During my time in France, I became interested in the rise of the New Popular Front in the summer of 2024 and the way many artists, students, academics, and members of the creative class responded to Emmanuel Macron’s government. The coalition formed very quickly after Macron called snap elections following the far right’s major gains in the European Parliament elections. It united left-wing parties, including Socialists, Greens, Communists, and La France Insoumise, largely in response to fears about the growing strength of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and dissatisfaction with Macron’s centrist policies. What stood out to me was how strongly many people in artistic and intellectual spaces identified with the movement. My host mother protested with her teacher’s union. While the groups had different platforms, the rallies focused on the defense of public culture, labor protections, immigration, and social services. This experience connects to the GEM learning goal of intercultural understanding because it pushed me to see French politics not simply through American political categories, but through France’s own history of labor movements, intellectual culture, secularism, and anti-fascist organizing rooted in the original Popular Front, which gained momentum after the February 6, 1934, riots and formally established a coalition by 1935. My host mother remembered her parents’ stories of their parents’ involvement. I later read about this feeling in Annie Ernaux’s The Years, where she recounts the Popular Front, where she romanticizes attempts to topple President Charles de Gaulle’s government in May 1968, instead of writing more historically grounded or broader economic frustrations and regional divisions shaping the country.
