Giuliano Da Empoli imagined that his new book, Predators (to be published on April 3 by Gallimard editions) would meet an echo in France so quickly in political news? If our country has not yet changed in chaos, Marine Le Pen’s conviction to ineligibility accompanied by provisional execution can be a turning point. It is time for his opponents to wake up.
L’Express: in your book The time of predators, You distinguish the Borgians, who focus on the substance, on the problems of the people, and the progressives, the liberals, who claim compliance with the rules of law. Marine Le Pen, put (temporarily?) Out of game by judges, is it not the chemically pure incarnation of this opposition?
Giuliano Da Empoli: Some elements probably recall this, but I would not say that this is a chemically pure example, because France has not yet changed in the hegemony of chaos. Here, the situation remains a little hybrid, this is the difference with the United States.
But how can a candidate embody the rule of law hope to prevail when the social body is on fire?
We will attend a questioning of the decision of the judges and the separation of powers. Even if we are not yet in the era of chaos in France, I think that hoping to prevail simply by defending a system of procedures – which are certainly the heart and nerve of democracy – becomes more and more difficult. Just observe the previous Italians. Berlusconi, from the start, is in a very violent dialectic compared to the judges, he considers to be persecuted and that did not prevent him from being elected several times. If he had not been a candidate, he would have been strong enough to impose someone in their place. Is this the case of Marine Le Pen, I lack knowledge of French political life to say it …
Who are the predators?
Predators represent basically a return to the normality of the political, governed by force and not by the rules and slid Power point. The opposite of their opponents, guarantors of legitimacy and technocratic order. If we observe the political science of the last twenty or thirty years, we do not understand anything about the predators, whereas it is enough to read some good Roman classics, suetonius or tacit, to grasp their profile. A more recent example is the César Borgia de Machiavelli, which evolves in a chaotic world where the small republics of the Renaissance have been swept by a technological revolution which restores primacy to the aggressor and where power is conquered by a staggering, unforeseen and often violent action. Today, chaos and the primacy of the aggressor return thanks to the rise of digital.
“” “The natural enemy of the predator is the right»
It is for this reason that I speak of “Borgians”. Their first rule of behavior is the injunction of Dick Le Boucher in Henri VI From Shakespeare: “Kill all lawyers.” An image which means that the natural enemy of the predator is law. I was struck to discover that in the United States, since 1980, the Democratic Party has only presented lawyers as candidates for the presidency and the vice-president. The only exception, in forty-five years, arose last year with Tim Walz, the Colistier of Kamala Harris. No wonder they find themselves distraught in the face of the Trumpian revolution.
What form does this confrontation take in the contemporary era?
Today, you have on the one hand the advance of Trump and other predators whose journey I tell in the book, and which all focus on the substance. They send the institutional frameworks, which they present as scams, plots of the elites who prevent people from facing people: purchasing power, crime, etc. Faced with them stands the party of lawyers who, in the United States, has done nothing other than Trump to be eliminated through his trials, while insisting on the risk he represented for democracy. Which was true, but insufficient.
There is a risk that we attend the same tango in France …
In retrospect, one wonders what would have happened if Trump had been declared ineligible. American democracy, which now seems to be reached would be in better condition … I have no judgment on the decision of the magistrates, but it can be said without making sure that counting on them to eliminate an adversary cannot represent a political strategy. Ultimately, the political forces that are content to offer formal responses to the progress of predators tend to be swept away, because the political game now takes place in a space without rules, which restores primacy to the aggressor and rewards the most extreme arguments: what I call “digital Somalia”. The lawyers committed a double fault: because they should have established rules for this digital world and did not do so, they made their arguments, their formalism, inaudible or ineffective.
“” “In the United States, facing Trump and Musk, the Democrats are still waiting for the judges to do the job, except that it may be too late!»
When the president of Salvador, Nayib Bukele, shared on social networks videos of expelled men allegedly members of gangs and incarcerated in high security prisons in Salvador, some democrats rose to say: “Remember that these people did not have a lawsuit.” It’s true, but this legal response seems weak. In the United States, facing Trump and Musk, the Democrats are still waiting for the judges to do the job, except that it may be too late! And even if it happened, it would not exercise the Democrats to provide a political response.
The day of Marine Le Pen’s conviction, the Kremlin did not wait to condemn the “violation of democratic standards”. Predators know how to do politics …
It is in their logic. It is also surprising that Netanyahu has not yet split a tweet … because all these characters have common political culture elements: distrust of the rules and counter-powers of liberal democracy. They share the idea of a primacy of the will of the people, which they are supposed to embody. It is a very powerful model.
I come back to Bukele, it is the most striking example. Elected democratically in the most violent country in the world, with the highest homicide rate in the world, he decides that he will replace the penal code with a tattoos manual, because the gangsters are tattooed. All tattooed will therefore be arrested. He stops 80,000 – and too bad if, in the lot, there are some fans of rock or a few individuals only guilty of an aesthetic error of youth. The level of crime soars and Salvador becomes the safest country of the entire American continent. Bukele, in perfectly free elections, is triumphantly re -elected with 84 % of the votes. So he said: “I am accused of having put thousands of people in prison, but I freed millions that now can walk the night in security.” It is very effective.
“” “Tech oligarchs want to free themselves from any authority and any control to continue their post-human ambitions»
Our democracies are quite poorly equipped, because this dynamic receives, as a bonus, the support of the entire digital sphere which follows the same logic. Tech oligarchs also want to kill as many lawyers as possible: free themselves from any authority and any control to continue their post-human ambitions. This is why they decided to free themselves from the old political elites, the gentle technocrats of center and center left who have governed us so far to bet on the predators. And it is this convergence that makes the phenomenon difficult to fight.
What is the universal suffrage is still worth?
Paradoxically, this is what predators claim to be. From their point of view, it is the nomination by the vote and the popular will that gives them all the powers and it is in the name of this, with the decisive assistance of tech, that they want to sweep away any form of counter-power. Therefore, it is also what makes the strength of their rhetoric. We are in democratic regimes, the argument which consists in saying “nothing should oppose the will of the people” has always scared the lawyers who have written constitutions through the ages, from the founding fathers of American democracy.
And this is what allows Trump, Musk, Vance and the others today to act quickly by freeing himself from any framework and all constraints, legitimizing their voluntarism by the idea that he is the expression of the will of the people.
It is a form of political miracle: the fundamental political act of the predator. In theology, the miracle is in God, which bypassing the normal functioning of the world and which intervenes to produce a direct effect. In politics, Vladimir Putin speaks of “manual control”. That is to say the possibility offered to the chief, in a very bureaucratic system, to intervene directly on a situation to produce a direct result by bypassing the rules. This is also what Trump invokes and all the leaders of this type when they want to exercise laws. “We act directly on the world since the situation requires it.” This is undoubtedly the greatest promise of these leaders. And the end of the rule of law. A very great threat, in short.
How to counter this movement?
By demonstrating that many things remain possible even in the context of liberal democracy. Restoring a sense to action by staying within these limits is an immense challenge.
But the speeches of moderate figures seem, in comparison, often bland or offset. Should we really imitate Barack Obama and discuss on the virtues of the organic vegetable patch?
We were all delighted to hear about the organic house of the White House! [Il rit.] That said, the Obama presidency coincided with a period when the lawyer party has locked itself in the defense of the rights of increasingly close minorities, forgetting to address the majority of voters. At the same time, American Democrats have neglected to intervene in the area alone which would have required a massive dose of regulation: digital Somalia and the new oligarchy which is engulfing their democracy. Europe is not yet there, it has not yet changed, that’s why you have to wake up.
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