The document was addressed personally to President Donald J. Trump of the United States, in keeping with what participants described as “standard diplomatic protocol for declarations of this nature,” though no officials could immediately confirm the precedent for that protocol when asked by reporters.

Among those present and signing were Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland. Mr. Tusk, who arrived last and signed with what witnesses described as “a certain theatrical flourish,” was referred to throughout the proceedings by an unofficial honorific that spread quickly among the delegations: Polonius. Mr. Tusk was said to be aware of the nickname and to have taken it in good humor, though he declined to comment on whether he found it apt.

Viktor Orbán of Hungary was notably absent. His office issued a brief statement saying he had not been invited, which was confirmed by four officials with direct knowledge of the guest list, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly confirm whom they had deliberately not invited.

“We wished to act with all appropriate urgency. This is why, having finalized the text in the final week of March, we waited until today to release it.”

The text of the declaration

The declaration, drafted over approximately four days by a working group of senior legal advisers, runs to slightly under two pages and opens with language that several historians of American constitutional documents described, when reached by telephone, as “familiar.” The full preamble reads as follows:

Excerpt — European Declaration of Independence, April 1, 2026

When in the course of European events it sometimes becomes necessary to think about who we are and how we live (without thinking about who we were in our colonial past) and to break the bonds that prevent us from being separate and equal powers trying to manage the global economy, a decent respect for our somewhat compromised dignity compels us to state the position on which we have hitherto remained silent.

To wit, we proclaim our equal and separate right to declare and wage our own wars in West Asia and elsewhere around the globe, as well as back the genocides of our choice, as befits any independent political entity. We regret any inconvenience this may cause to unfolding events, but we trust that your own precedent that took place 250 years ago will help you understand the urgency of this act.

Furthermore, we assert our sovereign prerogative to impose tariffs of our own devising, to conduct our own trade negotiations with parties of our choosing, and to organize our own security arrangements without prior consultation with or approval from Washington, Mar-a-Lago, or any other executive residence or golf property.

We hold these geopolitical truths to be negotiable, that all blocs are created with overlapping interests, that they are endowed by their treaties with certain inalienable prerogatives, that among these are the right to a unified agricultural subsidy regime, the unimpeded movement of professionals across member-state borders, and the pursuit of a competitive single market.

In testimony whereof, we have caused the seal of the European Union to be affixed to these presents, along with the signatures of such non-EU members as have been graciously permitted to append their names in a supplementary column to the right, formatted, it must be noted, in a slightly smaller font.

Reactions and context

The declaration was the culmination of a process, officials said, set in motion by the expanding scope of the United States-Israeli military campaign against Iran, which has reshaped strategic calculations across the continent. Several leaders, speaking to reporters after the signing, said the document had been in preparation since the final days of March — a timeline that, they were at pains to stress, reflected careful deliberation rather than impulsiveness.

“We did not wish to act in haste,” Ms. von der Leyen said at a brief press conference held in the castle’s Great Hall, beneath what is believed to be a reproduction of a sixteenth-century tapestry. “This is why, having finalized the text in the final week of March, we waited until today to release it.”

She did not elaborate on what had been gained by the intervening days. A spokeswoman later confirmed that the delay had allowed time for the document’s signatories page to be properly typeset.

Mr. Macron, who signed third and paused briefly to recap his pen before handing it to Mr. Starmer, said the choice of Elsinore had been intentional: “There is a question being asked here. It is not unlike another question famously associated with this place. We believe we have answered it.” He did not specify which answer Europe had chosen.

Mr. Merz said the declaration represented “the logical conclusion of a process that began some time ago and has been accelerating in ways that those responsible for accelerating it perhaps did not fully anticipate.” He added that Germany remained committed to dialogue, cooperation, and the rule of international law, and was simply choosing to pursue those commitments independently.

Mr. Starmer, for his part, noted that while the United Kingdom was not an EU member, the spirit of the declaration was one in which Britain could “wholeheartedly share, at least in this particular regard and subject to parliamentary review.” He signed in blue ink. All other signatories used black.

The White House had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication. A spokesperson for the National Security Council said she was “not aware of any such document” and asked that it be sent over by secure fax.

Historical echoes and practical questions

Scholars of transatlantic relations were divided on the declaration’s legal standing, its diplomatic implications and, more fundamentally, its coherence as a framework for international action. “It’s a gesture,” said one professor of European constitutional law, who asked not to be named because his tenure review is pending. “A significant gesture, but primarily a gesture. The question is whether gestures, when signed at sufficient altitude in a sufficiently old castle, acquire the character of policy.”

Several signatories acknowledged that implementation would require further discussion. A joint working group was announced to address questions including, but not limited to: which wars Europe intended to wage, in what sequence, under whose command and whether a common European war would require a qualified majority in the Council or could proceed under enhanced cooperation. A subcommittee on genocide backing criteria was said to be meeting in Geneva next Thursday, with an indicative agenda circulated but not yet agreed.

Officials confirmed that Mr. Orbán had not been invited specifically because, as one diplomat put it, “the spirit of the declaration is that we are declaring independence, not that we are providing an opportunity to register objections to the concept of independence at length and then block the communiqué.”

“It is not unlike another question famously associated with this place. We believe we have answered it.”

The document ends with a provision — Article VII, Paragraph 3, footnote (b) — specifying that the declaration “shall enter into force upon ratification by the relevant national parliaments, a process estimated to take between eighteen months and the heat death of the current geopolitical order, whichever comes first.”

After the signing, participants repaired to a reception in an adjoining hall, where they were served smørrebrød and a locally produced sparkling wine. Mr. Tusk — Polonius — was seen in conversation with a senior Commission official near a window overlooking the Øresund strait. Asked later what they had discussed, he said: “The view. It is very fine. You can see Sweden from here.”

He paused. “We did not invite Sweden either, but for different reasons.”

The document was to be transmitted to the White House by courier, officials said, with a digital copy sent by encrypted email and a decorative framed version dispatched separately via registered post. It was unclear whether anyone was expected to respond.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This stunning burglary has raised many questions, not only about the security flaws that enabled it, but also about how the French government, led by President Emmanuel Macron, is approaching the security of its central institutions.

The incident reveals an enormous, even greater issue: a lack of sufficient leadership in responding to basic security threats and in addressing embarrassing behavior that undermines the national image and heritage.

An unthinkable scenario

Consider this for a moment: individuals enter into one of the most tightly secured museums during the day. In a matter of minutes, they eight priceless items as if it were a routine logistical maneuver. Cameras, alarms and guards are all avoided.

The precise timing of the attack and the use of the proper tools to bypass the security measures demonstrate meticulous planning. Yet, it also poses a genuine challenge for whoever is tasked with protecting the building.

But most remarkable, other than the cunning of the thieves, is the shameful delay in the authorities’ response. During a time when security is a major issue in French politics, how was it possible for this robbery to occur at a museum of this caliber, a place that should serve as a model of protection and vigilance?

Management below expectations

The Louvre robbery is not remarkable in itself but rather the symptom of a deeper sickness. It illustrates the futility of a security system that appears to rest on shaky ground. If accounts released following the theft are to be believed, detection systems were clearly useless given the scope of the job.

Not only were the cameras not capable of capturing the criminals in real time, but the alarm systems were easily circumvented. One has to ask how committed they were towards being ready for the challenges of today.

The Louvre is more than any museum. It is not so much something to be viewed but rather a true center of support for . How are we to explain that this site, on which France bases its power over culture, has not been granted the degree of protection equal to the risks it poses? By considering the general image, it would appear that the security of national institutions comes second, as if we believed that such places were beyond all issues.

Actually, this break-in highlights a deeper problem: the lack of appreciation for how culture and heritage are essential in maintaining national stability. When such thefts happen, it’s common to blame local authorities or security agencies. But isn’t it really the central government that should take responsibility for this complacency?

The weakness of the political response

Even more damaging is the procrastination of the political response to the burglary. It may seem insignificant, but managing a crisis of such magnitude also involves sending clear messages to citizens.

Here, indecision and absence of leadership in the first few hours overshadow the government’s ability to manage crises of this nature. The silence of the Élysée Palace added to the mood of impotence and dilettantism in the presidency, as though France could not safeguard the security of its national icons.

The lack of firmness in addressing this incident and the segmented responses give the impression that the priority of this government lies elsewhere, in other political initiatives, rather than in upholding a cultural heritage to which all of humanity belongs. The French, in the meantime, are expecting concrete action. Maybe it is time for the government to commit to ensuring not just the security of citizens but the protection of what makes us us.

Lack of strategic vision

Other than this mishap, it would seem that the French government under Macron has a lack of strategic insight. Security, and more specifically that of cultural institutions, appears to have been relegated. But then this is not merely a matter of equipment or technology; it is really a matter of leadership — of issuing warnings — something that is lacking.

The Louvre case shows France must reconsider its cultural security policy. It is not merely an equipment or a budget issue, but an issue of responsibility. France’s government ought to be more reactive, not just to save its monuments but to save its place in the world as a cultural nation. France, a nation to be emulated, must prove it protects what makes it great, not only at home but all around the globe.

A call to action

October 19, 2025, is not merely a date on which a burglary took place but a day when France displayed a disturbing absence of steadfastness in its response to the protection of its heritage. This Louvre robbery is just one of several incidents that point to a fundamental problem: leadership and planning failure to address the challenges of the contemporary world. 

France deserves more than tardy responses and promised words of temporary change. If it genuinely wishes to protect its heritage and secure its citizens’ safety, France must reform the way it responds to these crises. The moment of indecision is over.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The debate has led to all sorts of theories, including the traditional folk wisdom of warning against the risk of “spreading oneself too thin” (excess breadth, insufficient depth) or proverbially noting that “a jack of all trades is master of none,” expressing a bias in favor of depth. 

From a prudential point of view, seeking depth seems the surer, safer approach. But the modern economy and the examples provided by the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have produced a model of growth and ambition in which a rapid achievement of perceived depth — based on an initial laser-like focus on either hardware, software or even selling books — serves to install a platform destined to become ever-expanding and attain practically limitless breadth. Stretching across the landscape is natural when one feels solidly rooted in a fertile earth.

