For years, we suspected weaknesses. We could see fine cracks, without paying attention. And then these cracks became bigger, until they turned into fissures. Here in the countryside, there in the outlying towns. Everywhere, we saw the country cracking. Even in these small villages or quiet towns, subject to the ambient radicalization and the mountains of false truths posted on social networks. Last year, farmers took over, turning the road signs upside down. This time, the cracks were everywhere, Jordan Bardella too, on TikTok, while the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal thought he could put out the fire by sitting on straws. Too late. For a long time, they had kept silent. Paris ignored them, forgetting Charles Péguy’s advice: “Those who keep quiet, the only ones whose words count.” On June 9, they went to vote in the European elections. That day the dam broke and the president dissolved it.
Caught off guard, the good souls cried wolf, trying to build anti-RN dikes, without seeing the anger invade the country. Sad reality of these two Frances, that the politician, blinded by power and technocracy, has never been able to reconcile. A first breach had been made with the yellow vest movement. Already, at the time, the government had brandished its checks and subsidies. Alas, the “whatever it costs”, disastrous for our finances, has never restored confidence. Because money does not resolve the disconnection. There followed the anti-vaccine demonstrations at the time of Covid, the protests against the surge in prices…
The taste for pique and the desire to get out
With the dissolution, Emmanuel Macron has finished destroying what was left of the dam. Perhaps he has not seen this film, The Exercise of the State, by Pierre Schoeller, in which the President of the Republic says: “The people do not have the power, we must recognize their anger”. As in the United States with the election of Trump in 2016, as in Great Britain with the Brexit vote, as in Italy with the rise to power of the extremes, the French populist wave has also ended up submerging the ballot boxes and imposing itself in Parliament. There is something of 1789 in this expression. Incomprehension. The taste for the barb and the desire to get out. The desire to put an end to this France of the elite, accused of all evils. On June 30, the Republic trembled. On July 7, it pulled itself together, preventing the RN from accessing power. But the dam gave way, letting the tumultuous waters of radical protest scour the soil of the country, erode its banks. A sad period, marked by the lack of courage of some and the petty calculations of others.
The time for reconstruction has come. It is urgent, before the presidential meeting of 2027. The coalition, which remains to be built, cannot be limited to an addition of “no” votes to the RN. It must resemble this “proof that our country is regaining its unity and, as a result, the chances of its greatness”. As General de Gaulle demanded on September 4, 1958, when the new Republic buried the previous one. Sixty-six years later, confides the Italian Enrico Letta, France needs something new more than ever.