Le Pen vs Macron: Two toxic brands of fascism, same rotten racism

The old U.S.-led liberal world order weakens by the day: the openly fascist and anti-NATO Marine Le Pen won 41 percent of the vote in the French presidential election while anti-France, pro-Russia forces rise in former French colonies in Africa. As rival imperialists China and Russia battle the declining imperialists (Ukraine is just the beginning), it’s our class that will pay the price. We workers cannot afford to walk into the traps of nationalism and liberal democracy. The alternative vision is evident—internationalism and communist revolution.
Celebrate this vision on May Day with Progressive Labor Party (see page 1)! As you wave your red flag of internationalism and chant, “Whose day? Our day!” remember how the might of the working class under communist leadership had produced revolutions out of the rulers’ world wars. Experience the revolutionary potential by joining our march for workers’ power as we fight to build an international communist movement. One day, the wretched of the earth will become its rulers. Need and commitment, not exploitation and profit, will be the driving force of society.
Tale of two fascists
France, as well the rest of the European Union and NATO, is part of the now-floundering U.S. world order established after World War II. In competition with the former state capitalist countries China and Russia, U.S. dominance is under siege, and the E.U. can no longer be counted on for automatic support. Liberal Big Fascists are doing their best to stem the tide of the collapse of the liberal global order but they are beset on all sides (see glossary, page 6). One reflection of this decline and disarray is in the French elections.
As is the case in all elections, workers were given the choice between two oppressors. Like his Big Fascist brethren Barack Obama and Jim Crow Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron uses liberal rhetoric while unleashing state terror and committing imperialist atrocities. He has even instituted a Clinton-esque slave labor program, which forces workers to only work for less than $8 per hour to keep government welfare (Le Monde, 4/19). Mimicking his U.S. imperialist counterpart’s readiness to slaughter workers, France launched airstrikes against a wedding in Mali, killing 22 people just last year. Macron is a blood-soaked liberal fascist, and workers are no fools: just before the election, thousands protested racist police terror (France 24, 3/19) and the double rate of unemployment among immigrant workers.
If Macron is to Biden, then Marine Le Pen is to former president Donald Trump. Driven by a “French First” anti-immigrant racism, Madame Fasciste is more the same than different from Monsieur Fasciste who “cut housing benefits for the poor but slashed wealth taxes…earning him the moniker ‘the president of the rich’” his first year in charge (France 24, 4/22). Since then, he has ratcheted anti-Muslim racism: increased survellience, expanded the power of the state to shut down mosques, and terrorized girls and women who wore headscarves (TIME, 5/19/21). Moving forward, Macron also plans to create a ‘rapid reaction’ gestapo at EU borders against refugees (Euronews, 3/2). Is a liberal the lesser-evil? Hell no!
Clearly both fascists are perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of workers. So, what is the difference? The primary difference between Macron and Le Pen is the extent of their commitment to the project of maintaining the global U.S.-led hegemony. Le Pen, admirer of Russian president Vladimir Putin, dreamt of blocking European sanctions on Russian oil and gas and withdrawing France from NATO (France 24, 04/20). That’s a failing plan for an imperialist bloc fighting to maintain their dwindling grip on the world. Le Pen’s high votes further confirms U.S. weakness.
Too much is at stake for Macron and the French Big Fascists who desperately need workers willing to fight and die in coming wars against arch rivals Russia and China. This is why they represent such a great danger to our class: for all of Macron’s apologies for French colonialism, for all of his support for universal preschool, he, like liberal Big Fascists around the world, will sacrifice millions of workers at the altar of profit and imperialist control.
The question for workers worldwide is not which of these blood-soaked capitalist servants to support; ask how we can build a worldwide communist movement that can destroy them and their profit system.  
French Empire’s bloody crimes against working class
While French capitalism festers in its crisis, its former colonies are striking back. France has dominated more than 20 countries in western, northern Africa since 1524. From Haiti to Mali to Vietnam, workers were subject to the vicious racism and genocidal nature of the French imperialist machine. In Algeria alone, they slaughtered at least 5 million (The New Arab, 10/4/21). In Haiti, workers are still punished with crippling debt for the Haitian Revolution that abolished French rule.
After “independence,” the bloody grip of French imperialism didn’t really loosen. Take the 1994 Rwandan Genocide for example. France had supplied the weapons and intelligence information to the Hutus regime that butchered 800,000 people (Anadolu Agency, 12/4/19).
The racist history of French colonialism, combined with ongoing brutality, has sparked workers in Senegal, Niger, and more to shout, “Down with France!” As they should. Still, these protests come with their own dangers.
Dangers ahead: nationalism and war
As U.S. and French imperialist control deteriorates in Africa, Russia and China fill the vacuum, signaling greater war plans ahead. The West’s growing weakness is evident: six months after the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan, Macron is set to withdraw 5,000 troops in his “forever war” in Mali. “Africa [is again] a crucial battleground in the confrontation between the West and its rivals…In economic affairs, China’s influence in Africa [via the Belt Road Initiative in 39 countries] far outweighs Russia’s. But…Moscow…directly contributed to the collapse of the French [imperialist] mission in the Sahel [African region]” (Foreign Affairs, 3/10).
Russia and local capitalists have won many workers to trade Western imperialists with a Russian one. One demonstrator was “ready to make a pact with Satan to drive out France” (Reuters, 2/5). In Burkina Faso, “tailors tore up French flags and pieced the tricolors back [to]…make Russian ones” (New York Times, 4/18). All flags, no matter how we cut it up, are made with workers’ blood. Why? National flags are markers of racist borders and an effort to shift workers’ loyalty from their own class interests to “their” local oppressor. The Pan-African nationalist movement failed workers once and will do so again. Nationalism is a deadly poison that can only be countered with communist internationalism. Our class can break our chains when we unite—from Francophone Africa to Russia to Haiti—to defeat ALL bosses.
PLP continues to advance our message: for workers in Mali and France, in the streets of Port-Au-Prince, in Kyiv basements and Russian factories, unite under the red flag of communism! We have a world to win.