This morning, France woke up to a devastating new political reality. As expected, the far-right National Rally finished top in the first round of voting in the most consequential legislative elections in recent memory. An absolute majority in parliament, which would result in France’s first far-right prime minister in modern times, is within reach.

All is not lost – hundreds of constituencies are still in play, and what matters now is how many French people will vote against the National Rally in the second round of voting this Sunday. But it is clear that a huge portion of the French voting public have supported a party steeped in racism, homophobia and misogyny, and the question is why these extremists are being given a shot at governing at all.

One of the responses often goes that the far-right has never been “exposed” to power, and that doing so will demonstrate their incompetence and they will fail at the next presidential election in 2027.

But recent history shows this isn’t true.

The National Rally and its previous incarnation the Front National have indeed been exposed to power. The party currently holds 89 seats in the French parliament, a number that will more than double after these elections. It has been sending MEPs to the European parliament since the 1980s. We can therefore examine its record to see what a far-right government might mean for France. On women’s rights, the record is clear: in the both French and European parliaments, members of the National Rally have systematically voted against or abstained from voting on bills that would protect women and girls from harassment, address wage inequality and provide access to abortion.

We can also look at their friends and allies. Until recently, they formed a bloc in the European parliament with the Alternative for Germany, a party that plotted mass deportations based on racist criteria similar to those the National Rally wish to impose in France – creating new categories of French citizens and giving some more rights than others. Under the last Law and Justice party government in Poland, abortion was effectively banned and feminists persecuted in the courts for helping people end unwanted pregnancies. The National Rally refused to condemn them for it. The National Rally’s politics are considered too extreme even for Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, and under whose leadership in Italy has seen lesbian mothers removed from their children’s birth certificates and references to abortion deleted from the recent G7 communiqué.

The far-right is rising around the world, from the US, where Donald Trump could soon be reelected and a Supreme Court dominated by zealots is dedicated to decimating reproductive rights, to Argentina, where Javier Milei is waging a misogynist campaign against women and gender-diverse people, to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán is legislating against what he calls “LGBT propaganda”. The National Rally enjoys the support (and the bank loans) of Vladimir Putin’s Russia: a country where domestic violence is decriminalised, LGBTQIA+ groups are banned as extremists and gender transition is outlawed.

Don’t be mistaken. The far-right are all too exposed to power.

As for whether the realities of government will cause voters to turn against them: Trump is on the verge of reelection, Orbán has held power for fourteen years, Law and Justice governed for eight. Meloni was elected in Italy after the National Rally’s European ally The League’s disastrous spell in government. How many migrant lives have been lost, how many people have died from pregnancy complications (in Poland, at least six), how many unwanted pregnancies have been carried to term, how many trans people have been prevented from receiving healthcare, how many immigrant families split up while people waited for these experiments with the far-right to get old?

France is already witnessing a horrifying rise in violent anti-semitism, Islamophobia and racism of which women and girls are often the first victims. Muslim women have been unfairly targeted in political debates in France for decades – their clothing banned, discrimination against them institutionalised, their loyalty to France questioned. This will only get worse under a far-right government that wishes to ban the hijab in all public spaces. Bardella and Le Pen say they are against anti-Semitism but their party has engaged in repeated acts of Holocaust denial and their current crop of candidates have expressed horrific anti-Jewish sentiment online without sanction. Since the European elections, in which the National Rally also finished first, testimonies of uninhibited racism have emerged all over the country. What kind of behaviour will be unleashed if this party is given the keys to the office of prime minister?

Gender politics and the racist politics of the far-right cannot be extricated from one another: the underlying ethos of the extreme right is that white women should have more children, and that immigrant women should have fewer. This so-called “great replacement theory”, which was born right here in France, holds that non-white migrants will replace white people in Europe, the US and the UK. Its very basis is the control of women’s bodies by dictating who should have children and who should not. Its obsession with conservative ideas of the family turns queer and gender-diverse
people into a threat.

Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen don’t want people to make these connections.

They want French voters to think they are a legitimate political alternative that deserves a shot at governing.

The National Rally pretends they are a normal political party like any other, but we do not have to agree.

The extreme right are at the gates of power, but we do not have to let them in.

Read highlights from our four years of reporting on gender inequality and the far-right here :

The far-right networks trying to end abortion in Europe

Argentinian feminists face misogynist backlash

When the only available abortion is in a war zone

Schools on fire: how sex education conspiracy theories led to arson attacks in Belgium

The end of Roe v Wade – the beginning of criminalising miscarriage?

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