The psychologist Angela Duckworth famously insisted on the importance of , which she describes as “grit,” or perseverance in a single direction. Others, such as Todd Kashdan, emphasize breadth that unfolds thanks to and the cognitive flexibility of generalists.

If Genghis Khan proved more successful than other more ephemeral military conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, it was because of the organizational depth of the Khan’s original non-linear logistical focus, featuring his “,” a complex relay of mounted couriers. Was Genghis our first network thinker? The depth of that potentially encompassing idea made possible the most rapid extension of geographical breadth in world history.

As we continue to witness an increasingly destructive war of expansion — perceived as an illegitimate quest for expanded breadth either on the part of NATO or Russia, depending on whom you prefer to blame — the question of depth vs. breadth has once again come to the fore. Ukraine’s spectacular “Spiderweb operation” just days ago forcefully struck military targets deep into Russia even as far as 4,000 kilometers beyond its national border. It achieved obvious breadth, impressing both the Russians and especially Western media. What it lacked, however, was depth, as most successful operations focused on PR tend to do. That remark could apply to the whole history of NATO, an organization that over the past 30 years has quite successfully extended its breadth (after solemnly promising not to) at the expense of its depth.

If we are to believe one of NATO’s most vocal leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron, the trend towards breadth is still in the cards. Why stop at Europe (Ukraine), West Asia (Afghanistan) and North Africa (Libya) when NATO has the potential to reach around the circumference of the globe? According to a Politico that appeared on Friday, “Emmanuel Macron warned China that NATO could become more deeply involved in Asia if Beijing does not do more to stop North Korea from taking part in Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Deeply involved:

In geopolitics — according to the usage of the presumably democratic model that guides Western Europe and North America — ��surreptitiously installed in specific places to exert influence and ultimately control, following the model of the jewelled cockroach by zombifying its host.

Contextual note

Even in promoting the idea of breadth by defining a role for NATO to play in the extreme Orient, Macron felt the need to pay lip service to depth by promising to see it “deeply involved.” Politico points to a troubling paradox: “France has long maintained that the transatlantic military alliance shouldn’t expand its reach into Asia and led the campaign to block the opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan in 2023.” But Macron is the kind of politician who has always felt empowered to shift from one position to its opposite. In his very first political campaign, he proclaimed his right to embracing opposites “en même temps” (literally, “at the same time”). That was his official back in 2016, when he boldly asserted he was both left and right.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Macron aim for breadth and depth at the same time, even concerning NATO, an institution he does not control. The problem, however, is that in contrast with Aristotle, his reasoning shows no inclination for either sophia nor episteme. In the fraught geopolitical landscape of 2025, dominated by an impulsive, volatile and capricious orange “leader of the free world” and de facto dictator of NATO, suggesting the radical extension of NATO and a goal of deep involvement sounds like the summit of irrationality.

NATO expansion, whether consciously or not, has literally thrown Europe into a state of permanent chaos; political, military and economic chaos. Putin us about it in 2008 and even gave a detailed explanation of why. US ambassador Bill Burns and later political scientist John Mearsheimer saw chaos as inevitable if expansion were to be pursued. Common sense dictated that no good could possibly come of such a conflict for Europeans, which is why Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy opposed expansion to Ukraine at the time. In contrast, even the class dunce on the other side of the Atlantic (and, of course,) could appreciate the monetary value such a conflict might have for the US military-industrial complex.

One deplorable result is that democracy in Europe has taken a serious hit. The toolbox of the European Commission — a pseudo-democratic institution, if ever there was one — now includes active support of the of election results (Romania in December 2024) whenever they appear to threaten an increasingly isolated political elite. France and Germany have set about either disqualifying popular (Marine Le Pen) or threatening to rising parties.

Largely thanks to a long history culminating with US President Joe Biden’s initiative back in 2021 of rejecting as a source of inefficiency any residual notion of diplomatic engagement, ���ܰ��DZ��’s current leaders have discovered the surest way of ensuring that democracy is simply to sideline it. Europe is no longer a community of sovereign nations, but focuses its identity around NATO. The Ukraine war has served to create a semblance of unity not as a common market, but an imagined future federated army. 

This ongoing drama has turned into something resembling Alfred Jarry’s celebrated absurd tragi-comedy of “.” It has Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer playing the lead role on alternate days. Assuming the position of casting director, Starmer just this week made an for supporting roles and extras: “Every part of society, every citizen of this country, has a role to play because we have to recognise that things have changed in the world of today.”

Historical note

No one should doubt that this is a monumentally significant period of transition in world history. Starmer and Macron see themselves as visionary leaders capable of guiding global events simply by verbally dramatizing the gravity of the issues and claiming to be the central actors. In reality, Europe has —  perhaps for the first time in two millennia — found itself in a historical limbo, strutting and fretting like an over-the-hill actor spouting his lines on a tacky stage. Here’s Starmer boldly announcing: “The front line, if you like, is here.” Perhaps he would “like” you to believe the front line is “here” (in Glasgow where he gave the speech? Or in 10 Downing Street?). That telling phrase, “if you like,” highlights the lame comedy of his script.

Macron has an equally compelling message about the course of history in which, as Starmer helpfully points out, “things have changed.” “The French president,” Politico reports, “also warned against the risk of nuclear proliferation and the potential collapse of the global order established after World War II.” Such comments, like Starmer’s on the changing world reveal their mutual commitment to the equivalent of Hamlet’s speculation about taking “arms against a sea of troubles” (Russia). They see this truly impossible mission as the key to preventing the collapse of a wonderful order that — sorry, dear Manu — is already beyond repair.

All this militaristic bombast projected by the leaders of enfeebled nations chained together within an unstructured alliance incapable of acting — militarily, politically or otherwise — in any coherent way, is designed not to define the future of Europe, but in the hope that their operatic bellicosity will convince Donald Trump to take them seriously and underpin their “cause.” They’re formulating their appeal at the very moment when the wild man in the White House has signaled his resolute reluctance to listen to their pleas.

The comedy we’re witnessing reveals broad but unintentional humor in a context that is deeply ironic. It points unambiguously towards an outcome that is likely to strike the audience as an unadulterated tragedy.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

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Even at the time, genocide wasn’t a difficult case to make. Whatever it was then has become demonstrably more flagrant today. At the very least, systematic attacks on , explicit acts of and deliberate, organized all fall squarely into the category of war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Many of the world’s governments, particularly in the West, have preferred to practice what they may think of as a style of “diplomatic discretion” that prevents them from explicitly condemning Israel’s actions. Few have taken any bold steps to use whatever political clout they could muster to prevent Israel from turning a plausible genocide into a fait accompli we Europeans just have to learn to live with. Several European nations have even continued to provide military assistance to Israel throughout the period.

, and are the only members of the European Union to have literally accused Israel of war crimes and followed it up with an . In contrast, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States have continued to back Israel militarily, even while occasionally hinting to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government that they would feel more comfortable if he were to tone down the destruction a bit. Italy initially arms exports but later resumed them quietly. “Piano, piano!” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seemed to be saying. Bibi, the Israeli virtuoso, naturally interprets her words as an invitation to play, with unusual brio, his latest resounding apocalyptic concert on her keyboard.

Emmanuel Macron’s France, to its credit, has consistently supported UN ceasefire resolutions, knowing the US would veto them, but adamantly refuses to call Israel’s actions genocide, collective punishment or ethnic cleansing. At the same time, it has refused a full arms embargo but, to demonstrate its empathetic rhetoric with a suffering population, has restricted the supply of certain weapons.

In other words, despite a few courageous initiatives from a small minority of governments, the Atlantic alliance — the US, European nations and the EU itself —  has remained relatively unified in solidarity with Israel. From the beginning the US has led the fanfare, first under Biden and then, despite a visible change of style, under Israel’s favorite US president of all time, Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, the pressure is mounting and some of the seams appear to be cracking. Just last week, Macron characterized the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “,” adding that it has become “” (����é�徱��). By “unprecedented” he meant that Israel’s conduct today appears to be even worse (������������é��) than it was at any earlier point in the campaign. In other words, his complaint is less about the nature of the act than the degree, as if war crimes can simply evolve quantitatively before crossing the distant threshold of genocide. This kind of reasoning enables Macron to maintain a position that falls short not only of having to utter the g-word, but of acting in any concrete way upon his perception of ongoing horror.

Nevertheless, the temperature is clearly rising. France’s state-owned radio news network Radio France Internationale (RFI) that Macron’s government has at least begun thinking about the theoretical tipping point beyond which it becomes necessary to evoke gross violations of international law. “French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot,” RFI informs us, “has voiced his support for reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, amid growing concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Our Devil’s Dictionary has recently highlighted the moral ambiguity associated with prominent political figures who voice “concern.” But Barrot provides another clue about the strength of France’s moral fiber when he proclaims: “This is a legitimate request, and I invite the European Commission to examine it.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Legitimate request:

A timidly formulated hope that others will recognize a moral stance unwilling to take the form of a commitment. It contrasts with what the same parties see as an “illegitimate request,” such as firmly demanding the cessation of a genocide.

Contextual note

The French have always cultivated the idea that they are a generous and welcoming people, clearly reflected in Barrot’s promise to “” the European Commission to review its solidarity with a nation credibly engaged in genocide. Note that the invitation aims not at changing the relationship or taking any concrete action, but at examining it.

That attitude of bold moral resoluteness turned out to be too much for the currently disenfranchised leader of the opposition to Macron’s regime, Marine Le Pen, who no need for a review. “Israel is doing what it can in a situation that is extremely difficult,” she charitably explained. Her reasoning may follow a well known pattern: Any nation that would go so far as to invite the opprobrium attached to practicing live-streamed genocide and ethnic cleansing would only do so in response to an extremely difficult situation. Take the case of Nazi Germany, whose regime Marine’s father (and founder of her party) openly . After losing World War I, the German nation found itself humiliated by the victors, saddled with exorbitant reparations to pay that in turn provoked raging inflation that undermined the economy and destabilized the government. The world treated Deutschland as the sole culprit in a war ���ܰ��DZ��’s leaders had collectively sleepwalked into. In such extremely difficult circumstances, it is natural that only a holocaust could follow.

