Popular Front (France) in the context of "French-Jewish"

Michel Aflaq (Arabic: ميشيل عفلق, romanized: Mīšīl ʿAflaq‎, Arabic pronunciation: [miˈʃel ˈʕaflaq]; 9 January 1910 – 23 June 1989) was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement; he is considered by several Ba'athists to be the principal founder of Ba'athist thought. Aflaq published various books during his lifetime, such as The Road to Renaissance (1940), The Battle for One Destiny (1958) and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution (1975).

Born into a middle-class family in Damascus, Syria, he studied at the Sorbonne, where he met his future political companion Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Aflaq returned to Syria (at that time part of the French-ruled Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon) in 1932, beginning his political career in communist politics. He became a communist activist, but broke his ties with the communist movement when the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party supported colonial policies through the Popular Front under the French Mandate of Syria. In 1940, Aflaq and al-Bitar established the Arab Ihya Movement (later renaming itself the Arab Ba'ath Movement, taking the name from Zaki al-Arsuzi's group by the same name). The movement proved successful, and in 1947 the Arab Ba'ath Movement merged with al-Arsuzi's Arab Ba'ath organisation to establish the Arab Ba'ath Party. Aflaq was elected to the party's executive committee and was elected "'Amid" (meaning the party's leader).

The French Communist Party (French: Parti communiste français, pronounced [paʁti kɔmynist fʁɑ̃sɛ], PCF) is a communist party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left.

The PCF was founded in 1920 by Marxist–Leninist members of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) who supported the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian Revolution. It became a member of the Communist International, and followed a Marxist-Leninist line under the leadership of Maurice Thorez. In response to the threat of fascism, the PCF joined the socialist Popular Front which won the 1936 election, but it did not participate in government. During World War II, it was outlawed by the occupying Germans and became a key element of the Resistance. The PCF participated in the provisional government of the Liberation from 1944 to 1947, but for the next 30 years was excluded from government despite consistently winning more than 20 percent of the vote in elections. It fell behind the Socialist Party in the 1970s, though entered government early in François Mitterrand's presidency (1981–1984) and participated in the Plural Left cabinet led by Lionel Jospin (1997–2002).

The history of the Jews in France deals with Jews and Jewish communities in France since at least the Early Middle Ages. France was a centre of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages, but persecution increased over time, including multiple expulsions and returns. During the French Revolution in the late 18th century, on the other hand, France was the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population. Antisemitism still occurred in cycles and reached a high in the 1890s, as shown during the Dreyfus affair, and in the 1940s, under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime.

Before 1919, most French Jews lived in Paris, with many being very proud to be fully assimilated into French culture, and they comprised an upscale subgroup. A more traditional Judaism was based in Alsace-Lorraine, which was recovered by The German Empire in 1871 and taken by France in 1918 following World War I. In addition, numerous Jewish refugees and immigrants came from Russia and eastern and central Europe in the early 20th century, changing the character of French Judaism in the 1920s and 1930s. These new arrivals were much less interested in assimilation into French culture. Some supported such new causes as Zionism, the Popular Front and communism, the latter two being popular among the French political left.

The New Popular Front (French: Nouveau Front populaire [nuvo fʁɔ̃ pɔpylɛːʁ], NFP) is a broad left-wing electoral alliance with centre-left, left and far-left factions in France. It was launched on 10 June 2024 to contest the 2024 French legislative election following the gains of far-right parties in the 2024 European Parliament election. The Front stood in opposition to both Ensemble, the presidential camp of Emmanuel Macron, as well as the far-right National Rally.

The Front is an alliance of La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Ecologist Pole, the French Communist Party, Génération·s, the Republican and Socialist Left, the New Anticapitalist Party, and other centre-left and left-wing political parties, comprising the majority of left-wing political parties in France. With the unifying motive of defeating the far-right National Rally, its name echoes the interwar anti-fascist alliance the Popular Front.

A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault". More generally, it is "a coalition especially of leftist political parties against a common opponent". The phrase uses "front" in the sense of a political movement "linking divergent elements to achieve common objectives".

The term was first used in the mid-1930s in Europe by communists concerned over the rapid growth of fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which they sought to combat by coalescing with non-communist political groupings they had previously attacked as enemies. Temporarily successful popular front governments were formed in France, Spain, and Chile in 1936.

The far-right leagues (French: ligues d'extrême droite) were several French far-right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties. After having appeared first at the end of the 19th century, during the Dreyfus affair, they became common in the 1920s and 1930s, and famously participated in the 6 February 1934 crisis and riots which overthrew the second Cartel des gauches, i.e. the center-left coalition government led by Édouard Daladier.

For a long time, the French left wing had been convinced that these riots had been an attempted coup d'état against the French Republic. Although contemporary historians have shown that, despite the riots and the ensuing collapse of the governing left wing, there had been no organized plans to overthrow Daladier's Radical-Socialist government, this widespread belief led to the creation of the anti-fascist movement in France, and later to the dissolving of these leagues in 1936 by the leftist Popular Front government headed by Léon Blum.