| “¡No pasarán!” or “They shall not pass” is an iconic slogan used in the context of leftist forces fighting fascism. During the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibárruri Gómez (“Pasionaria”), a member of the Communist Party of Spain, pronounced her famous “No pasarán” speech on 18 July 1936. “¡No pasarán!” was then also used by British anti-fascists during the 1936 Battle of Cable Street on Sunday, 4 October 1936. It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police sent to protect a march by members of the British Union of Fascists, led by Sir Oswald Mosley, and various anti-fascist demonstrators, including local trade unionists, communists, anarchists, British Jews, and socialist groups. A huge crowd in Paris chanted ¡No pasarán! on the night of 7 to 8 July 2024, after it became clear that the mobilisation of the French left had defeated the far right’s plans to become the first political force in the country and gain an absolute majority in the National Assembly. The left (Nouveau Front populaire, including La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, The Ecologists, and the French Communist Party) won 182 seats. President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance Ensemble (including his Renaissance, the Democratic Movement, and Horizons) got 168, and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (RN) and allies 143, interior ministry data cited by Le Monde showed. Instead of finishing first and claiming the right to form a government, the RN finished third, which means that it will stay in opposition, and that was a major surprise. No matter how difficult it will be to form a government, this was a triumph of the “Front républicain”, a French political term born in the 1950s when a leftist coalition sought to end the Algeria war (1954-1962). It was “Front républicain” that ended the “Fourth Republic” in 1958. This constitutional construction was designed to ensure post-war reconstruction while keeping at bay the powerful French Communist Party (PCF) in the Cold War. In the “Fifth Republic,” put in place by Charles de Gaulle, who became its first president, the expression “Front républicain” was again used to constitute a coalition of government parties against Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, the predecessor of RN, notably for the presidential election of 2002. All the parties represented in Parliament called for Jacques Chirac to vote against Le Pen in the second round. This proved effective since Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered the same percentage of votes in both rounds, 17%, while Chirac won with 82%. | 