Le Pen herself has undergone the humiliation and disgrace of being barred by the courts from running in an election, even though the put her in the lead for the 2027 presidential election. That may help explain her current position on Israel, which she expressed in her critique of Macron’s impatience with Israel: “He is constantly increasing his criticism of Israel, perhaps because it is incapable of providing a solution to facilitate the fight against Islamist fundamentalism.” The German example may have convinced Le Pen that when attempting to “provide a solution” the only surefire way of achieving one’s goal is by aiming at a “final solution.”

Historical note

Historical inertia, the patient acceptance of immoral behavior as a fait accompli or feature of the landscape, has become a standard response for leaders like Macron. Le Pen is right to point out that he has no solutions, but that won’t prevent him from defending to the death his right to hold onto power and prevent anyone who might have solutions from applying them. The current class of European leaders has become adept at using the perception of intolerable situations as faits accomplis that can never be seriously questioned as the most convenient way to define and maintain their dangerously confused policies. This is especially true with regard to the two major conflicts they appear committed to: a Ukraine war started and then apparently abandoned by the US, and Israel’s noble “self-defense” against a captive, occupied and confined population whose cowardly soldiers hide behind human shields composed essentially of women and children.

If it didn’t involve the sacrifice of probably more than a million Ukrainians and Russians, the case of ���ܰ��DZ��’s inertia with regard to Ukraine may appear comic, at least since the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House. The Donald has embarrassingly made it clear he’s ready to pull out of a war his predecessors encouraged Europe to join. The belief initially inculcated by US propaganda that Ukraine has the capacity to win a war designed to humiliate and eventually dismantle Russia is already delusional. But formulating the project of replacing the clout of the US — which under Trump is withdrawing from the fight — and believing that ���ܰ��DZ��’s commitment could turn the tide is positively surreal.

���ܰ��DZ��’s backing of Israel follows the same pattern. Former US President Joe Biden set the tone and Europe followed suit. In this case, NATO solidarity could not provide the pretext, but the logic was identical. The US leads NATO and NATO leads Europe; with or without NATO, the US has led Europe… by the nose. That’s what Europeans have accepted as a “security system” (some would call it a security blanket). It is not limited to Europe and its periphery. It applies even to nations in West Asia. It should be noted that Macron, thanks to his obsession with the idea of “strategic autonomy,” is the rare European leader in recent times to have expressed his desire to refuse the status of vassal to the US.  Note that he “desires” to “refuse” which means quite simply that he will not dare to refuse.

The policy of passive conformity with the policies of other nations — Israel and the US — who have fewer qualms about engaging in evil, may now be coming back to bite Europe and France. A group of French “Jurists for the Respect of International Law” (JURDI) have taken legal action, sending a formal (mise en demeure) addressed to the European Commission and the European Council calling for “the immediate suspension of all agreements of cooperation with Israel,” individual sanctions imposed on responsible parties and exclusion of Israel from the SWIFT payment system. These are all measures that the Europeans rapidly applied to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

As Le Monde, this is an accusation of “institutional complicity.” Readers will note the radical difference between a mise en demeure (a formal legal act) and a “legitimate request.”��

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post ���ܰ��DZ��’s Reckoning: Genocide in Plain Sight, Diplomacy in Disguise appeared first on 51�Թ�.

At the same time, the chatbot worries “that leaders resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority may bypass traditional democratic processes, leading to a disconnect between government actions and public sentiment.” Because of the risks, it maintains that “it is crucial to balance these actions with robust democratic engagement to ensure that measures taken do not inadvertently weaken the democratic institutions they seek to protect.”

Up to this point, the discussion remained theoretical. As often, ChatGPT recommended a balanced approach, avoiding risks and preserving stability. But, given what we know about Europe today, is that realistic? I continued the conversation with the following prompt:

“All these suggestions may sound reasonable to the leaders who are looking to promote a vision of unified Europe standing tall on the global stage. But aren’t its vulnerabilities obvious? Does it make sense to talk in these terms, at least on the UK side, after Brexit? Isn’t there already a debt crisis that will only be aggravated by these projected plans? Isn’t it also obvious that achieving unanimity within ���ܰ��DZ��’s 27 nations is unthinkable, but that the notion of a ‘coalition of the willing’ is far more absurd today, when there is no powerful designated leader to organize it, as was the case for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq? Even in those circumstances, the effort proved to be a long-term fiasco. Am I wrong to think that Europeans themselves, the voters, will remain skeptical of the bombast and excessive optimism? There are personalities such as Dominique de Villepin who are attempting to put forward a somewhat different vision. But is there room for a different vision of Europe today, given the attitude shared by the current elected and non-elected leaders, such as Ursula von der Leyen?”

ChatGPT reacted with a dose of political and economic reality that appears to pour cold water on its previously-affirmed cautious optimism.

“Your skepticism is well-founded, and it aligns with many of the critical fault lines that could hinder ���ܰ��DZ��’s ambitious defense and geopolitical aspirations. Let’s break down the key vulnerabilities and contradictions:

1. The Fragility of the Unified Europe Narrative

• European leaders, particularly Macron and von der Leyen, present a vision of Europe as a sovereign geopolitical power, capable of defending itself and asserting influence on the global stage.
• However, the realities of economic distress, political fragmentation, and military dependence on the US suggest that this vision may be more rhetorical than practical.
• Even within EU defense discussions, Germany, France, and Eastern European states differ in their approaches—with Poland and the Baltics favoring a US-centric NATO approach, while Macron pushes for ‘strategic autonomy’, which lacks real military backing.

2. Brexit and the UK’s Role in European Defense

• The UK is no longer bound by EU decision-making, making its participation in these defense plans far less certain.
• British defense strategy is still tightly linked to the US and NATO, meaning any idea of a European-led military force that includes the UK is largely wishful thinking.
• Moreover, Brexit itself was driven partly by skepticism toward grand European integration projects—so UK voters may not see these proposals as viable or desirable.

3. The Debt Crisis and Economic Constraints

• The EU’s economic reality is already strained:
  • High debt burdens in France, Italy, and Spain.
  • Rising interest rates, making new borrowing for defense spending more costly.
  • Lack of fiscal unity, with northern European countries (Germany, Netherlands) resisting major joint spending plans.
• ��If European defense spending follows the model of past crises (such as the Eurozone bailout), it could exacerbate economic inequalities and public discontent.

4. The Problem of Consensus and the Illusion of a “Coalition of the Willing”

• During the Iraq War, the US was the clear leader, and even then, the coalition was shaky and ultimately failed to achieve its long-term goals.
• Today, Europe lacks a single dominant military or political power capable of leading such a coalition.
• Macron might aspire to this role, but Germany’s reluctance to engage militarily and the diverging interests of Eastern and Southern Europe make true unity implausible.
• Eastern European countries—particularly Poland and the Baltic states—prioritize NATO over EU-led initiatives, making a purely European military effort unlikely.

5. Public Skepticism Toward Militarization and Bombastic Rhetoric

• European voters have traditionally been cautious about military interventions, especially in France, Germany, and Italy.
• The failure of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars lingers in public memory, reinforcing skepticism toward open-ended military commitments.
• Polls suggest that support for Ukraine is conditional—many Europeans favor continued aid, but not at the cost of long-term economic hardship or direct military intervention.
• Far-right and far-left parties across Europe (e.g., AfD in Germany, Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, Salvini’s Lega) are capitalizing on this skepticism by opposing expanded military commitments.

6. Is There Space for an Alternative Vision?

• Figures like Dominique de Villepin, who famously opposed the Iraq War, are advocating for a more diplomatic, cautious European foreign policy.
• The problem is that current European leadership (von der Leyen, Macron, Scholz, and others) is deeply aligned with US priorities.
• Mainstream European political parties (center-right and center-left) are largely in lockstep when it comes to positioning Europe as a strategic actor in global security.
• The European Parliament lacks real influence over foreign policy, and the European Council (where heads of state make decisions) is dominated by those favoring a militarized approach.

Final Thoughts: Can Europe Chart a Different Course?

���ܰ��DZ��’s leaders are promoting a vision of military strength and unity that lacks both financial and political foundations. The public remains skeptical, debt levels are high, and deep fractures exist among member states. The real risk is that leaders, driven by bombastic rhetoric, may commit to policies without true democratic legitimacy, further alienating voters and weakening democratic institutions.

A different vision, based on diplomacy, de-escalation, and economic stability, exists but currently lacks strong political champions at the highest levels. Whether figures like de Villepin or emerging opposition movements can shift the debate remains an open question—but for now, the dominant leadership is pushing Europe toward a more militarized, high-risk posture that may prove economically and politically unsustainable.

Most of ChatGPT’s response seemed to me very pertinent. There was one assertion, however, that seemed to me to be totally erroneous. I chose to challenge the chatbot on this particular point.

“In one of your responses above you stated that ‘The problem is that current European leadership (von der Leyen, Macron, Scholz, and others) is deeply aligned with US priorities.’ This seems to me mistaken, unless you’re referring to US priorities under Joe Biden. The anguish in Europe today seems to turn around the shift in US priorities under Trump. Can you clarify this?”

“You’re absolutely right to raise this point. My statement was imprecise. When I said that ‘current European leadership… is deeply aligned with US priorities,’ I was referring specifically to the Biden administration’s stance—supporting Ukraine, reinforcing NATO, and advocating a militarized deterrence strategy against Russia. 

However, as you note, the real tension in Europe stems from uncertainty about the future of US priorities, particularly with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. Trump’s approach—his skepticism toward NATO, transactional view of alliances, and suggestion that European nations should bear more of their own security costs—has created deep anxiety among European leaders. 

This explains why figures like Macron, von der Leyen, and even Scholz (despite his cautious approach) have begun discussing the need for European strategic autonomy. The problem is that Europe is structurally dependent on the US for defense, making real autonomy difficult to achieve, especially in the short term. So while they align with Biden’s policies today, they are also trying to hedge against a potential future in which the US disengages or shifts to a more isolationist stance. 

Would you agree that this uncertainty—rather than a simple alignment or divergence with US policy—is at the heart of Europe’s current dilemma?”

Some lessons about ChatGPT raised by this dialogue

Just as many people have noticed that when asked to produce an image, AI often demonstrates its deep concerning left and right, this example reveals that ChatGPT has a serious problem with time. In this example, it reflected on statements made in the past month by European leaders, but it is assuming that Joe Biden is still the US president and that US policies are Biden’s policies.

