„Donald Trumps Sieg hat viel zu tun, um die französische linke linke Pause zum Nachdenken zu geben.“

Donald Trump’s victory in the United States in 2024 was tied to issues like the cost of living, immigration, and „woke culture“ – topics on which Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) prospers. These are also areas where the French left seems either powerless, in denial, or absent. The billionaire’s victory across the Atlantic prompted introspection among [Democrats](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/11/07/2024-us-election-results-anatomy-of-a-political-disaster_6731920_4.html): too much focus on identity politics, not enough on the economy, and excessive insularity. Since Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025, „resignation“ has dominated in the progressive camp, as The New York Times reports.

Imperialism, trampling allies, threats of trade wars, undermining birthright citizenship, forsaking discrimination struggles, attacks on transgender rights, retribution against opponents: The deluge of executive orders and social media posts have paralyzed the left. In France, even La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left), which in November 2024 proclaimed that „only a radical and popular left“ could have defeated Trump and that Kamala Harris had lost because she was like an American version of former socialist president François Hollande, has lowered its tone. Trump’s election „puts (…) in danger many of the certainties of the previous world,“ wrote LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon cautiously on his blog on the day of the inauguration.

Even if the US is not France, as is often heard here, the accession of a far-right demagogue to the head of the world’s largest developed and educated country is enough to give the left pause for thought and prompt a stocktake. „The fact that the American working class, supposed to be the backbone of the Democratic Party, has flipped is a huge lesson,“ said Raphaël Glucksmann, a social-democratic member of the European Parliament, on [France Inter](https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/questions-politiques/questions-politiques-du-dimanche-19-janvier-2025-5889938) radio on January 19. „We must stop believing that the triumph of far-right populists is a historical anomaly. It’s a deep-seated trend in Europe as well as in the US.“

But can the left’s response to the Trump hurricane, a possible forerunner of a new tsunami carrying Le Pen to the Elysée, be limited to these generalities about the need for a „return to the people“? How can we fail to see that the propensity of the left to present immigration as a simple right, and its reluctance to link it to social issues, feeds identitarian positions? That its own electorate is affected by the issue of immigration? (A majority of left-wing voters, including LFI’s, are in favor of measures to encourage the deportation of undocumented foreigners, according to a 2023 BVA poll for the Fondation Jean-Jaurès.) That its denial of the need for security is driving working-class voters into the arms of the far right?

**Read the full article here:** [**https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/02/04/donald-trump-s-victory-has-plenty-to-give-the-french-left-pause-for-thought_6737759_23.html**](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/02/04/donald-trump-s-victory-has-plenty-to-give-the-french-left-pause-for-thought_6737759_23.html)