If we were in a spy novel, we would talk about a destabilization maneuver, a large-scale manipulation… The fact remains that the NFP has managed to largely convince people that it alone is legitimate to govern, even to impose the name of his Prime Minister on the president. A belief has been born. It is not so banal. France is willingly contaminated by fake newsbut we do not see it so often in the grip of collective hallucination under the effect of an entirely bogus dogma. The experience of recent weeks shows, however, that an aberrant constitutional theory can pass for true if we know how to massage public opinion with enough consistency and bad faith so that the product penetrates deep into the social fabric.
We are therefore talking about: 1) an ultra-minority heterogeneous formation (193 deputies out of 577) which demands to be treated as the depositary of an absolute majority; 2) an electoral score foreign to any massive adhesion to the program of said formation since strongly linked to the desire to erect at all costs a “dam” against the RN; 3) the cowardice and electoral calculation of bodies – essentially socialists – which agreed to sell what remained of their soul and their own convictions by signing a pure LFI program and, as such, incompatible with this whole which had historically freed them from the double communist and leftist mortgage, at the very moment when the latter took the terrifying Islamist and chaotic turn that we know; 4) a charabistouille consisting of refusing the slightest amendment to said program while declaring itself open to compromise (on the composition of breakfast?). 5) of a “Lucie Castets or death” that no head of state could ever have accepted – Mitterrand was the first to himself smash the idea of a constraint of this order on the presidential choice -; 6) of a threat of dismissal if the president does not appoint the Lucie Castets in question… And so on and so forth.
All this defies understanding, but a significant fraction of the French buy these alternative truths. They even consider them certain and necessary, while – and this is not the least of the paradoxes – no real argument supports them once the famous “we arrived first” is set aside, which is absolutely worthless in a country divided into three thirds of comparable size. Everything in this jumble is based on media saturation with a litany of peremptory assertions, endless repetitions and prefabricated slogans. No one is capable of seriously explaining how there would be a “denial of democracy” in not taking this nonsense seriously. But it doesn’t matter. It percolates like water through a coffee filter. In return, we “mobilize” on it, we plan to put people on the streets, to stir up violence, to make the search for a national solution of common interest even more difficult… The bigger it is, the better it goes down.
The weight of our voluntary enslavement
This tactic – since that’s what it is – was running through Mélenchon’s speech from 8:01 p.m. on the evening of the second round of the legislative elections. All it took was pretending that this nonsense was self-evident to get the ball rolling. The NFP’s allies had an interest in it. The till was ready to resonate far and wide. There was bad faith, there was strategy, there was “good war”. It could have worked. It didn’t work badly.
Belief in the unbelievable is always mysterious. We do not know very well why some (many?) are fooled, among the ordinary voters as well as among the promoters of this scam, self-persuaded that they are in the right and furiously angry to see it denied them. History teaches us that opinion can be manipulated and that a good part of political art consists in manufacturing it, but it also teaches us the weight of our voluntary subjugation. However, the essential thing is played out in our capacity to ensure that our free will is something other than a pleasant fiction. If the intoxication of the moment could create some immunity for us, it would be a little less tragic.
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