After the mass mobilisation in the United States, this Sunday 6 April was anticipated in France due to the various political gatherings called by the RN, by LFI, the Greens and part of the left, and by the formerly Macronist party Renaissance.

When one wants to analyse a situation to provide elements for working-class activists to fight effectively, one must not pay lip service. One must therefore clearly state that the victorious force of this day of 6 April in France is... Renaissance, and that the force which has been most weakened is the left, which is at the same time primarily responsible for all these results.

The RN received primacy on the continuous television channels although it gathered only a few thousand people, certainly not the (actually unimpressive) 15,000 that it claimed. The reality is that it failed to mobilise, and elements of division concerning tactics and presidential candidates are already noticeable.

The RN claims that the court decision concerning it results from pressure from those in power, but the exact opposite is true: it was counting on pressure from those in power leading to a lenient decision, and between Macron, Bayrou and Ferrand, there had probably been some assurances to this effect. There is no need to make an inappropriate apology for the judicial institution in the capitalist state to welcome the fact that the independence of judges, who, it is true, had little choice in view of the texts and facts, has played in favour of democracy and law. Moreover, Trump’s offensive against European powers, with Trump, Putin and Musk ostensibly supporting Ms Le Pen and the RN, did not favour state favouritism towards Le Pen.

This situation could and should have been seized positively, as an opportunity to go back on the offensive, by all the forces which, by forming the New Popular Front on 10 June 2024, had then prevented the formation of a Macron/Bardella executive. Division prevented this and we must analyse in what way.

The broad masses, the same ones who blocked the formation of the Macron/Bardella executive through their mobilisation and vote, then the same ones who carried out, notably in public education, the highly political strike of 5 December last, are today concerned and feel directly affected by the Trump/Putin danger. They want peace and hate the victorious gangsters, they grasp that the danger of armed aggression, fascist aggression and social destruction are there, on two fronts, that of Trump and that of Putin.

They need clear and straightforward language: let’s defeat the Trump/Putin fascist Axis, and for that, let’s impose a democratic and legitimate government against the Macron/Bayrou/Retailleau executive of the Fifth Republic, which raises wages, repeals the pension reform, stops the dismantling of public services, immediately arms Ukraine, and engages in the real climate fight. With a clear perspective, they will act, without any doubt.

The gathering at République was called by LFI and the Greens on the basis of the usual “antifa” discourse, not at all integrating the international dimension perceived by the broad masses and which should provide a powerful anti-RN weapon, this party of national abasement and loss of sovereignty under the aegis of Trump and Putin. No, comrades, you do not push back fascism by chanting “siamo tutti antifascisti” with keffiyehs, you need to denounce the RN for what it is, confront the Trump/Putin Axis, call for arming Ukraine and disarming Netanyahu now. Without this, you are merely pleasing yourselves, and even then...

The populist-Bonapartist ambiguities of Mélenchon, actually opposing justice being carried out in the Le Pen case, have additionally given the PS the pretext not to join this gathering, with the PCF except for JC also keeping its distance. At most, there were 3,000 participants and the most striking fact was the scandalous division orchestrated by the minor leaders of LFI, attempting to get MP Alexis Corbière booed at the precise moment when he was calling for real antifascist unity throughout the country.

These are the reasons why Gabriel Attal emerges as the winner of this day, and not through his own strength. Before about 4,000 people, he arrogated to himself the privilege of being the one who, today, has mediatively accused Ms Le Pen of being “the groupie of Trumpism”, while praising his reactionary “shock of knowledge” in schools, which he takes care not to remind us that in its time, the RN had applauded it!

Attal even took up the formula “Trump’s reactionary International”, a formula which, in the CGT’s call for May 1^st, replaced the much more sharpened, precise, fair and combative expression of “Trump/Musk/Putin/Netanyahu fascist International” used by Sophie Binet before the FSU congress and still repeated in the CGT’s statement on the international situation of 10 March...

Thus, by the grace of the leaders of the left, and notably of LFI and the forces which, in the CGT, CGT-FO and FSU, seek to ensure that the Trump/Putin fascist axis is not designated as such, Gabriel Attal, formerly Macron’s prime minister, was able to affect playing the bulwark against reaction!

No more than Macron, an Attal will not be the bulwark, he whose shock of knowledge has paved the way for the RN, and whose social objectives, by dismantling public services and lowering real wages, can only weaken any resistance to the Trump/Putin Axis.

Only the social forces of youth and the proletariat, of women and the oppressed, who barred the way to the RN and the Macron/Bardella executive last year, can carry in France the struggle of the American demonstrators of 5 April and the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people. It is to them that it necessarily belongs to play this historic role.

For this, the battle for political clarification is necessary: designate the international enemy, confront the national enemy constituted by Macron and the Fifth Republic in the same struggle. It is the role of this battle to reconstitute and impose unity. Unity is not built on emptiness but on real needs, otherwise the emptiness sees the inflation of all bourgeois balloons in the Attal fashion. This is the battle that Aplutsoc carries as a political centre of analysis, proposals and actions. Next moment: the gatherings for the “Rule of Law” called for notably by the CGT and the FSU next Saturday.

Arguments pour la lutte sociale (Aplutsoc)