UPDATE. Stephen Green, at Instapundit:
MON DIEU: Is France Heading for a Civil War?
If the National Rally passes the 289 seats limit, Mr. Macron is supposed to call upon Mr. Bardella to form the cabinet. This would be seen as a casus belli by the militant far left. Alternatively, Mr. Macron may cite law and order concerns to bar Mr. Bardella from the premiership and form an “apolitical” or “technical” cabinet. A move that the right may construe as a coup d’Etat.
The far left’s “civil war” threats should not be ignored and are not. Shops and restaurants are already barricading. Mayors — including the most liberal ones — are begging for police and gendarmerie deployment.
They fear “punitive raids” by the well-trained urban guerilla fighters known as the black bloc — a kind of left-wing “Invisible Empire” that periodically pops up in France and in other European countries — and large scale youth riots and arsons, just like one year ago.
Even more ominous is the ethnic/religious dimension of the crisis. The French take much pride in laïcité, their traditional “wall of separation” between government and organized religion. Only religion — both as faith, culture, and community identity — is back on the map with a vengeance.
It is, first and foremost, a consequence of Islam’s spectacular rise over the past 50 years: a 1,100 percent growth, to about 12 million in 2024 from 1 million in the early 1970s, thanks to high communal birth rates, mass immigration, and conversions.
No matter how it plays out, this dangerous moment is the result of decades of French elites actively working against French interests.