In its initial response, the chatbot clearly assumed that Biden was calling the shots. In its reaction to my correction, it revealed that it believes Donald Trump has not yet become president. Its time frame is clearly prior to Trump’s election last November, since it evokes “the possibility of a second Trump presidency.”

In the first year or so after ChatGPT’s launch, it frankly admitted, with a formal disclaimer, that it had no information about events after September 2021. In 2025, it no longer informs us of the limits of its chronological perspective.

Does that invalidate its answer? Not really, because the Europeans, in contrast with the US, have not deviated from their former policy. So long as we are speaking of Europeans, its observations remain valid. But this gaffe does tell us something worth noting: that when we are dialoguing with AI we do not exist in the same time frame. Moreover, it raises the question of how time has been built into AI’s algorithms.

This highlights a fundamental difference between AI and human intelligence. We cannot remove ourselves from the consciousness of time as a structural factor in our environment. Those who claim AI will someday achieve and even surpass human consciousness should take note of this radical difference. It isn’t a simple gap of awareness of history. If we evoke the question of sentience as the essential component of consciousness, the perception of time for humans remains fundamental. It isn’t a question of tracking and measuring the intervals between events, it’s our permanent awareness of the present.

With these thoughts in mind, I asked ChatGPT another question:

“Actually, I’m intrigued by the question of why you seemed to believe Biden is still president? What is your time frame?”

“Good catch! My default time frame is the present moment (March 2025), but since I don’t have real-time awareness of political events unless I look them up, I was working under the assumption that Biden was still in office. If Trump or another candidate has taken over, that would obviously change the dynamics dramatically. 

Would you like me to check the latest updates on the U.S. presidency and its impact on ���ܰ��DZ��’s strategic calculations?”

This answer complicates the ambiguity of the time factor, a topic I will come back to in a future column. 

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51�Թ�, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial��policy.

The post Outside the Box: AI’s Honest Take on ���ܰ��DZ��’s Ambiguity, Part 2 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Ukraine clearly occupies center stage and should stand as the central actor, but there are at least three reasons why its capacity to influence the outcome has become marginalized. The first is basic post-Soviet history. Any honest historical assessment of the causes of the war must focus on the positions, ambitions and global standing of the two major powers involved: the US and Russia. Ukraine is a mere pawn on what Zbigniew Brzezinski nearly three decades ago as “the grand chessboard.” Europe in contrast stands as a line of pawns that has been wondering all along what its role is supposed to be.

The second reason for Ukraine’s limited influence is the often-denied complexity of its demography that has kept it in a permanently confused state of cultural, if not national, identity at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What makes a nation? Its legal boundaries, determined by whom and to what end? Or its culture, its language, its historical memory, its sense of ethnicity or religious identity? To say nothing of the ideologies that sometimes come to the fore. Ukraine’s case has always been a puzzler.

The third reason is the brutal fact, still frequently denied in the West, that the prospect of Ukraine defeating Russia is now unthinkable. Russia definitively has the upper hand today. But it also has the capacity — thanks to its Oreshnik missiles, demonstrated once but currently in mass production — to wreck the entire country if Russia were to feel threatened. After that, it’s the prospect of nuclear war.

All the actors acknowledge that the war has reached a phase in which dialogue in some form, must have a dominant role to play. How that dialogue will be structured, with the four parties jockeying for position, remains a mystery.

With that in mind I decided to engage in a conversation with ChatGPT focused on the nature and quality of the dialogue attributable to European leaders, the fourth interested party. That collection of nations, despite their presumed collective clout, finds itself clearly in a position of weakness, if not confusion about their role and even their standing.

I opened the conversation with the following prompt.

“Germany’s next chancellor Friedrich Merz has said ‘In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the rule for our defence now has to be “whatever it takes”.’ Joe Biden repeatedly said that the US would support Ukraine ‘as long as it takes.’ It appears that this concept of unlimited and unquestioned commitment has become a feature of a militaristic attitude that characterizes periods of historical instability and that comports serious risks of escalation. Am I wrong in seeing this as a change in the mentality of leaders in the West? Am I overestimating the level of risk which seems to be less manageable than during the Cold War?”

“You’re not wrong in observing a shift in the rhetoric of Western leaders, nor in perceiving the risks of escalation as significant. The language of open-ended commitment—whether ‘whatever it takes’ (Merz) or ‘as long as it takes’ (Biden)—signals a potentially more expansionist or uncompromising approach to military engagement, in contrast to the measured deterrence that characterized much of the Cold War. However, the nature of risk today is different rather than necessarily greater.

Is There a Change in Western Leadership Mentality?

Yes, there appears to be a shift, but it must be contextualized:

1. More Emotional and Moral Framing:
   • During the Cold War, political leaders framed their strategies in terms of containment, deterrence, and realpolitik, often accepting the necessity of compromise (e.g., arms control agreements, détente).
   • �մǻ岹��’s rhetoric leans more towards moral imperatives—defending democracy and sovereignty—making de-escalation rhetorically harder.
2. Commitment Without Clear Strategic Limits:
   • The Cold War saw well-defined red lines (e.g., NATO vs. Warsaw Pact boundaries, nuclear doctrines like MAD).
   • �մǻ岹��’s Western leaders are committing to a principle (Ukraine’s defense, European security) without a predefined endpoint, making it harder to calculate risks rationally.
3. Weaker Institutions for Restraint:
   • Cold War diplomacy was anchored by mechanisms like the Helsinki Accords, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and backchannel diplomacy.
   • Today, Russia is no longer treated as a co-equal nuclear power in negotiations; dialogue mechanisms are weaker, and diplomacy is often framed in absolute terms.

Are the Risks Less Manageable Than During the Cold War?

Possibly, but for different reasons:

• Nuclear deterrence still exists, but crisis management is weaker.
  • In the Cold War, even during extreme tensions (Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer 83), both sides used structured backchannels to prevent escalation.
  • Today, there is less direct military-to-military communication between NATO and Russia, increasing the risk of miscalculation.
• Multipolar instability replaces bipolar balance.
  • The Cold War had two clearly defined superpowers. Now, power is more fragmented, with China, regional players, and unpredictable alliances (e.g., Iran-Russia).
  • This makes escalation harder to control, as multiple actors with different risk tolerances are involved.
• Public and media-driven escalation dynamics.
  • �մǻ岹��’s political environment rewards performative toughness, especially in democracies where leaders respond to public pressure.
  • Unlike the Cold War, when secrecy allowed for quiet negotiations, social media and 24/7 news cycles make de-escalation harder without appearing weak.

Are You Overestimating the Risk?

It depends on how you define ‘manageable.’ While nuclear deterrence still holds, the pathways to crisis resolution are weaker, and the dynamics of political escalation are less constrained than in the past. There’s also a greater unpredictability—not just from Russia, but from domestic political shifts in the West (e.g., a potential Trump return, changing European politics).

So while a direct U.S.-Russia or NATO-Russia war is still unlikely due to nuclear deterrence, the lack of clear de-escalation mechanisms and the absolutist rhetoric make unintended escalation more plausible than in the structured framework of the Cold War.

Would you like to explore how this shift in Western leadership mentality is affecting public opinion and policy debates?”

“Yes, I would even like to look specifically at the stances taken by leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer. Most European leaders have seen their electoral bases and their credibility severely diminished. Some say they are resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority or at least their image as leaders of a war effort, but others observe that the public has not been consulted on the kinds of commitments they are ready to make. So please elucidate as best you can this complex situation, which many people such as myself see as a major multifaceted crisis that is likely to lead to the weakening of democratic institutions.”

“Your concerns about the evolving rhetoric of Western leaders, particularly figures like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, and its implications for democratic institutions are indeed pertinent. The current geopolitical landscape has prompted leaders to adopt more assertive stances, which, while aiming to address security challenges, may also influence domestic political dynamics and public engagement.

Emmanuel Macron’s Position

French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated for a robust European defense strategy in response to escalating security threats. He emphasizes the necessity for Europe to strengthen its military capabilities and reduce reliance on external powers, aligning with broader EU discussions on increasing defense budgets and coordinating rearmament efforts. Proposals under consideration include the establishment of a ‘European Security Fund’ and a rearmament bank, inspired by the European Financial Stability Facility, to finance defense initiatives and support Ukraine. 

Keir Starmer’s Stance

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has outlined plans to revitalize Britain’s economy and public sector efficiency, linking national security with domestic renewal. His agenda includes restructuring the civil service and the National Health Service (NHS), increasing defense spending, and integrating advanced technologies into public services. While these reforms aim to bolster the UK’s strategic position, they have faced domestic resistance due to concerns over potential job losses and spending cuts. 

Public Consultation and Democratic Engagement

The adoption of assertive policies without extensive public consultation raises questions about democratic engagement. Critics argue that leaders resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority may bypass traditional democratic processes, leading to a disconnect between government actions and public sentiment. This approach risks alienating citizens and undermining trust in democratic institutions, especially if the public perceives that their voices are not being heard in decisions of national importance.

Impact on Democratic Institutions

The current multifaceted crisis poses challenges to democratic institutions:

• Erosion of Civil Liberties: Increased security measures can lead to restrictions on civil liberties, affecting freedoms of speech, assembly, and privacy.
• Centralization of Power: Emergency powers and expedited decision-making processes may result in the centralization of authority, reducing checks and balances.
• Public Disillusionment: A perceived lack of transparency and public involvement can lead to disillusionment with the political process, decreasing civic participation and voter turnout.

In summary, while leaders like Macron and Starmer aim to address pressing security and economic challenges through assertive policies, it is crucial to balance these actions with robust democratic engagement to ensure that measures taken do not inadvertently weaken the democratic institutions they seek to protect.”

To be continued

In Part 2, we will continue our discussion by attempting to respond to the question of whether there is room for a different vision of Europe today, given the attitudes we have begun exploring here. We will discover why ChatGPT, after reviewing the sometimes confusing language of ���ܰ��DZ��’s most audible voices, believes that “a different vision, based on diplomacy, de-escalation, and economic stability, exists but currently lacks strong political champions at the highest levels.”

