Never since the Liberation has the far right in France come so close to victory. It carries a project of social demolition, of chauvinist withdrawal, of racist, sexist, homophobic discrimination, of war on minorities, of authoritarian upheaval and of ecological regression.
In her strategy to seize power, she has made the media a privileged terrain, with billionaires taking control of publications, television channels, and radio stations to serve her project. Through this network, she imposes her disinformation and her obsessions that run counter to fundamental rights in public debate. The National Rally is already signaling its intentions for public broadcasting, which would be destined for privatization if it came to power.
Press freedom is in its crosshairs. Everywhere in Europe, in the world, where the far right governs, it is violently attacked: publication bans, destruction of source protection, multiplication of gag orders, censorship, pressure and intimidation, drying up of public funding for the press. In France, unfortunately, the ground has been methodically prepared by the executive under Emmanuel Macron's presidency, which has relentlessly worked to restrict journalists' protections and rights, through attacks on source protection and the primacy of business confidentiality, the global security law, the planned merger of public broadcasting, and inaction regarding the capitalist concentration of media in the hands of major industrialists, to the detriment of pluralism and independence.
Fighting the far right and its agenda is at the heart of our editorial commitments. In our diversity, we aim to play our full part in the essential political, social, and popular mobilization in service of social and ecological justice, human emancipation, and the expansion of rights and freedoms to keep it from coming to power. The stakes are preserving the very possibility of a press independent from political power, pluralistic, with journalists exercising their profession in complete freedom. Without a free press, there is no democracy.
This is why we are calling, through our editorial initiatives, and without ever relinquishing our critical perspective, to support the ongoing social and civic mobilization, which echoes the antifascist dynamic of the 1936 Popular Front in its ability to transcend partisan frameworks. We believe that it alone is capable of preventing the RN from coming to power on July 7. The fight against the far right requires all of us, and us first and foremost, as actors of civil society.
To go further
Facing the far right, independent media step up: discover our roundup of actions, practices and formats put in place by independent media to support the ongoing movement.
