Over the last few days, a map of France’s European election results has been doing the rounds on social media. It is lavishly detailed, showing the first-placed political party in each of the country’s 35,000 communes. An interactive version is available on the Le Monde website: just click on a département and then zoom in for a town-by-town, village-by-village breakdown of votes.
Yet it’s the big picture that’s attracted the attention. With the main exception of Paris, France appears as a sea of brown, indicating the dominance of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). Why might the map’s designers have chosen that particular hue? It’s not the official party colour, which is navy blue. Irrespective of intentions, brown is suggestive of fascism. That’s especially because of the uniforms worn by the SA, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
The map also classifies the RN as “far right”. By contrast, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFl party is classified as “radical left” — as, for that matter, is the French Communist Party. This is not accidental, and it’s surely time to start using political terminology with greater care.