Le Pen – Bardella – Macron
The paradox of France barricade: from the hunger for greatness to cupio dissolve
France is a barricaded republic that occasionally likes to be governed by an emperor. The soul of the French is a pendulum that oscillates between the will to power and the cupio dissolvi (the desire for self-annihilation), the hunger for grandeur and degagisme, which translates into the overthrow of power without the ambition of replacing it, only for the pleasure of contemplating the void. The French have always pursued strength because they know they do not possess it.having seen it in action with Charlemagne, the Sun King, Napoleon and de Gaulle. But the heirs of the Enlightenment are also eager for the thrill of Shadenfreude (the pleasure one feels in the face of another’s misfortune) and inexorably drawn by the call to the void. France is at once the homeland of absolutism and the cradle of modern democracy. The annals of this nation are littered with peasant revolts, the jacquerie, which occurred centuries before the French Revolution. The country is the first theater in the world where the masses burst into history and the political scene. In less than a century, the same nation smiles at the apogee of the Sun King and cuts off the head of its monarch, Louis XVI. The French Revolution leads first to Robespierre’s Reign of Terror and then to the birth of Bonapartism.
After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, in the space of just over fifty years, due to popular uprisings, the Hexagon went through a restored Ancien Régime, a constitutional monarchy, a republic that elects an emperor (Louis Napoleon) by universal suffrage and finally a socialist Commune. The plan to return to the monarchy having failed, during the Third Republic (1870 – 1940) for 70 years a government falls every 7 months, while during the Fourth Republic (1946 – 1958) one every 5. Finally in 1958 the Fifth Republic is born following the threat of a coup by the French generals stationed in Algeria and by means of referendums (even bordering on unconstitutionality). At its origins this new government structure is christened by the future president – pharaoh Mitterand the “Permanent Coup d’état”. The institutional architecture conceived by de Gaulle attributes strong powers of direction to the President of the Republic and separates his fate from the executives. The latter act as a lightning rod for social tensions, ending up being replaced on average every year and a half. The French Republic thus earns the epithet of “presidential monarchy”.
However, life always overflows its banks and forms. The stability of the institutions of the Fifth Republic has not healed the rift between the people and the ruling classes. The gilets jaunes and the protests against pension reform, the police and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy are only the latest stages of a social unrest that cyclically explodes again.
Yet in the decisive moments of the last 66 years the Republican Front against the far right, the bandwagon effect (with the alignment of the mandates of the head of state and the National Assembly), the rally round the flag effect (in the presence of internal instability or wars) have from time to time ensured the tenant of the Elysée a presidential majority. In the last legislative elections only the Front Républicain was triggered. Nonetheless the anti-system tide is here to stay. Under the leadership of Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the far-right formation Rassemblement National has already had access to the presidential runoff 3 times and has come first in the last 3 European elections. The anti-system parties have been fully cleared when they obtained 55% of the votes in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections, becoming the majority in the country. Time can reshuffle the internal balances of this front but not affect the overall amount of its consensus. This is demonstrated by the case of Italy, where in 2022 the Brothers of Italy rose to power, after the 5 Star Movement and the League had alternated at the helm of our nation in the previous 4 years, in various government structures together with other parliamentary forces.
During the pandemic and the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine, Macron deployed a powerful social safety net, to the Draghian-style battle cry of “whatever it costs”. The unemployment rate at the end of 2023 reached its lowest point in the last 40 years and since the current President of the Republic has been in office, 6 million businesses have been created.
In 2022, French government spending was the 2nd highest in the world after Norway (if we exclude Libya and a handful of Pacific microstates), absorbing 58.4% of GDP. The debt-to-GDP ratio has gone from 65% in 2004 to 110% in 2024.
Nevertheless, the French find themselves today with 7,100 fewer state primary schools than in 2005 and a number of hospital beds halved in the last forty years. In 2022, the richest 10% of the population held 57.7% of the wealth, more than 10 times that of the poorest 50% of French people. Disintermediation, the catch-all leader approach, intransigence on public displays of the Islamic faith are trends already discernible in Macron’s predecessors that Le Pen has embraced. For aspiring prime minister Bardella, Paris would have been worth a mass. However, Marine Le Pen knows that a clear victory in the legislative elections would be equivalent to a Pyrrhic victory in view of the 2027 presidential elections. Faced with a parliament that emerged from the polls without a clear majority and the difficulties of the other political forces in finding a compromise to form an executive, the leader of the Rassemblement National can still paradoxically present herself as the only guarantor of future stability. “Me or chaos” is the fork in the road she allows us to glimpse.
Knowing that you cannot bend fate, de Gaulle admitted: “How can you govern a country that has 246 different varieties of cheese?” Drunk with his Jupiterian style, Macron has instead exchanged the Elysée for Olympus. “Do not delude yourself that being a sovereign for mortals is true power,” warns Euripides in “The Bacchae.” In this ancient Greek tragedy, the king of Thebes ends up with his head chopped off by the followers of Dionysus, the god of irrational instincts born from that Jupiter that Macron deluded himself into thinking he could imitate.
#paradox #barricading #France #hunger #greatness #cupio #dissolvi