For decades, France’s far right was treated as a political force that could provoke, frighten, and disrupt but never govern. That assumption no longer holds. The National Rally now dominates major elections, has its largest-ever parliamentary presence, and is closer to the presidency than the French far right has ever been.

In this episode, we trace the movement’s evolution from the founding of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in 1972 to Marine Le Pen’s strategy of dédiabolisation, making the party appear more respectable without necessarily abandoning its core politics. We examine the party’s origins in postwar far-right networks, its rise through elections, and its transformation from an openly provocative fringe movement into a credible contender for national power.

We also look at why people vote for the National Rally; how economic insecurity, distrust of mainstream parties, immigration, identity, and media ecosystems shape its support; and how Jordan Bardella has helped give an old political project a younger, more digital image.

Finally, we explore the stakes of the 2027 presidential election. Can France’s democratic parties still build a coalition strong enough to block the far right, or has the process of normalization already changed French politics too deeply?

For decades, the Parti Socialiste was the central governing force of the French left. It elected presidents, transformed daily life through shorter working hours, paid vacation, decentralization, abolition of the death penalty, and marriage equality, and then gradually lost much of the electorate it once claimed to represent.

In this episode, we trace the history of the French Socialist Party from Jean Jaurès and the SFIO to François Mitterrand’s victory in 1981, the turn to austerity, Lionel Jospin’s reforms, François Hollande’s presidency, and the party’s spectacular electoral collapse after 2017. We examine how a party built around social transformation became associated, for many voters, with privatization, labor-market liberalization, and compromise with European economic constraints.

The episode also looks at the PS today: Olivier Faure’s effort to preserve a place for the party within a united left, Raphaël Glucksmann’s attempt to build an autonomous pro-European social-democratic alternative, and the continuing conflict over Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise.

Can the Socialists rebuild a broad coalition of workers, public-sector employees, young urban voters, rural communities, minorities, and climate-conscious progressives? Or has the center of gravity of the French left shifted permanently away from the party that once dominated it?

From Mitterrand to Mélenchon, this is the story of power, reform, compromise, collapse, and the unresolved future of French social democracy.

French political discourse often frames the present conflict as a choice between two dangerous extremes: the far right on one side, the radical left on the other. In this narrative, the center presents itself not as one political choice among many, but as the reasonable, responsible, and supposedly non-ideological alternative the only option capable of governing.

This episode begins a series that will critically examine France’s major political parties and currents across the spectrum. The purpose is not to claim that they are all the same, but to question their narratives, policies, and relationship to power: who benefits, who pays, who is heard, and who is treated as a problem to manage.

In this first episode, I examine Emmanuel Macron and Macronism through the idea of the far center a concept I have been developing in a book project. The episode asks what happens when the political center turns its own program into “reality,” dismisses alternatives as irresponsible or extreme, and treats democratic conflict as a failure of public understanding rather than a legitimate disagreement. From labor reform and policing to immigration, pension reform, education, and the post-2024 political crisis, this is a critique of the myth of "neutral" power. Amine Zidouh, Lecturer at Dartmouth College