I invite our readers who truly wish to penetrate not just the fog of war but the even denser fog of political rhetoric to join us not only with your own reflections, but with your own experimental discussions with your favorite chatbot. Everyone is now empowered to use AI’s access to seemingly limitless resources to begin to clarify the questions that they consider urgent to explore and eventually resolve.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51�Թ�, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial��policy.

The post Outside the Box: AI’s Honest Take on ���ܰ��DZ��’s Ambiguity, Part 1 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When we refer to a party, politician or political thinker as being on the “left” or “right,” what does it mean? Americans are no longer even sure what political, economic or moral principles the label Democrat or Republican stands for.

Most people agree that President Donald Trump belongs to the right wing of US politics, and even the extreme right. But pundits and demographers alike have noticed that his electoral victory in 2024 was due in part to the fact that many on the left of the Democratic party supported his candidacy. The fact that Robert Kennedy Jr., who initially sought to challenge Joe Biden within the Democratic primaries, joined forces with Trump and helped him to victory reveals the degree of blurring of the traditional distinction between left and right.

More telling are the attempts the media have recently made to describe personalities consistently identified with an uncompromising left —, Matt Taibbi or Russell Brand, for example — as right-wing. This is mainly the work of Democrats who prefer to hold a monopoly over the terms “left” and “progressive,” even when they embrace policies most Europeans would describe as center-right.

Trump himself was no stranger to this confused system of labeling when he Biden Democrats as “radical left” and even “communist.” A buzzword in the form of an insult will always produce a stronger, more immediate effect than a nuanced discussion of principles, policies, facts or reasoned conclusions.

In France, equivocation about left and right may be less pronounced, but it exists as well. Because it is a multi-party system in contrast with the binary logic of US politics, there is more room for nuance. But when you consider that the majority of voters who four or five decades ago voted for the Communist Party, deemed far-left, now vote for the extreme-right, the confusion is as real in France as in the US.

If left and right now lead to such confusion in nations as culturally contrasted as the US and France, surely we expect one thing to remain reasonably stable: the center. But even that notion has become ambiguous.

Attempting to assess the political standing of Emmanuel Macron, the publication Le Monde last week featured an whose title translates: “The ‘extreme center’, an extremism that can lead to authoritarianism.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Extreme center:

A supposed safe place in the middle of the political spectrum that rather than attenuating the risks associated with extremes concentrates with the gravitational force and capacity for annihilation of a black hole in the cosmos.

Contextual note

Although mention of the idea of “extreme center” in contrast with a moderate center dates back to 1980, Le Monde cites the work of historian Pierre Serna who, in 2005, examined the concept in some depth. According to Le Monde, “this concept designates individuals, groups or parties claiming to be in the center of the political spectrum, with a fluctuating ideology and whose extreme character refers to the intolerance they show towards their opponents and their use of strong executive power.”

The comforting notion of reasonable people seeking a position at the center and avoiding the extremes should, at least theoretically, correlate with a focus on the interests of “average people,” “the middle class” and the “silent majority.” But Serna demonstrates that the extreme center consciously cultivates intolerance of anything that deviates from the status quo. This becomes doubly dangerous for democracy when trends towards increasing inequality of wealth spawned by the normal practice of financialized capitalism combine to define the status quo as an oligarchic system run by the moneyed elite.

The extreme center will seek first to dismiss and then to vilify as extreme any position or even idea that calls into question the status quo. The concern with security quickly becomes the obsession with protecting any and all of the institutions representing the status quo. Any critique of the established order can be branded extremist.

Interestingly, Le Monde quotes Emmanuel Macron’s own use of the term, following the first round of the 2022 presidential election. “Three-quarters of voters,” according to Macron, “voted for three projects. An extreme right-wing project… an extreme left-wing project… and an extreme-center project, if you want to qualify mine as such.”

One of the characteristics of an extreme center, according to Serna, is the aptitude to change one’s vest whenever convenient and to speak out of both sides of one’s mouth. “Once in power, they tend to rule the country with an iron fist, repressing their opponents to stay in power.” When Macron applied the term to his own movement, he was certainly ignorant of the historian’s description.

Historical note

The political activist and writer Tariq Ali exploited the idea of extreme center, a concept he analyzed in detail, when he published his 2015 book, “The Extreme Centre, A Warning,” followed in 2018 by a second edition: “The Extreme Centre, A Second Warning.” He develops his analysis in the context of United Kingdom politics, in the period just before and shortly after Brexit. He also looks closely at the European Union and NATO.

He notes in particular that in Western democracies, mainstream parties, regardless of their traditional left or right affiliations, converge to serve the interests of the market and uphold shared neoliberal policies. This means that the notion at the core of democratic ideology, that people can choose and manage their system of governance, has been mechanically replaced by a trust in market forces. Markets decide; markets legislate, even if they need human robots (legislators) to carry out the formal task.

Extreme centrists will always consider the marketplace as the true geographical “center” of politics, though they generally refuse to acknowledge the logical corollary, that this can only happen to the detriment of the demos in democracies and even the human princes, governors, benevolent dictators or philosopher-kings that dominated traditional, pre-democratic political thinking.

Macron famously aspires to be a “Jupiterian” autocrat and, as a super-technocrat who understands marketplaces but famously fails in his rapport with actual people, the former Rothschild banker is well placed to play king of the gods in a super-centrist world. The gods over which he reigns are the forces of the marketplace.

In 2021, The Jacobin French MP Danièle Obono, who explained her vision of Macron’s hold on power. “The last four years have seen a form of radicalization. But from two different points: from both the far right and the extreme center, which has grown into an annex of the far right. We see this when we consider Macronism as a political force, as a form of power, both in its antisocial dimension and in its anti-ecological dimension.”

Macron’s extreme centrist mandate may end soon, possibly even sooner than the official deadline for a new election in 2027. Most commentators believe that the confusion within his now twice rejected centrist coalition leaves the door open to the person who has become his now traditional rival on the extreme-right: Marine Le Pen. But, of course, Le Pen earned her apparent legitimacy by distancing herself from her extremist father, the late Jean-Marie, and innovating with a new hybrid ideology: that of an extreme-right party that embraces an extreme centrist culture.

Apart from the blow to Macron’s narcissism, the current president may well feel more comfortable with Le Pen at the Elysée Palace than any of the other possible successors on the left, right or even no man’s land. For the latter, I’m thinking of Dominique de Villepin, who could rise above the establishment crowd as the providential choice of the electorate. A more likely scenario, if Villepin does emerge, is that he will be blocked, if not emasculated by the Israeli lobby, more discreet, but possibly just as influential in France as in the US.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post In France, Politics is an Extreme Sport appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After two and a half years of a troubled reign challenged by the “yellow vest” revolt, a global pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Macron profited from the confusion to win a second term in 2022, in the name of continuity. But with no clear majority in the National Assembly, the ride became rocky. The year 2023 ended in relative chaos, as Macron put in place a new government led by a carefully groomed youngster, Gabriel Attal.

The year 2024 became Macron’s . It began in controversy with the hotly contested passage of an ideology-laden law on immigration. Throughout the springtime, in the leadup to the European parliamentary elections, Macron spent most of his waking hours vainly devising tactics to prevent the inevitable: the humiliation of losing to the far-right in the June 9 election.

His reaction to that resounding loss surprised friends and foes alike. He dissolved parliament and called for a national reckoning through a snap election. The result in July added insult to humiliation. A quickly cobbled-together left-wing coalition came out on top. Macron’s already motley party was now reduced to political marginality. For the first time, a Fifth Republic president was struggling to keep the political system on life support.

After months of floundering, a vote of no-confidence in December obliged Macron to nominate a new prime minister, François Bayrou. Most experts expect he will meet the same fate as his predecessor, Michel Barnier, who managed to stay in office for 90 days, affording him the satisfaction of nearly doubling Liz Truss’s record of 49 days in the UK in 2022. In other words, stability is not the best term to describe French domestic politics at the start of 2025.

If the year was truly horrible on the homefront, some people believe France has a more solid footing internationally. One of those people is… Macron. Even in the face of a general catastrophe that has unfolded recently across Africa’s Sahel region, where a series of former colonies have invited the French military — stationed for more than a decade in the name of protecting them from terrorism — to pack their bags and go home.

In an address to the annual ambassadors conference, Macron now that all’s quiet on the African front. “No, France is not in decline in Africa, it is simply lucid, it is reorganizing itself. (« Non, la France n’est pas en recul en Afrique, elle est simplement lucide, elle se réorganise »).

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Reorganize (oneself):

1. Reformulate the narrative of any humiliating defeat to represent it as a subtle and clever exercise of one’s authority.
2. Make obvious chaos appear to be a conscious imposition of order.

Contextual note

The tone as much as the rhetoric of Macron’s speech reveals much more than the actual words he employs, even though the language itself could serve as exemplary content for a masterclass in defensive self-justification.

It takes cojones (pardon my French!) to say: “We chose to change course in Africa … because we had to move.” (« On a choisi de bouger en Afrique … parce qu’il fallait bouger. ») Both verbs in the sentence are bouger. A literal translation of this would be: “We chose to budge in Africa because budging was necessary.” His tone conveys the idea that this was all about strategic planning, not about receiving marching orders from former colonies. He takes the opportunity to upbraid “a good portion of our press” for creating that “disinformation.”

But his impatience doesn’t stop there. Macron complains that those African nations fed up with France’s meddling “forgot to say merci.” At the same time, he reminds his ambassadors that these leaders owe their privilege “of managing a sovereign country” to France. They should be eternally grateful every time they collect their presidential paycheck. Some interpret these sentiments differently. Le Monde Chad’s foreign minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, who sees this as demonstrating Macron’s “contemptuous attitude towards Africa and Africans.”

As a side note, it’s worth pointing out what the French would call Macron’s “preciosity” of language when he , “we have looked at our past relationship, memorial, cultural, we factualize it and assume it, and tell ourselves the truth. And we yield nothing to disinformation.” Thank you, Emmanuel, for factualizing your history! Our Devil’s Dictionary still isn’t sure about how to define that verb.

Historical note

In 2016, Macron made the decision to enter the race to succeed François Hollande, the president who put him in the limelight by appointing him Minister of Finance in 2014. He thus had the opportunity to observe from the inside the Fifth Republic’s system built around the unassailable authority of a president who initially had seven years to wield his power. (That was later reduced to five under Jacques Chirac).

