French President Emmanuel Macron said in a podcast episode on Monday that both the far-right National Rally (RN) party and the left-wing coalition New Popular Front – frontrunners in the parliamentary elections – were at risk of causing a ‘civil war’ in France.
Macron told the ‘Generation Do It Yourself’ podcast that the RN party’s manifesto – which was ranked number one by election researchers – and their solutions to tackle fears of crime and immigration were based on “stigmatization or division ‘.
“I think the solutions of the far right are excluded because it categorizes people based on their religion or origin and therefore this leads to division and to a civil war,” he told the podcast.
Macron expressed the same criticism of the far-left party France Unbowed (LFI), which is part of the New Popular Front coalition.
‘But there is also a civil war behind that, because you are categorizing people solely on the basis of their religious views or the community they belong to, which in a sense is a way of justifying isolating them from the wider national community. in this case you would have a civil war with those who do not share the same values,” Macron said.
Asked to respond to Macron’s comments on the civil war, RN President Jordan Bardella – seen as a possible prime minister if the RN wins the most votes in the election – replied on M6 TV: “A president is not allowed to say that.”
France’s leader Jean-Luc Melenchon also criticized Macron’s comments in an interview with France 2 TV, saying it was Macron’s own policies that led to civil unrest, such as in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.
