L’Express: Emmanuel Macron declared that he had “never considered that the RN or Reconquest were part of the ‘republican arc'”. Is it up to the head of state to say who is there or not?
Nicolas Roussellier: Under the Fifth Republic, the president became a leader of the political majority and contrary to what General de Gaulle hoped, he is not and cannot be above the parties. It is therefore normal that he tries to define his majority with the rhetorical instruments at his disposal. The president probably does not want to leave this role to the Prime Minister. It’s politics. The real problem lies with the word “Republican”, its current strength or rather lack of strength. Historically, the term was powerful because it was “divisive.” Throughout the 19th century and for a good part of the 20th century, we had, face to face, the clarity of the republican fight and the clarity of the anti-republican fight. The monarchists or Bonapartists explicitly rejected this regime since they defended an opposite model. There was a phenomenon of political identities and they were nourished by the clarity of their opposition.
We find this with some of the inter-war leagues; not only were they opposed to the Republic, its regime and its spirit, but they were proud of it. They found a part of the French for whom being against the “scum”, against the “scum” of the Palais-Bourbon made sense. All Republican leaders, from Léon Gambetta to Léon Blum, have never stopped using this vision of the Republican “party” or the Republican spirit, and they were right. It was a means of founding the regime not by its birth (which was fragile) but by a constantly rekindled fight against the enemies of the Republic. It was also a tool for creating majorities in the Chamber, at a time when the parties were weak.
Conversely, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal believes that “the republican arc is the Hemicycle”, and that behind the parties there are “millions of French people who voted”. Does the voting procedure de facto transform a party into a republican body?
This highlights the current difficulty of the word “republican” and the ineffectiveness of its exclusionary charge. The RN is located in the Hemicycle. Its leaders, father and daughter, have continued to run for president, managing to qualify for the second round three times. The historical opponents of the Republic not only ignored the elections but proudly claimed such a rejection. This is the well-known case of Action Française. So, like it or not, integration through election and entry into the Hemicycle has changed the situation: it offers the RN a new and incontestably effective tactical instrument. The vagueness no longer concerns the word “republican” itself, but rather something else, the way in which we position ourselves vis-à-vis the pluralism which characterizes our society.
And when LFI, the day after the 2022 presidential election, calls into question the legitimacy of the elected president under the pretext that he was elected with only 38% of the votes of those registered, does it not also call into question the democratic game of our Republic?
Historically, the left, up to and including LFI, benefits from a sort of birthright in its presence within the republican arc. This is due to the diversity of the five French republican experiences: each current of the left was able to forge its reference republic, that of 1793, that of 1848 or even that of the Commune of 1871. We see this clearly with the Party communist: despite Stalinism and the support given to a totalitarian regime for decades, despite the practice of violent and intolerant activism, it has its place in the republican idea, at least since the Resistance. To say that President Macron was “poorly elected” due to the mix of vote carryovers from the second round is a politically banal observation, it’s fair game. This does not take us outside the Republican arc. On the other hand, the uncontrolled verbal violence, the strategy of deinstitutionalization and the inability to name the fact of October 7 in Israel for what it is have no equivalent in the history of French democratic parties.
To criticize the institutions of the Republic or a decision of the Constitutional Council, as the RN and LFI and even LR have already done, is this to be anti-Republican?
Taking into account the fact that institutions, which are normally arbitral and impartial in nature, are required to intervene more and more often in the political game, such as the Constitutional Council and the Council of State – we could add the COR [NDLR : le Conseil d’orientation des retraites] during the debate on pensions – it is normal that they receive “blows” and criticism. These institutions have de facto new weight in the public debate. This is the price of their success. It is also the reflection of a process of judicialization which concerns all modern democracies. The Council’s interpretations are based on case law and this, by definition, is subject to subtlety and therefore to the variety of interpretations. It is entirely legitimate to propose reforms of these institutions based on criticisms that have been made of them. Demanding their suppression through a rejection of the rule of law would obviously be something entirely different.
No party anymore defines itself as anti-republican, neither on the extreme right nor on the extreme left. The whole debate is about “republican values”. Are they not confused today?
You are right: there is no longer a party which presents itself as opposing the Republic as such. Even the criterion of memory tends to fade. At its origin, the FN still had an anti-Gaullist identity, French Algeria, anti-Fifth Republic and a link with Vichy. Today, Marine Le Pen, who is going to the pantheonization of Manouchian, seeks to integrate herself into the memory matrix of the Republic.
On the other hand, LFI or other groups which claim to be supporters of a Sixth Republic are not seen as anti-Republican. Their Sixth Republic is, on the contrary, presented as a better Republic, which revives more democratic elements of our former republican experiences (especially the First and Second Republics). The fact that our republican “tradition” is one of perpetual change in its constitutional dimension does not make it easier to set benchmarks.
Is it possible that the worm is in the fruit?
The idea of the Republic has become much broader today than in the past. It is a territory without borders, which is new compared to our past. We could rejoice and say that it is the mark of better democratic integration. But other signs point in the opposite direction. The Republic is a Spanish inn where each party can do well by finding this or that instrument to exclude the other. If I say that the RN does not belong to the republican arc, I send a verbal or gestural sign to say that I am on the left, and that can do some good; but, at the same time, I say nothing about the substance of the real problems of the moment and of our country. Aside from the French who, for family reasons or out of a taste for History, still have ears that resonate with the memory of the defense of the Republic in 1934, the Resistance or the fights against the dictatorships which were at our doors (Spain for example), one may have the impression that the subtlety of the republican arc does not engage the majority of public opinion.
Should we redefine what makes “Republic”?
In the expression “republican arc”, it is the word “republican” which is problematic… Not that it is not originally noble, but because of the obsolescence of its concrete meaning, of its dimension performative, one could say. It would make much more sense to speak of an “arc of concord” and to use this criterion to see who is inside and who is outside. It is an imperative that is essential in the current situation and even more so in that of tomorrow. We can speak of minimal concord in the practice of our institutions and in political behavior, but above all of concord in concrete terms, in our society as it is and also of concord between groups of diverse origins or between the different religions. This criterion seems much more enlightening to me for orienting ourselves in the thick fog that surrounds us. If this notion recalls the ability to integrate a son of an Italian like Gambetta or a Jew from France like Léon Blum, then, yes, we could reevaluate the word “republican” and speak instead of “republican concord”…
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