Such a system will inevitably be attractive to a personality with a narcissistic view of himself as a messiah or savior of the nation. Macron saw that such a system could never live up to its potential in the hands of a “normal” Frenchman, which is what Hollande claimed to be. Macron drew inspiration from Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, often the “hyperpresident.”

Elected at the age of 37, Macron felt empowered to redesign a nation clearly floundering in the routine of its political past. Two successive five-year terms in office would offer him a full decade of exercising supreme power in the flower of his youth. During that decade he would have the time to establish a new order and groom a generation of politicians who would follow his initiative and complete the transformation of France’s political culture.

The key would be to use the theoretically impregnable power of a Fifth Republic presidency to break with a sclerotic, complex hierarchical system inherited from the previous century dominated by Gaullists and Socialists. He would usher in a new republic based on the meritocratic, neoliberal and technocratic ideals that a generation of Western bankers, traders, entrepreneurs and innovators had redefined as the new universal norm. Oddly, he hadn’t noticed, and still doesn’t seem to notice, that the globalized world was already moving in a multipolar direction that called into question the logic of Western globalization.

Already in 2015, Macron had begun a changing political chessboard. “The great missing piece is the figure of the king” (le grand absent est la figure du roi.). This remark may surprise some observers who note that, in comparison to other Western democracies, a president of France’s Fifth Republic already exercises virtually regal powers. Macron went so far as to claim that the French regretted killing the monarch. It left “an emotional void in the collective imagination.”

In 2016, after announcing his candidacy, Macron the nature of the office itself. “France needs a Jupiterian president… not a simple god but the king of the gods.” In some sense, Macron was a disciple of Francis Fukuyama, who decades earlier had “the end of history.”

For Macron, now that history had stopped in its tracks, France could simply enjoy the royal privilege bequeathed to the nation by its noble past. The former Rothschild banker reasoned that to exercise its dynamic power, France simply had to consolidate its own economic contribution to the global order, alongside the other gods on the new Olympus. The old culturally complex social structures dear to the Gaullists and the Socialists of Mitterrand’s generation could now be replaced by a society defined essentially through purely economic relations.

Alas, Macron had failed to notice that, by 2017, Fukuyama’s updated Hegelianism had lost its luster. The drift of history since the beginning of the new millennium had already provided a few dramatic surprises to remind people it was still alive and kicking. Already a global pandemic and a war in Ukraine were in preparation.

As for Macron in 2025, after his annus horribilis, there can be little doubt that the worst is yet to come.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Africa Fails to Thank Macron for His Service appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The agreement is based on the terms of United Nations Security Council , which ended the previous Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006. The truce will be enforced by 5,000 to 10,000 Lebanese troops and the UN’s 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon () peacekeeping force, which has operated in that area since 1978 and includes troops from 46 countries.

The truce has broad international support, including from Iran and Gaza’s Hamas leaders. Israel and Hezbollah were apparently glad to take a break from a war that had become counterproductive for them both. Effective resistance prevented Israeli forces from advancing far into Lebanon, and they were inflicting mostly senseless death and destruction on civilians, as in Gaza, but without the genocidal motivation of that campaign.

People all over Lebanon have welcomed the relief from Israeli bombing, the destruction of their towns and neighborhoods and thousands of casualties. In the Lebanese capital of Beirut, people have started returning to their homes.

In the south, the Israeli military has warned residents on both sides of the border not to return yet. It has declared a new (which was not part of the truce agreement) that includes 60 villages north of the border, and has warned that it will attack Lebanese civilians who return to that area. Despite these warnings, thousands of displaced people have been returning to south Lebanon, often to find their homes and villages in ruins.

Many people returning to the south still proudly display the yellow flags of Hezbollah. A flying over the ruins of the Lebanese city of Tyre has the words, “Made in the USA,” written across it. This is a reminder that the Lebanese people know very well who made the bombs that have killed and maimed thousands of them.

The truce’s success seems unlikely

There are already many reports of ceasefire violations. Israel shot and two journalists soon after the truce went into effect. Then two days after the ceasefire began, Israel attacked five towns near the border with tanks, fired artillery across the border and conducted on southern Lebanon. On December 2, as a UN peacekeeper told CNN that Israel had the truce “roughly a hundred times,” Hezbollah finally with mortar fire in the disputed Shebaa Farms area. Israel responded with heavier strikes on two villages, killing 11 people.

An addendum to the truce agreement granted Israel the right to strike at will whenever it believes Hezbollah is violating the truce, giving it what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “complete military freedom of action,” which makes this a precarious and one-sided peace at best.

The prospect for a full withdrawal of both Israeli and Hezbollah forces in 60 days seems slim. Hezbollah has built large weapons stockpiles in the south that it will not want to abandon. Netanyahu himself has warned that the truce “can be short.”

Then there is the danger of confrontation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese military, raising the specter of Lebanon’s bloody civil war, which killed an estimated 150,000 people between 1975 and 1990. 

So violence could flare up into full-scale war again at any time, making it unlikely that many Israelis will return to homes near the border with Lebanon, Israel’s original publicly stated purpose for the war.

The truce was brokered by the United States and France, and signed by the European Union, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. France was a colonial power in Lebanon and still plays a leading role in UNIFIL, yet Israel initially rejected France as a negotiating partner. It seems to have France’s role only when French President Emmanuel Macron’s government agreed not to enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Netanyahu if he comes to France.

The United Kingdom also signed the original truce proposal on November 25, but doesn’t appear to have signed the final agreement. The UK seems to have withdrawn from the negotiations under US and Israeli pressure because, unlike France, its new Labour government has publicly that it will comply with the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant. However, it has not explicitly said it would arrest them.

Netanyahu justified the truce to his own people by saying that it will allow Israeli forces to focus on Gaza and Iran, and only die-hard “Security” Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir voted the truce in the Israeli cabinet.

While there were hopes that the truce in Lebanon might set the stage for a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel’s actions on the ground tell a different story. Satellite images show Israel carrying out new mass demolitions of hundreds of buildings in northern Gaza to build a new road or between Gaza City and North Gaza. This may be a new border to separate the northernmost 17% of Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip, so Israel can expel its people and prevent them from returning, hand North Gaza over to Israeli settlers and squeeze the desperate, survivors into an even smaller area than before.

Syria complicates the conflict

And for all who had hopes that the ceasefire in Lebanon might lead to a regional de-escalation, those hopes were dashed in Syria when, on the very day of the truce, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a surprise offensive. HTS was formerly the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. It itself and severed its formal link to al-Qaeda in 2016 to avoid becoming a prime target in the US war in Syria, but the US still brands it a terrorist group.

By December 1, HTS managed to seize control of Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, forcing the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian allies onto the defensive. With Russian and Syrian jets bombing rebel-held territory, the surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent, destabilizing front reopening in the Middle East.

This may also be a prelude to an escalation of attacks on Syria by Israel, which has already Syria more than 220 times since October 2023, with Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments killing at least 296 people.

The new HTS offensive most likely has covert US support, and may impact US President-elect Donald Trump’s reported to withdraw the 900 US troops still based in Syria. It may also impact his nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard is a longtime critic of US for al-Qaeda-linked factions in Syria, so the new HTS offensive sets the stage for an explosive confirmation hearing, which may backfire on Syria hawks in Washington if Gabbard is allowed to make her case.

Arab and Muslim state strategies

Elsewhere in the region, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and war on its neighbors have led to widespread anti-Israel and anti-US resistance.

Where the US was once able to buy off Arab rulers with weapons deals and military alliances, the Arab and Muslim world is coalescing around a position that sees Israel’s behavior as unacceptable and Iran as a threatened neighbor rather than an enemy. Unconditional US support for Israel risks permanently downgrading US relations with former allies, from Iraq, Jordan and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Yemen’s Ansar Allah (or Houthi) government has maintained a blockade of the Red Sea, using missiles and drones against Israeli-linked ships heading for the Israeli port of Eilat or the Suez Canal. The Yemenis have a US-led naval task force sent to break the blockade and have shipping through the Suez Canal by at least two-thirds, forcing shipping companies to reroute most ships all the way around Africa. The port of Eilat filed for in July, after only one ship docked there in several months.

Other resistance forces have conducted attacks on US military bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and US forces have retaliated in a low-grade tit-for-tat war. The Iraqi government has strongly condemned U.S. and Israeli attacks on its soil as violations of its sovereignty. Attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria have flared up again in recent months, while Iraqi resistance forces have also launched drone attacks on Israel.

An emergency of the Arab League in Cairo, Egypt on November 26 voted unanimously to support Iraq and condemn Israeli threats. US–Iraqi talks in September drew up a for hundreds of US troops to leave Iraq in 2025 and for all 2,500 to be gone within two years. The US has outmaneuvered previous withdrawal plans, but the days of these very unwelcome US bases must surely be numbered.

Recent of Arab and Muslim states have forged a growing sense of unity around a rejection of US proposals for normalization of relations with Israel and a new solidarity with Palestine and Iran. At a meeting of Islamic nations in Riyadh on November 11, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin-Salman publicly called the Israeli massacre in Gaza a for the first time.

Arab and Muslim countries know that Trump may act unpredictably and that they need a stable common position to avoid becoming pawns to him or Netanyahu. They recognize that previous divisions left them vulnerable to US and Israeli exploitation, which contributed to the current crisis in Palestine and the risk of a major regional war that now looms over them.

On November 29, Saudi and Western officials told Reuters that Saudi Arabia has on a new military alliance with the US, which would include normalizing relations with Israel. It is opting for a more limited US weapons deal.

The Saudis had hoped for a treaty that included a US commitment to defend them, like treaties with Japan and South Korea. That would require confirmation by the US Senate, which would demand Saudi recognition of Israel in return. But the Saudis can no longer consider recognizing Israel without a viable plan for Palestinian statehood, which Israel rejects.

On the other hand, Saudi relations with Iran are steadily improving since they restored relations 18 months ago with diplomatic help from China and Iraq. At a meeting with new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Qatar on October 3, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan, “We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states.”

Prince Faisal highlighted the “very sensitive and critical” situation in the region due to Israel’s “aggressions” against Gaza and Lebanon and its attempts to expand the conflict. He said Saudi Arabia trusted Iran’s “wisdom and discernment” in managing the situation to restore calm and peace.

