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On the occasion of the release of Vincent Tiberj's book, La Droitisation française. Mythe et réalités, the La Boétie Institute organized exceptional dialogues between researchers and politicians entitled "Right from above, left from below?", Thursday, October 24, with Vincent Tiberj, Héloïse Nez, professor of sociology, Tristan Haute, researcher in political science, Marlène Benquet, co-host of the sociology department of the La Boétie Institute and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co-president of the La Boétie Institute. The idea of a generalized shift to the right of society is omnipresent in media and political discourse. Pseudo-opinion surveys, the electoral rise of the RN, reactionary moral panics: everything leads us to believe that the French have moved to the right. However, the latest work by sociologist Vincent Tiberj, Droitisation française. Myth and Reality defends a completely different thesis: no, the French have not moved to the right. They are even more and more open and tolerant, and aligned with left-wing values. On the other hand, we are witnessing a very clear shift to the right in the media, intellectual and political fields: a shift to the right "from above". The discussion, based on Vincent Tiberj's observation, sought to understand the paradox between the evolution of French society and that of its institutional representation, which seem to go in opposite directions. Is the process of "shifting to the right from above" opposed by a "shifting to the left from below"? Can this gap between society and its superstructure be explained by an under-mobilization, electoral and beyond, of popular groups? These dialogues thus shed light on the link between values, mobilizations and representations in contemporary France in order to provide strategic avenues in the face of this "French paradox".