How do Marine Le Pen’s RN and Zemmour’s Reconquista not come together?

In the days after Emmanuel Macron announced legislative elections in France for June 30, a bloc campaign was defined: a popular front to the left of Macron and a national front to your right. This provision, which seems civil war in the eyes of a Spaniard, was born from the determination of both wings of Parliament to become the first political force and dethrone the Renaissance liberals in the Government.

On Monday, June 10, the European hangover seemed to put both fronts back on track. Marion Marechalhead of the far-right party list Reconquest of Eric Zemmourleft a meeting at the headquarters of the National Group (RN) from his aunt Marine Le Pen expressing his “fervent desire” to “find a way of rapprochement.” The night before, the colors of the RN had colored the French map, and its leader Jordan Bardella had become the new bet of the French far-right in Brussels.

To everyone’s surprise – and to the disgrace of Maréchal and Zemmour – Bardella announced on Tuesday that the RN that he and Le Pen lead they will not converge on a national front extreme right with Reconquista. This despite the fact that their political positions are much more reconcilable than, say, those of the left-wing parties, which have managed to form a bloc made up of environmentalists, socialists, communists and the rebels of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. What makes the two far-rights irreconcilable?

[Empieza a andar el “Frente Popular” de la izquierda francesa para frenar a Le Pen con un primer pacto]

The answer to the question lies in the RN’s desire to naturalize itself as a legitimate alternative to Macron, and from being an opposition party that monopolizes the protest vote to become be another political option. In the words of Mathias Bernard, a specialist in the history of French political parties and rector of the Clermont Auvergne University, “the approach [del RN] is to try to reach a broad audience with a view to exercise powerwhile Reconquista continues in an opposition stance,” he explains to Le Parisian.

To achieve this, Bardella and Le Pen have used the best possible ally: Eric CiottiPresident of The Republicans (LR), the main party of the traditional right, which reaches out to the extreme right is costing its group the biggest internal crisis. For the RN, an agreement with LR would represent an important legitimization of its movement. While all of France is waiting to see if Ciotti manages to prevail against the Republican barons, who have formally expelled him from the party, Le Pen and Bardella moderate their tone and they make their distances with Reconquista clear.

In Reconquista they have not taken the “sudden decision” of Bardella not to converge in a national front with the most extreme extreme right. According to Maréchal, the RN’s refusal “contradicts [los] numerous exchanges and preparatory work, [que] “is not up to par with the events and the hopes raised among the French.” Le Pen’s niece also explained that she had been told that her aunt’s party did not want “no direct or indirect association with Éric Zemmour”.

[La derecha tradicional francesa expulsa a su líder Éric Ciotti por aliarse con la ultraderecha de Le Pen]

As stated Le Parisian, leaving Zemmour out of a right-wing alliance would be Ciotti’s condition to compete en bloc with the RN on June 30. Bardella gave his version of his decision on the France 2 news: “We need trust […] Éric Zemmour’s excessive positions have made the conditions of an agreement obsolete.” Beyond the ideological motivation and instead of there being any cordon sanitaire, a source declares to the Parisian media that Ciotti’s decision could also be strategic: Philippe Vardon, Maréchal’s campaign manager, is the Republican’s rival for the mayor of Nice in the upcoming municipal elections. The same source concludes: “It’s an operation by Ciotti to save his ass”.

During the European campaign that was held last Sunday, and in which both Bardella and Maréchal won seats, Maréchal and Zemmour’s messages were especially stubborn towards the rest of the right-wing parties, especially LR and RN. In a interview with BFMTV on June 2, Maréchal attacked Le Pen’s group: “The big difference […] is that we we have 92 measurementsthat is, four times more than them.

Reconquista and the RN have antipodean positions regarding New Caledonia. Zemmour’s party advocates declaring a state of siege, while Le Pen’s party proposes holding a referendum within 40 years. “We have 92 proposals, four times more than them. For example, we defend a naval blockade of the Mediterraneanand we have the will to defend French and European demography with family policies that are deduced from national deficits, things that they are not,” he stated. This is particularly evident in the promotion of this “nativist” vision of society. The vision of Reconquista is openly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community and favorable to a patriarchal societywhere women serve above all to reproduce the “original group.”