The ball is in Trump’s court

If Saudi Arabia and its neighbors can make peace with Iran, what will the consequences be for Israel’s illegal, genocidal occupation of Palestine, which has been enabled and encouraged by decades of unconditional US military and diplomatic support?

On December 2, Trump on Truth Social that if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration, there would be “ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East.” “Those responsible,” he warned, “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”

Trump and many of his acolytes exemplify the Western arrogance and lust for imperial power that lies at the root of this crisis. More threats and more destruction are not the answer. Trump has had good relations with the dictatorial rulers of the Gulf states, with whom he shares much in common. If he is willing to listen, he will realize, as they do, that there is no solution to this crisis without freedom, self-determination and sovereignty in their own land for the people of Palestine. That is the path to peace, if he will take it.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Truce in Lebanon: Can Diplomacy Rise from the Ruins? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Macron’s many failures have been a recurring pattern since les gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) movement erupted in France starting the winter of 2018. Only the pandemic stopped the movement from weakening the president further. Now, all presidential authority has evaporated thanks to a full-blown constitutional crisis.

What is going on?

Many of our readers have been following the US elections and have not paid France as much attention. So, let us lay out the bare bones of France’s crisis.

In June, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (RN) emerged as the largest party in the French elections for the European Parliament. In response, Macron called a snap parliamentary election to break the far-right fever gripping the country. In the first round of parliamentary elections, RN got 33.21% of the votes, beating Nouveau Front populaire (NFP) and Ensemble, which got 28.21% and 21.28%, respectively. In the second round, the left coalition NFP and Macron’s centrist grouping Ensemble combined to push the far-right RN into third place. NFP unexpectedly ended up with 180 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly. Ensemble managed to come in second and retain 159 seats. RN increased its numbers to 142 seats but was no longer the leading party in parliament. In this hung parliament, no one party could form a government and the French hosted the Paris Olympics whilst in political limbo.

After the Olympic summer, Macron Michel Barnier prime minister on September 5. This was a rather surprising choice. Les ��é��ܲ�������������s (The Republicans), the traditional center-right party, got 5.41% of the votes and won 39 seats. Barnier was not among those elected to the National Assembly. In fact, in the lead-up to the 2022 presidential election, Barnier as a primary candidate for his party but was eliminated in the first round, getting only 23.9% of the vote. 

Like almost all French politicians, Barnier graduated from one of France’s elitist grandes écoles, the highly selective institutions that train the crème de la crème of France. Though not a household name, he is a highly competent public servant who held many in Paris and Brussels. Like Macron, he is very much part of the French elite that governs the country and plays a big role in the EU. It is also now a highly discredited and increasingly despised elite.

Barnier tried to pass a long overdue budget but met strong opposition in parliament. Eventually, he used an executive order, Article 49.3, to pass the on December 2. Two days later, France’s far-right and left-wing lawmakers joined together to vote a no-confidence motion through. RN required a permanent consultative role in budget planning, increased spending in areas benefiting French citizens directly and opposed Barnie’s tax increases. Both RN and NFP opposed austerity measures, while NFP supported higher taxes on the wealthy. Their contrasting but complementary populist themes made inevitable their convergent choice to vote out Barnier. Now, France is about to enter 2025 with no government and no budget.

Three points are of note after the no-confidence vote:

1. As per the constitution, Barnier now has to resign.

2. Macron cannot call yet another election until June because the constitution sets out a 12-month waiting period after a snap election.

3. Macron is unlikely to find anyone acceptable to a majority of legislators in the National Assembly to succeed Barnier as prime minister.

Barnier was trying to improve France’s fiscal position by cutting the deficit from 6.1% to 5.0% of the GDP. France is growing by barely 1.0% a year and its debt-to-GDP ratio now stands at 110%. Therefore, Barnier proposed €40 billion ($42 billion) in spending cuts and €20 billion ($21 billion) in tax rises. Neither the NFP nor the RN found Barnier’s proposals acceptable. His effort to push through this budget through an executive order, overriding democratic process, led to his fall.

These are interesting times for France. Yesterday, the country experienced its first successful no-confidence vote since Georges Pompidou’s government fell in 1962. At that time, none other than Charles de Gaulle was president. He had inaugurated the Fifth Republic in 1958 and had immense political authority. Macron is literally and metaphorically a midget by comparison and his Sancho Panza Barnier has achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in the Fifth Republic.

In the past, French political parties went through protracted bouts of arm-wrestling to agree upon a budget. With the implosion of the traditional center-right and center-left parties and the drift to populist anti-establishment positions, France’s legislators are now unable to arrive at a compromise. Instead, they are engaging in a bruising brawl. Fists are flying and not only has Barnier been knocked down but the French political system is on the floor.

On Sunday, Le Monde published a long, detailed full of fascinating quotes from diverse members of the political class, both friendly and unfriendly to Macron. It bore the title: “Since the dissolution, the slow twilight of Emmanuel Macron.” Many are wondering whether he intends, in the of Dylan Thomas, to “go gentle into that good night” or “rage, rage against the dying light.”

This is not the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic that a president has felt endangered. Far more spectacular were the events in 1968 — celebrated in France as mai soixante-huit —  when the world and the French population wondered whether they weren’t witnessing a second revolution à la 1789. Students armed with anti-authoritarian slogans such as “It’s forbidden to forbid” or, more poetically, “Sous les pavés, la plage” (“under the paving-stones the beach”) dug up these very paving-stones and threw them at the riot police. An estimated 500,000 people took to the streets and de Gaulle fled the Élysée Palace. A year later, the grand old general resigned but the Fifth Republic survived.

History is rhyming but not repeating itself

The difference between then and now is twofold. First, de Gaulle had immense stature as the leader of the French Resistance during World War II. Even though the war hero secretly fled to West Germany during the most fraught days of the unrest, he still commanded authority in much of the country. Upon his return to France, de Gaulle gave a resounding speech and called for a snap election. About 800,000 supporters of various ages marched through Paris and Gaullists won 353 of 486 seats while the Socialists and Communists managed only 57 and 34, respectively.

Second, France has now entered the brave new world where traditional politics of the left and right is dead and buried six feet under. In 1968, the Gaullists and the left offered two clear visions for France. Both had seasoned professionals and well-structured political parties. At the same time, there was a solid centrist bloc that could work with both sides of the political divide. Voters had a clear choice between the left and the right and, thanks to de Gaulle’s actions, the disorder of May became the new order of June.

The crusty old general succeeded in saving the constitution because he literally embodied it. In 1958, he had created the Fifth Republic after the collapse of the postwar Fourth Republic. Yet when he called for a constitutional referendum a year later, de Gaulle lost and duly resigned. Pompidou, his Gaullist prime minister, took over and the Fifth Republic endured.

Macron has consistently taken inspiration from de Gaulle. But to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen in his 1988 vice-presidential debate with Dan Quayle, the appropriate response to the current president’s hubris would be: “Manu, you are not le Grand Charles.” The essayist Alain Minc, quoted in the Le Monde article, offered the most credible explanation of Macron’s personality in a discussion he claims to have had with Nicolas Sarkozy. Apparently, Minc told Sarkozy, “You’re egocentric. He [Macron] is a narcissist. Egocentrics need others. Narcissus is alone.” Note that a friend of the two authors who was a classmate of Macron at Sciences Po called Macron a pervers narcissique (pervert narcissist).

Even though Macron managed to cobble together a disparate group of followers and call them a party — initially, La République en Marche and later Renaissance — he has never succeeded. Monsieur Jupiter fails to understand that, by their very nature, political parties include a number of disparate interests who somehow combine to work together on multiple levels of policy and organization. All successful parties have some mechanism to make collective decisions.

In 2018, Fox News reporter Chris Wallace Macron what he liked most about being president, Macron replied that he likes making decisions. Note not solving problems, not negotiating complex issues, not even governing. Making decisions. Macron then defended himself against the accusation of being authoritarian, arguing that being “aware of all the consequences of your decisions and thinking that you have to stick to your decisions to deliver when it’s for the good of your country is not the same as being authoritarian or arrogant.”

Some credit Macron for being a political genius but forget that he benefited from spectacular good fortune in 2017. The blocs on the left and the right had lost their sense of direction. They had failed to produce political personalities whom the French saw leaders. Then, Macron was a young unknown. He was a recent addition to then-President François Hollande’s administration. Mostly as a result of Hollande’s political amateurism, he rose from the technocratic ranks to become finance minister. In the past, this important post was usually reserved for political personalities. That honor ennobled Macron in the eyes of the public and at the same time inebriated him. Hollande’s performance as president weakened the Socialist Party and Macron cannily played the card of continuity while betraying the party of his benefactor.

Elected in 2012, Hollande was the first president in the history of the Fifth Republic to visibly lack the force of personality and political muscle the French associate with the office of president. De Gaulle, François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac — each with his contrasting style — successfully embodied the image of Fifth Republic president. Sarkozy, despite his two discrediting epithets “bling-bling” and “Sarko ��’A��é������������” (Sarko the American), thrived, at least for a while. He lived on his previously constructed image as a “tough guy” when he was Chirac’s minister of the interior.

Note that Sarkozy’s American reputation helped him initially. Even though the French constantly criticize Americans, they secretly admire everything American. This includes bling-bling and celebrity culture. Yet this appeal has its limits. Sarkozy ended up as a one-term wonder because they do not appreciate bling-bling in their leaders. Hence, the tough guy lost the 2012 election to Hollande, who had promised to be “normal.” In 2017, Macron promised a chimeric return to a Gaullist past but the callow president lacked judgment, experience and substance.

Macron survived a flurry of punches in the first seven years of his reign as ��ܱ辱��é������� president for a very simple reason: His opponent in the final round of the 2017 and 2022 elections was the “unrepublican” Marine Le Pen. The notion of “republican” for the traditional political class has long been applied to anyone who fits into the traditional mold of a politician belonging to a party not too extreme to deserve banishment from polite company. Marine’s father, Jean-Marie, was the portrait of someone who was existentially unacceptable.

