MARSEILLE, France (CN) — Saint-Victoret, a 7,000-person enclave next to the Marseille Provence Airport, has the typical markers of any small French town: a church, a tobacco-café, bakeries and not much else. But it made headlines when about two-thirds of its voters backed the far-right National Rally in the first round of snap elections on June 30.
It would be nearly impossible to immediately identify Saint-Victoret as a right-wing stronghold. There are no obvious campaign posters for the RN, as the party is known, or outward signs of any political tendency. One house had a French flag hanging outside its door. Although flags are commonplace in the U.S., in France such a display of patriotism is usually reserved for government buildings. But at nearly 67%, the town had the highest percentage of RN voters in the region.
Eddy Azrou works in a tobacco-café in Pas-des-Lanciers, which borders Saint-Victoret and links it to Marseille by train. He grew up in Marseille and voted for the new left-wing coalition in the first round of elections.
“The racism is discreet,” Azrou told Courthouse News. “Even if they feel it, they won’t show it.”
In Saint-Victoret, people seemed to either jump at the chance to talk about the elections or shy away from the topic completely.
“We don’t talk about politics here,” a man working in the local café told Courthouse News, declining to respond to questions. “People drink, so it can get heated.”
He spoke in the middle of the afternoon, and no one was drinking alcohol.
Though the RN is credited with becoming more mainstream in recent years — which most attribute to Marine Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella, whose key attributes include not being a Le Pen — the party still remains somewhat taboo. Since the RN's founding in 1972, it has been wrapped up in scandals and widely criticized as racist.
The Council of State maintains that the RN is extreme right, despite advocates within the party trying to remove the “extreme” from its label.
But the normalization campaign has worked. On June 9, after the RN won the European elections in France and crushed President Emmanuel Macron’s party, he dissolved the government and called for snap legislative elections. The move came as a shock to everyone, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
In the first round of voting on Sunday, the results loosely mirrored those of the EU elections. The RN won around 34%, while the freshly assembled left-wing coalition New Popular Front took roughly 28%, leaving Macron’s party trailing with about 20%. The second round of voting will be on Sunday.
On the streets of Saint-Victoret, despite the voter turnout, the voices of non-RN voters seemed the loudest.
Emilie Boden is the daughter of a French Christian father and an Algerian Muslim mother, and grew up in the region. She works as an esthetician and was sitting outside of a beauty salon next to the local Aviation Museum.
“They say immigrants are taking their jobs,” she told Courthouse News. “But they want to work, integrate, marry and have kids.”
Boden said that her French name has shielded her from a lot of the racism others face. But her kids, who have Muslim names, have encountered issues at school. She’s saddened by the anti-immigrant sentiment that exists in a country immigrants helped to build.
“What annoys me is that in my building, I know that everyone voted for the RN,” Boden said. “But when I make Algerian food, I’ll give it to them; they’ll tell me my couscous smells good, and I’ll give them couscous.”
But Boden said that neighbors have told her things like, “We don’t like Arabs, but we like you!” with a smile and touch on the arm. To her, this is ridiculous. The same thing happens on Facebook, when people make controversial posts about Muslims; when Boden interacts, they say, “Yes, but not you!”
Outside of the salon, planes zoomed overhead every few minutes, cutting through the small-town silence. In between landings, the owner of the salon chimed in.
“Why did the RN pass? People have limited brain capacity,” she told Courthouse News. “I can’t with these fascists and racists.”
She grew up in the region but has never felt racism directed toward her personally.
Immigration is the big topic of discussion as the second and final round of elections loom. Politicians on TV debate and redebate the issue, and the conversation rings through the streets.
Every party takes heat over immigration policy. The RN thinks Macron and the far left haven’t done enough to curb migrants; the far left sees the RN and Macron as too restrictive — pointing specifically to Macron’s controversial immigration law passed in December; and Macron’s camp leans toward the right, though it maintains that its mandate is incomparable to the RN’s.
"We will never agree on immigration and it is a source of pride for me. Listening to you, we have the impression that behind every foreigner, there is a delinquent or a terrorist. It’s revolting," Attal said to Bardella during a debate last month.
The RN's mandate includes the idea of "national preference," and proposes policies that would strip foreigners of some health and welfare benefits while giving French citizens priority in the job and housing markets. Bardella also wants to eliminate birthright citizenship, which automatically gives the children of foreigners French citizenship at 18, with some caveats. The party also advocates for making it easier to deport immigrants without residency papers.
Aurore, a woman who preferred to go by her first name, lives in the area. Though she used to vote RN, learning about the thousands of migrants who have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea made her change her mind.
“What touches me is how people come here by boat, on the sea,” she told Courthouse News. “We can’t just tell them to leave.”
Bruno Escalier, a resident of nearby Port-de-Bouc, came to Saint-Victoret to get his car fixed. He openly supports the RN and was happy with the results of the first round of voting. For Escalier, there are a few problems that need to be addressed by the new government: purchasing power, security and immigration.
“Immigration has to stop; there’s too much, don’t you see?” he told Courthouse News, craning his head and gesturing around the parking lot. “All of the problems come from immigrants; they steal everything, they’re aggressive, where do these problems come from? I’m not saying they can’t be from French people sometimes, but still.
“We have to limit it,” he continued.
One woman was entering a gated house with a baby in her car, and preferred not to be named. She grew up in Saint-Victoret.
“Here, it has always been racist and always been fascist,” she told Courthouse News. “They don’t want us Muslims in France, but without us, there is no France.”
Follow @lilyradz
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
