the rise of the far right, a heartbreak for dual nationals

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A few hours before the face-to-face meeting which is to oppose, on Wednesday April 20, the outgoing president to the candidate of the National Rally, Mehdi Gharnit does not hide a certain weariness. The presidential race came down, for this 38-year-old Franco-Moroccan, to a “pretty poor debate, a divided left, a president on his pedestal who has not played the game”. And, again, the “identity issues” have imposed themselves in the foreground, laments his companion, Leïla Benazzouz, a teacher like him in a French establishment in Casablanca.

For these dual nationals living on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the rise of far-right themes is heartbreaking. “I do not see the link between these political speeches and reality, I do not understand where these fears come from”, confides Leïla Benazzouz, who began her career in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Read also: The far-right vote in France in 2022

“As a binational, it seems obvious to me that cultures mix. As if I couldn’t be 100% French and 100% Moroccan, as if I had to choose! »is indignant the young woman, who voted, in the first round, for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, precisely because he was one of the only “talking about creolization”.

Qualified in 2015 from “half-French” by Jean-Marie Le Pen who then said he doubted their “loyalty”, dual nationals are no longer directly targeted by the National Rally. While she had ardently defended in 2012 and 2017 the abolition of dual extra-European nationality, this old totem of the far right no longer appears in Marine Le Pen’s program this year.

“Worse if Marine Le Pen wins”

A change of foot decided on the sly which surprised his supporters. But that she assumes because, she specified a few months ago at the World, “France has changed” and that this measure ” worried[ait] unnecessarily the French of foreign origin”.

Worried, Selim Ben Abdesselem, a former Tunisian deputy, is still worried. “The far right has given up on questioning binationality, but there have been all the exits on foreigners, social benefits reserved for French people or even national preference”, he laments. After voting for the environmentalist candidate Yannick Jadot in the first round, the 52-year-old former socialist activist who lives in Tunis is resigned to doing “dam at the National Front” Sunday April 24.

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