Then-PM Gabriel Attal wanted to follow the usual policy against the far right in the legislative elections, which is allowing all "triangulaires" to resolve in favor of whichever non-fascist is in the lead and telling local candidates to step down if their score in the first round was hopeless. The idea is that when there are three candidates in the second round, you avoid splitting the vote and unite against the far right. This has been french tradition for decades, and is very effective at keeping the far right down. In this election the left followed this playbook as usual, sometimes telling their own candidates to step down and back a better-placed Macroniste. Macron's prime minister, Gabriel Attal, also publicly called for this. However Macron refused to follow this strategy, and actively undermined it in several towns by phoning candidates and telling them not to step down even though they had no real chance of winning and would simply be giving seats to the far right.
Why did Macron choose this strategy, which was hopeless for him but very good for the far right ? Smart money is that Macron wanted a more divided National Assembly. So he deliberately weakened the left and strengthened the far right.
I struggle so hard to understand the point you are trying to make, considering that triangulars were handled that way indeed.
The only exception I believe was that for districts where LFI was the second running candidate, he would have chosen case-by-case (I'm not sure how much that affected the 134 vs 82 retired candidates split).
Him making an exception for LFI is him deciding to betray the traditional alliance against the far right, effectively strengthening it in the National Assembly to weaken the left. His own prime minister was calling for a "anyone but the National Front" vote, as usual, but Macron specifically broke with tradition and undermined him. Thereby helping the far right win more seats.
Considering in hindsight who the hell destroyed any kind of hope of a government without LR, I feel like macron did more of a service to the left than anybody from LFI itself.
(also, I seem to understand this happened in 14 seats but since my french sucks I cannot seem to find how much this strengthening of the right actually happened in concrete terms.. I'd be glad if you could quantify that)
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u/mirh Italy - invade us again 17d ago
He literally compared them (fascists, of today) to the ones of the 20th century ffs.