“It’s a problem, this division”: demonstrations against extreme right mobilize very little

Barely more than 22,800 protesters gathered in thirty cities in France to protest the presence of Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. Anger against Emmanuel Macron also expressed himself.

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This is not the crowd of the big days on this Saturday, April 16 in the demonstrations against the extreme right. Professional and student unions (CGT, FAGE, UNEF, a judiciary, among others) and many associations and collectives (League of Human Rights, Greenpeace France, dare feminism!, SOS-Racism, among many Others) have called for mobilization to train at the far right in thirty cities in France, eight days of the second round of the presidential election that opposes Emmanuel Macron in Marine Le Pen.

If the nearly 22,800 protesters – 150,000 according to the organizers – have come to say everywhere in France their opposition to the candidate of the national rally (NR), the conduct to be held in the second round of April 24 is far from doing consensus. Voting Emmanuel Macron, vote white or abstain, all protesters have not yet made their choice and are not on the same wavelength. Many also want to express their opposition to the president.

In Paris, the tone is given even before the procession of 9,200 protesters falls between the places of the Nation and the Republic. Just behind the top square, a cortege of young SCANDE “Le Pen, Macron, releases!”. A slogan that reminds those heard this week in several French universities, including the Sorbonne, but that do not share the organizers of the mobilization, for whom we can not put both candidates on the same plan. “It does not mean that we are conciliatory with Emmanuel Macron, who wears a great deal of responsibility in this situation of despair”, assured Benoit tests, Secretary General of the FSU. It is challenged by a man with a yellow vest that passes: “But you too are part of the system!”.

“And the planet in all that?”

“This is a problem, this division, regrets Beatrice, who scrolls behind the banner does not touch my friend. With Macron, at least, we are in democracy. Fascism, we know when he is here, we do not Do not know when he leaves. “At the oldest, the memory of April 21, 2002 – and the accession of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election against Jacques Chirac, who had provoked an important protest movement anywhere in The country remains in the heads. Michèle, a septuagenarian, remember with some nostalgia. “Twenty years ago, we were a human tide,” she sighs, showing his incomprehension to the cleavages that speak two decades later: “We just see that no one is happy”.

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/Media reports.