All of the western democracies are telling their people the reason their quality of life is declining is due to immigrants and the disabled and poor. A lot of people seem to believe them. I agree its about inequality and bringing the far right in will only accelerate the process.
Right, I see your point. I also wonder sometimes if the excess of social media consumption and the battle to gobble more eye balls has somehow influenced people making them more susceptible to manipulation via charisma and populist opinions, I'm not sure how different it is nowadays than a couple of decades back. I might be wrong about this anyways
Macron made an irresponsible gamble, at the worst possible timing, without taking in account his current lack of popularity. To no one surprise it blown up in his face.
Basically, his party got beaten so badly at the European elections (barely got half of the far-right votes, and almost got the third position after the Socialist), that he decided to trigger a "Dissolution", which literally stop the current assembly mandate and call for flash-election. His gamble was to make himself the only alternative to the far-right by counting on the left division and the fear of the far right...
Which blown up to his face since the left kinda united itself and the far right still got a good advance. Even worse, this time its party got third by a long shot, and may loose a lot of its seats at the National Assembly.