Enemies of Enemies are My Friends? The Paradoxical Vote of Orthodox Jews for a Far-Right Party

This presentation fits the axis about “the role played by religion in electoral and party politics” in the domestic field, and focuses more specifically on the analysis of voting patterns. It intends to contribute to those issues through a case study of the electoral behavior of orthodox Jews in France. Researchers have established that the voting patterns of Jews is historically split [Schnapper, 1983; Strudel, 1996] but have identified a recent shift toward right-wing parties [COHEN, 2005]. Research on Judaism struggles to attract attention, but the emergence of a new voting behavior amongst orthodox Jews underlies the need for further research. The migrant crisis as of 2015, terrorist attacks through the Western world and recurring controversies about Islam altogether tend to shed light on the place of Islam in the French society. This has tremendous impacts on Jews. Some communities are choosing to move to other cities or even countries. Some changed their vote, shifting to the main far-right party, the Rassemblement National (RN). This new attitude is all the more so paradoxical since those very voters consider this party as antisemitic. So how do some orthodox Jews in France justify their at-first-glance-paradoxical new voting pattern and how can we explain it? Which sociological profiles are most affected? How is religion getting more relevant to define political orientations? This presentation is based on an ongoing PhD project. It encompasses around 80 semi-structured interviews with orthodox Jews in France, as well as participant and non-ethnological observations during classes and events of communities, and the analysis of French orthodox newspapers and websites. This paper aims at showing how some orthodox Jews are using religious texts as cognitive shortcuts, turning them into a political resource to make up their mind and prioritize the stakes: Islam embodies a greater threat than the RN. From then on, they vote for the party which seems to have the toughest stance on Islam, even though it happens to be the antisemitic RN… On analyzing minorities political patterns, this study resorts to works on electoral sociology of minority groups [Fourquet, Manternach, 2019; Köttig, Bitzan, Petö, 2017]. On analyzing religion as a dynamic of the political commitment, it resorts to work of sociology of religion on religious activism [Raison du Cleuziou, 2019; Wilcox, 1990]. Thus, on crossing those two approaches, this paper enables to take religion as an explanatory factor of paradoxical voting behaviors [Orfali, 2011]. Cohen E., Heureux comme Juifs en France ? Etude sociologique, 2001, Paris Fourquet J., Manternach S., L’an prochain à Jérusalem ? 2019, Paris Gorski P., “Why Evangelicals voted for Trump: A critical cultural sociology”, American Journal of Sociology, 2017, Chicago Köttig, M., Bitzan, R. and Petö, A. (eds.) Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, 2017, London Orfali B., L’adhésion, 2011, Paris Raison de Cleuziou Y., Une contre-révolution catholique, 2019, Paris Strudel S., Votes juifs, 1996, Paris Wilcox C., “Religion and Politics among White Evangelicals: The Impact of Religious Variables on Political Attitudes”, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1990, New-York.