Fear & Loathing in the French Republic

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Paris Calling

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What’s really driving the ch= aos across France right now? Marc Weitzmann on a perfect s= torm of political strife and what it means for an uncertain time ahead= .

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Ivy Gould / The Signal

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Intense political conflict has = consumed France for more than two months now, with President Emanuel Ma= cron pushing an unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. P= rotests and strikes began in January, when he introduced the plan, and esca= lated after he used an arcane constitutional tactic to pass a bill on it wi= thout any vote in the National Assembly. That move led to two rare no-confi= dence motions in the legislature, the first of which Macron’s governm= ent barely survived.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Meanwhile, the protests and st= rikes have continued—with more than a million people recently taking = to the streets for a day of demonstration—but havoc is now increasing= ly accompanying them: Dozens of government buildings have been vandalized a= nd burned, and the Council of Europe has condemned excessive force in the r= esponse by French police. How has a bill changing the retirement age by jus= t two years led to all of this?
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Marc Weitzmann is a Fre= nch journalist and the author of Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism = in France (and What It Means for Us). To Weitzmann, the retirement issu= e and the way Macron’s handled it have brought fundamental tensions t= o the surface of French political life—tensions within the country&rs= quo;s traditional political culture, and tensions between this culture and = Macron’s more contemporary style of governing.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09The immediate effects have bee= n intense disarray—in the National Assembly as well as in the streets= —along with a major power shift that neither Macron nor many analysts= of the French scene expected: a return of labor unions as significant play= ers in French politics. But there’s potentially a bigger shift beyond= the chaos of the moment: a strengthening of the far right as champions of = order. Soon, France’s highest court will rule on the law—and a = possible referendum over it—which could settle the issue at Macron&rs= quo;s expense. Or it could go the other way and “compound the crisis = of authority in France.”

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Eve Valentine: Wh= at do you think these protests say about French life right now—and Ma= cron’s position in it?
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Marc Weitzmann: They say a great deal. There’s a deep crisis of authority and powe= r in this country—and you can see different aspects of this crisis co= nverging in the protests.
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At the heart of it, France’s= power structure isn’t working anymore. France has long been a very c= entralized country with an enduring nostalgia for absolute power. Its curre= nt system of government, the Fifth Republic—which was founded by Char= les de Gaulle in 1958—works almost like a secular monarchy, with trem= endous power concentrated in the presidency. In some ways, Macron wants to = fit the part of a Fifth Republic secular monarch; but in many ways, he just= doesn’t fit it—and doesn’t want to fit it—above al= l, because he’s too much of a technocrat, delegating and deferring to= a host of specialist policy experts.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Macron’s style of techno= cracy is increasingly how power is managed across the West; it’s incr= easingly in tension with the old tradition of centralized power in France; = and Macron has been increasingly caught between the old system he’s i= nherited and the new system he represents.
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Meanwhile, he’s relied deepl= y—and far too much, frankly—on technocratic polls and surveys t= o try to understand what the French people think and feel and want. And tha= t’s led to some acute problems.
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One is that the companies managing= these polls and surveys also serve as advisors to the government. So they&= rsquo;re on both sides of the question, if you will: They’re interpre= ting their own polling and surveys, and they’re also advising the gov= ernment on what it should do—meaning there’s no critical distan= ce between the interpretation of the data and the practical recommendations= based on it.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09A second problem is that the t= echnocratic language of all these polls and surveys is completely alien to = how people actually think and feel—and really, there’s no way y= ou can understand the life of a country based on what they say.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09When you get these kinds of te= chnocratic dynamics entrenched within a highly centralized power structure,= you get a government that’s dangerously isolated from the hearts and= minds of the population as a whole.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09And the population as a whole = is full of confusion about everything their country and world are going thr= ough right now. It’s telling that there’s a war in Ukraine, thr= ee hours by air from Paris; there’s a world of crises, economic and p= olitical; and the thing the people of France are most concerned about right= now is their retirement.
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I would say there’s a certai= n inability among the French really to grasp the country we live in. We&rsq= uo;re concerned about inflation, we’re concerned about the energy cri= sis, much more than we’re concerned about the transformative state of= Europe and the world right now—including what it will ultimately mea= n for France. So you have a government that’s out of touch with the p= opulation, and you have a population that’s out of touch with Europe = and the world.
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At the same time, you have a tradi= tional attraction to populist outrage in France that’s paradoxically = mixed up with the tradition of highly centralized power. You can see this i= n the way the protesters are both criticizing Macron—for what they se= e as his will to absolute power in the way he’s trying to pass this l= aw on retirement—and asking for a strong authority to oppose him.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Remember, the French fundament= ally invented modern populism in the Revolution of 1789. We’re the ma= sters of the art. Our tradition of collective rebellion is built deep into = our national identity now—and tracks with Jacques Lacan’s defin= ition of hysteria: Deep down, we desire a strong power to rebel against. =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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Ivy Gould / The Signal

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More from Marc Weitzmann = at The Signal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“During the deba= te on Macron’s retirement law in the National Assembly, the = far left went super-crazy, adopting a very theatrical strategy—yellin= g, and chanting, and insulting ministers, and so on. Meanwhile, the Nationa= l Rally essentially did nothing. They sat on the bench, trying to look resp= onsible on TV—saying that of course they were concerned, saying that = they understood the demonstrators. But they showed none of the love for cha= os that the left has demonstrated, so now they appear across France to be t= he most responsible politicians in the country.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“In France, it&r= squo;s become part of the country’s identity that it’s= supposed to have the best retirement system in the world, the best social-= security system in the world, and so on. And so now we have an identity cri= sis. But it’s an identity crisis based on a pervasive sense that thin= gs were “normal” for France back in the 1960s and ’70s. V= irtually all electoral campaigns on the left and the right, since Nicolas S= arkozy was president more than 10 years ago—including electoral campa= igns by the National Front—have been based on that nostalgia. We want= to go back to “normal”—normal meaning full jobs, full em= ployment, complete social security, a robust retirement system, and so on. = Which is really, in historical perspective, anything but normal.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“This is a gover= nment run by people who’re not inclined to engage with the p= opulation as it is; it’s run by people who’re inclined to engag= e with the population as they want it to be. And what they want it to be is= a population conditioned by technocratic concepts and technocratic communi= cation. The idiom of emergency very easily, and very quickly, becomes an id= iom of manipulation. The aspiration among Macron’s people is that it = will work. But the reality is that it cuts the people running the governmen= t off. So they end up talking to themselves. And the tragedy is, they don&r= squo;t realize it at all.”

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