that they have been driven out) by a new population, living directly or indirectly on public aid, subsidies, municipal jobs and financing of all kinds, under the sign of the redistribution of wealth. We will think of activists of all kinds, serving all possible identities, especially the most improbable, of artists convinced of their genius, but incapable of making a living from it, and convinced of having a fundamental right to other people’s money – in the name of their very particular conception of culture.
Municipal progressivism provides a form of ideological alibi, a moral veneer, for this generalized practice of welfare. These new social categories remind us that municipal socialism has become a way of life. The immoderate extension of social housing corresponds, whatever one may say, to the desire to create an irreplaceable electoral mass, which hides its material interests behind the language of the common good. We could even, in certain respects, speak of municipal communism to the extent that it is the right to property which is targeted. Who can seriously believe that the right could tomorrow convince this electorate to vote for it? He would simply have neither the desire nor the interest. The political result of this left, obviously, is not convincing. Cities, subject to progressive aesthetics, are more and more ugly, forced to believe in “living together”, while they are less and less safe, and are falling into a form of regressive environmentalism, which makes them more and more dirty. There is a form of daily decivilization there which does not speak its name. The man about town, by which I mean the representative of the masculine gender, is normally a deconstructed man who wants to censor all speeches that contradict his vision of the world in the name of tolerance.
The ethnicization of the vote
This movement of ethnicization of the vote, or communitarization, if we want to use the official phraseology, does not only strike the left, obviously – I say it once again without rejoicing or being sorry about it, I am simply trying to describe the reality as closely as possible to the facts. The indigenous middle classes have having left the big cities for a long time, they have exiled themselves, in a way, to find their country in peripheral France, or the large suburban towns. They then become the majority again. They now have an increasingly common experience: that of feeling foreign in their own country. Obviously there that the RN managed to break through in these municipal elections, beyond its contrasting bastions of the north and the south.
It is the same for the Republicans, who want to believe in the newfound prosperity of their party, because they retain many small towns, which used to vote for them. This is obviously an illusion. This native, or autochthonous, electorate, made up of native French and assimilated people, is crossed by a mixture of despair and hope. Despair pushes him to live in withdrawal mode. We will then see its cities as so many reserves of former French people. Hope leads him to believe in a possible reconquest.
From this point of view, 2027 represents the real deadline for him, because French political mysticism invests the presidential election with transformative power. It will be noted that these parties, which spontaneously converge in their diagnoses and often in their proposals, have nevertheless not managed to ally themselves, the sanitary cordon of the RN remaining the political fact structuring the public space. Conversely, the lefts have generally managed to reach an agreement, at the cost of some minor hypocritical contortions. They just need to decree the emergence of the very great danger of the extreme right to suddenly find a way to ally themselves. They did it in 2022, in 2024, in 2026, and they will do it if necessary in 2027.
The scenario of 2027
What about the central bloc, which was not fighting under its own colors? We could say: not much. It comes to the end of a cycle. However, he found his hero in Édouard Philippe, re-elected in Le Havre, and who can therefore accelerate his march towards the Élysée. The media system is enthusiastic: it has found a way to tell a story other than that of the confrontation between the RN and LFI. Here is what we should expect: Édouard Philippe will see some polls confirm his status as a contender for the Élysée, and will settle into the role of number two. Then, the withdrawal of one or two of the candidates from the central bloc, who will probably rally around him, will give him an “unexpected” boost in the polls which will allow us to move from “if it were him” to the story of the man capable of saving the system from the extremes. We will sing of his competence, his austere charisma, we will see the revenge of Juppé to whom the French should have entrusted their destiny from 2017. We will obviously give him great natural authority, praising his expertise. The national right, caught in a strategy of respectabilization pushing it to neutralize any form of insurrectional dimension to its speech, will be in a lot of trouble, and will not really know how to confront it. This is obviously just a scenario. But it seems likely for 2027.
Mathieu Bock-Côté
© LA NEF n°390 April 2026
