Taking a page from the dark days of the 1930s and the rise of fascism and nazism, the major left wing parties in France are forming what they are calling a new "Popular Front" in the upcoming snap National Assembly elections called by French president Emmanuel Macron. The electoral coalition will include the Socialist Party, the French Communist Party (PCF), the Ecologists (Greens), and Jean Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise as well as some smaller parties.
Mélenchon came within 1.2% of the vote to advancing to the second round of the last French presidential elections despite the left vote being divided.
This new initiative is a direct result of the threat now posed by the far right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen after their success in the European elections. As the PCF put it: "In France, the far right, with 36.93% of the vote, obtained an unprecedented result in our history. The National Rally alone totaled 31.47% of the vote and came out ahead in all but four of the country's departments. This disastrous development is already accompanied by a rise in xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism, an increase in discrimination, the questioning of the most fundamental principles of our Republic...We will not let the far right divide the nation with its politics of hatred."
The hope is that with "only one candidate on the left per constituency" they can "re-elect all the left-wing and ecologist deputies and win a left-wing majority by defeating the candidates of the National Rally everywhere in France."