What Happened In France (in the Summer)?

A reflection on the snap election this summer in France, when the left-leaning alliance rallied to resist the far right with a surprise “come-back” in the second vote. This offers specific lessons for resisting fascism, e.g. “we have to cast elections against authoritarian leaders as elections that are a fork in the road for two futures – not a competition between two existing agendas.” It also describes how its success was due to a rapid coordination that centred organisers – “people who wanted to do things” – and that by working from shared goals and messaging, this coordination across movements was able to reach a lot of people quickly, inviting them in to choose “care” instead of “hatred”, with the emphasis on what they were ‘for’, rather than just ‘against’.