Rarely have the images of an Agricultural Show gone around the world so much: all the European media are commenting on the chaos surrounding Emmanuel Macron’s inaugural visit, this February 24, described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in Germany, as “a real pitched battle between farmers and the police”. “The Agricultural Show had never been a long, quiet river, but never in history had such tension raged at the Porte de Versailles for an inauguration,” summarizes The evening in Brussels.
The violence which marked the first day of the Agricultural Show symbolizes the peasant anger which has been boiling since the start of the year in France, but also elsewhere in Europe. In Portugal, Germany and Poland, farmers are crying out in despair at the endless decline in their income and the importation of non-European meat. “However, there is something of the order of the exceptional in the peasant demonstrations in France, maintains the American academic Robert Zaretsky in Foreign Policy. By their cultural and historical roots, these protests stand out from all others in Europe. So much so that Gabriel Attal declared the complete surrender of his government in the face of this discontent, accepting almost all of the unions’ demands.”
According to Zaretsky, the importance of these demonstrations can be explained by “the place of the land in French identity” and the death of the traditional agricultural world already described by Henri Mendras in The end of the peasants in 1967: “Fifty years later, this final battle continues to be fought.” And the American historian warns: “These rural demonstrations constitute a gift for the European electoral campaign of Bardella and Le Pen […], this election often being an opportunity for voters to express their discontent. It is time for the left to show that the future of France is not only based on respect for the land, but also on respect for the men and women who cultivate it.”