Whatever happens, let’s say it straight away: we are living in distressing times. No citizen driven by the good faith desire for France to get better can get through this moment of little reason and little glory without a lump in their stomach. The blitzkrieg that is beginning promises to throw even more salt into the wounds of an already raw society, and that is not reassuring. What has become of politics?
And let’s look to the left, first, where the nervous breakdown has been elevated to morning routine. Every day, its Scottish shower: lyricism of great evenings, early mornings of Lambertist purges. The time, we are told, is for great “clarification”. Where is she ? What does this new union say about the foundations and promises of the left? What does she say about the defense of progress? Emancipation through knowledge? Secularism? Education? The fight against communitarianism? What does it say about the protection of the weakest, and in particular the working classes, who feel so poorly represented that most of them have long since switched to the RN or abstention? The left of the parties is increasingly made up of people who have arrogated to themselves the monopoly on the definition of “the left” – above all: a letter of nobility – and who, by dint of morally and intellectually contemptuous of the diagnoses of a part of the French chased the people from their electorate. Good results.
Despite the lyricism of the slogans, the period changes nothing. The truth of the New Popular Front is not clarification, but arithmetic. The only common program is to put all “differences” aside to block the far right. Personally, I still have difficulty understanding how anti-Semitism can be a divergence that would be put aside, but it seems that I am quibbling. What happens, though, when there’s more dust than carpet? I know well that many sympathizers of this New Popular Front, in no way anti-Semitic, in no way sectarian, think that the agreement will make it possible to marginalize the worst of LFI thanks to the dynamic created by the union. They believe they can “do judo” with Mélenchon and his sect. But you don’t do judo with a crocodile. They are not up to the task, and will learn it the hard way. I doubt, finally, and above all, the effectiveness of the new team in fighting against the RN: can we put up a barrier when we ourselves become a repellent for many French people?
Macron, the blind man and psychology
A look at the center now. Where we wanted to believe in overcoming divisions through “pragmatism” bullet points. This was the whole point of the original Macronism, and this is its entire failure. The collapse of the horizontal “left-right” divide has given rise to a vertical recomposition: basically, France which is doing well against France which is doing badly. Rather than drawing conclusions, Emmanuel Macron preferred to see his 2022 re-election as a sign that his magic was still working. There is no worse blind person than he who does not want to see. In addition to the base of his faithful from the first round – but you never run a country on the low of its unwavering supporters – Emmanuel Macron was only reappointed by the coalition of “faults of better” and the barrier to Marine Le Pen , as the legislative elections subsequently showed.
The re-elected president had the historic responsibility of governing in part against the sociology of his voters – who would have recovered from it. Instead, he tried to explain (like a month ago in our columns) that “[sa] strategy was the right one”. To end up unleashing at the worst moment – at the worst! – a dissolution which plunges the country into a highly flammable dramatic intensity. The president seems to have a psychological inclination towards the tragedy that many of those close to him have described for a long time, who expressed herself this time more than ever.
Marine Le Pen and her “opportunistic zigzags”
Finally, on the far right of the chessboard, the nationalist populism of Marine Le Pen is causing controversy. The more the political debate gets lost in noise and fury, the more lepenism looks like honey. The program and promises change every day, depending on the time, reviews, polls or the weather, but these opportunistic zigzags do not seem to stop the dynamic from which the party now benefits. The National Rally has built popularity over the years by riding on the contempt that many French people from the middle and working classes now feel subjected to. The Republican right is on the carpet. The rating enjoyed by the RN will now be difficult to crack as long as voters judge that “at least we didn’t try”.
What will this situation lead to? Impossible to predict. The worst is never certain, but given the state of our country and its fractures, the best now seems excluded. What remains is France, its citizens and its institutions, which often inspire more confidence than the devices. Hearts up, and forward!
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