Thousands of people gathered in Paris on the call of several media outlets, labor unions, and groups to vote against the far-right in the second round of France’s parliamentary elections, with minority Muslims, like many others, concerned about the development of the extreme right.
“I have the impression that we’ve really become a country of racists, and that saddens me a lot because we were France after all,” Valere Pique, a 31-year-old public servant, told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
“There’s a lot of imagination abroad about what France is, and I get the impression that we’re really closing in on ourselves, and it really saddens me to see that, in fact.”
Another protester at the site stated, “Given the divide between the countryside and the cities, I don’t see how France can be reconciled at this time.” So it terrifies me to witness the outbursts of violence, as well as the reality that racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Islamophobic, or whatever statements have become normal. “I find this trivialization of violence very frightening.”
France’s embattled prime minister has encouraged voters to build a united front to oppose the far-right in legislative elections, warning that Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party was on the verge of securing an absolute majority.
“The extreme right is the only bloc capable of achieving an absolute majority,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told France Inter radio.
“On Sunday evening, what’s at stake in the second round is to do everything so that the extreme right do es not have an absolute majority,” he said.
“It’s not nice for many French to have to block (the National Rally) by casting a vote they did not want to,” he added, but “it’s our responsibility to do this.”
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