In an interview with Le Monde, Lumir Lapray, author of 'Ces Gens-là,' urges the French left to understand the National Rally's success among peri-urban and rural working classes. An ecologist activist from Ain, she traveled rural areas in France and the US to analyze these voters. She sees volatility in these votes as hope for the left to win back their support.
Lumir Lapray, 33, a defeated candidate in the 2022 legislative elections for Nupes in Ain's 2nd constituency, publishes her first book, 'Ces Gens-là. Plongée dans cette France qui pourrait tout faire basculer' (Payot, 224 pages, 19.50 euros). An advocate for popular ecology, she examines the National Rally's (RN) success in peri-urban and rural areas.
Asked about her encounters with working-class voters turning to RN in France or Trump in the US, Lapray identifies similar drivers: 'the feeling of living on a knife's edge – because any life accident can tip into precarity. Added to this fear is something else, such as the shame of feeling this fragility, the anger of having no control over one's own existence, the scapegoating of others often more vulnerable than oneself.'
In the US, she points to a 'more objectively violent unrestrained capitalism,' compounded by Christian nationalism and masculinism fueled by decades of wars. Still, she emphasizes the volatility of these votes: 'it is notably a symptom of emotions (shame, desire for belonging or pride) and a search for culprits for very real problems; something that educated elites, who tend to have intellectualized political ideologies, struggle to grasp. This should give us a lot of hope, because, in the face of this confusion, the left can organize to win back their hearts.'
Lapray thus calls on the left to make room for rural working classes to counter RN's rise.