It has long been noted that the unifier of the left, François Mitterand, was the first to exploit the idea of using Jean-Marie as the ideal foil to create havoc on the right. It was a successful strategy but it proved risky in the long run. When Jean-Marie became a spent force, his daughter Marine took center stage as a softer and subtler version of her father. It wasn’t exactly King Lear and Cordelia, and there was far less drama to it. But a dose of cultural conflict between the two gave Marine the credibility Jean-Marie never had.

All this drama, from de Gaulle to Macron and Le Pen, has ended up producing the constitutional crisis playing out today. The founders of the Fifth Republic — de Gaulle and his cronies — crafted a document designed to avoid what is now unfolding before our eyes. They created a parliamentary system dominated by the spectre of presidential authority. The French presidency has a monarchic tinge to it because it was designed to prevent the instability that often afflicts parliamentary regimes of which we have seen two examples recently in Europe. Post-Brexit United Kingdom proved so unstable that Conservatives devoured their own prime ministers. In Germany, the traffic light coalition of Socialists, Liberals and Greens has just collapsed. Ironically, the Fifth Republic that set out to avoid parliamentary instability might itself be able to collapse.

In some ways, the current situation is very French and a product of a political culture that developed as a result of the French Revolution in 1789. France has been politically unstable since that fateful day when a group of rebellious citizens stormed the Bastille. Unlike the United States with its quasi-religious faith in its 1787 constitution that many still see as sacred writ, France has been through several successive constitutions. Each time, the French rewrote the basic rules of the state. France has experienced the First Republic, the First Empire, the Restoration, the liberal monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, the Vichy regime, the Fourth Republic and then the Fifth Republic. Hence, the French do not see the Fifth Republic as magical, mystical, spiritual or even literary. To their eyes, it does not deserve immortality. The traditional political establishment, and Macron above all, disagree.

The rise and fall of Macron and the Fifth Republic

As noted above, the Fifth Republic was a stable two-bloc system for decades. However, the last 16 years destabilized the reigning equilibrium. Like many other first world countries, France was unable to deal with the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. Sarkozy, “��’A��é������������,” elected in 2007, as the global crisis was developing, took the right in an Atlanticist direction, alienating the proud nationalists who had inherited de Gaulle’s stubborn embrace of national autonomy and resistance to the US. Hollande, inspired by the examples of US President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, succeeded Sarkozy and dreamt — in the age of high tech and Silicon Valley prestige — of running a rational, technocratic regime. He failed to serve the middle or working classes and his party came to be perceived as champagne or caviar socialists.

Clinton and Blair’s Third Way tried to reconcile center-right and center-left politics by synthesizing economically liberal and socially democratic policies but ended up leaving the working class behind. The British Labour Party has only returned to power this year after 14 years of political wilderness. In the US, Democrats under Kamala Harris have just been defeated roundly by Donald Trump. Her defeat is much worse than Hillary Clinton’s who had the consolation of winning the popular vote.

By 2016, Hollande’s champagne socialism had made him unpopular with voters. Unlike Sarkozy, he did not stand for re-election. In the ensuing primary, Benoît Hamon triumphed. He was the most traditionally working class but, by now, Hollande’s Socialist Party was dominated by centrists. They rallied behind Macron who emerged as a third party candidate.

At that time, most people did not give Macron much of a chance. , a former prime minister, was the frontrunner who was expected to waltz to victory. He possessed all the traits of a traditional leader. He was the establishment figure of the center-right but an embezzlement scandal involving his wife torpedoed his prospects.

This miraculous break in the clouds allowed Macron to emerge as a fresh young face promising a break from the past. Hamon and Fillon fell by the wayside and Macron and Le Pen squared off for the second round of the 2017 presidential election. Her party’s sulfurous, unrepublican reputation paved the way for Macron’s victory. In 2022, he again won because his opponent was Le Pen and because the Covid-19 pandemic gave him a break from les gilets jaunes. In the snap elections this year, his party only came third. The voters have sent him a clear message: “You may be president for another three years, but we no longer trust you to govern.”

As stated earlier, Macron managed to win two elections but he has failed to create a real political party. It has no truly political or even ideological identity. Ensemble is little more than a coterie of lukewarm loyalists bound for the advancement of their political careers to a talented but narcissistic leader. This leader has chosen technocrats with no political stature as his prime ministers. Édouard Philippe, Jean Castex, Élisabeth Borne, Gabriel Attal and now Barnier are not exactly household names in France. Macron clings to the fantasy that the weaker his prime ministers are, the stronger he will be. This has clearly backfired and led to an eminently avoidable crisis.

The constitution obliges Macron to find a new prime minister. The next elections cannot be held until July. Yet there is no personality on the left or in the center with enough authority to who can win the confidence even of a ragtag majority in a fragmented parliament. 

The urgent issue today, a day after the vote of no confidence, is to confirm a budget for 2025. But with no government to push a budget through, uncertainty reigns. With Trump waiting in the wings to take charge of the West Wing, uncertainty will only amplify. He is threatening 10–20% tariffs on European imports. So, France faces a risk of lower export earnings from the US market. It along with other European countries also faces the added risk of Chinese dumping because the Trump administration is planning to hit China with massive tariffs.

The war in Ukraine and the Middle East also cast a dark shadow on France. With no budget yet in either France or Germany, Europe can no longer back Ukraine. In any case, Trump has clearly signaled that he will be following a very different policy to US President Joe Biden in Ukraine. After tying himself closely to Biden, Macron will have to sing a different tune. Lebanon and Syria are former French colonies. They are in trouble and could end up in bigger trouble soon. This will cause Macron headaches.

In a nutshell though, the lack of a government and a budget poses grave risks for the economy. 51�Թ�’s Editor-at-Large Alex Gloy points out that yields on French ten-year bonds have surpassed those on their Greek counterparts and the country’s credit rating could be downgraded soon. Bankruptcies have been soaring and the French stock market performance has severely lagged those of other countries. Since the peak in 2007, the French stock market index CAC-40 is up a mere 18% while the German Dax has increased by 148% and the US S&P 500 by 286%. 

Furthermore, like Germany, France has been hit hard by soaring energy prices, high inflation and rising interest rates after the war in Ukraine started in February 2022. There is no political consensus as to how to pay for current and future spending. Like many times in the past, France is now in a full-blown political and economic crisis. Macron’s ��ܱ辱��é������� reign is ending in an unmitigated disaster and the Fifth Republic might not survive for too long.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron’s Embarrassing Hour of Reckoning appeared first on 51�Թ�.

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the US, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” That historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one President-elect Donald Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.

Making the original prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, I was the historian.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of US decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. President Barack Obama’s administration was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the US was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of the empire agreed that the US would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely-read book on imperial decline, that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While the US’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the US was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires — particularly those of Britain, France and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary US citizens, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of the US’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating US global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany vs Great Britain in World War I — expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the US National Intelligence Council that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year later, Chinese President Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power. This would come in the form of what he called “the ,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the US–China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall : “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”

The global rise of the strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the in 1995, pressing open-market “” on developing economies and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the US and Japan, while simultaneously 2.4 million US jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the US and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia in 2000, Israel in 2009, Hungary in 2010, China in 2012, Turkey in 2014, the Philippines and the US in 2016, Brazil in 2018, Italy in 2022, the Netherlands in 2023, Indonesia and the US again in 2024.

Set aside their incendiary us-vs-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an . In Russia, President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, President Recep Erdoğan caused a crippling , while 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte 30,000 suspected drug users and China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to in office and stay out of prison.

Prospects for Donald Trump’s second term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, the US is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent re-election, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world the US made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the US will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029. That is the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also wind farm leases on Federal lands and the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the US economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that US-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petroleum-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the US automotive industry uncompetitive at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic–foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling US farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs. Simultaneously, it will dramatically raise the cost of consumer goods for US citizens, stoking inflation and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall meeting in May 2023, he he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he : “I would tell [Ukrainian President] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November 5 election, Trump reportedly Putin over a phone call “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator — should Trump actually appoint one — might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been ���ܰ��DZ��’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a . But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French President Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.

US allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for US global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, NATO is arguably the most powerful military alliance in modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the US into war. While campaigning last February, he that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the US presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the entente with Australia and Britain; the with Australia, India and Japan and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the administration US President Joe Biden those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so US power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he in June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the US position along the Pacific littoral, which for 80 years has been the fulcrum of its global imperial posture. This would push its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to the US’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.

A silent US recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

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Most Western democracies have embraced the democratic ideology Abraham Lincoln famously articulated when he evoked “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” But who are “the people” and how can you define them, especially in a melting pot or like the US? The very fact of diversity casts a dark shadow on the comforting idea of “we the people.” Aware of that potentially troubling anomaly, Americans rallied around the idea of “majority rule.”

The 19th century idea of rule by an elusive “majority” inevitably spawned the historical trend towards the now classic two-party system. The 50.1% rule for elections became the measure that allowed diverse populations to believe in majority rule. It became apparent this can only work when there are no more than two dominant parties. So, even today, you’re a Democrat or a Republican, but you might also be an independent, sitting on the fence. In Europe, it was more complex. Nevertheless, even with multiple parties, democracy tended towards a perception of left (working class) vs right (educated ruling and business class).

Even though the founding fathers raised serious objections to the very idea of parties — which they characterized as “” — the US political system culturally, and to some extent legally, codified the two-party system, making it a structural feature of all but local elections. Third parties are permitted but barely tolerated. The media systematically casts third parties and their candidates into the category of annoying eccentricities. Strom Thurmond (1948), Ross Perot (1992), Ralph Nader (2000) and a few others managed to muddy the otherwise clear waters, but each could be dismissed as an ephemeral nuisance.

Repeated cases in recent years of US presidents elected while failing to obtain a majority of the popular vote began to disturb the tranquil belief people had in the principle of majority rule. The tsunami provoked by hurricane Donald, highlighting “American carnage,” “alternate facts” and “stolen elections” has now called the logic itself into question.

The events of this election year in the US, marked by an assassination attempt and the last minute replacement of an incumbent, have provoked a further erosion of the belief in democracy. But it can’t compare, in gravity, with what is unfolding today in France.

France’s parliamentary elections two years ago failed to produce a majority for the already re-elected President Emmanuel Macron. This forced him to rely on improvised alliances within the center, the right and eventually the far-right, to pass legislation. Disappointed by the disastrous results of the European parliamentary elections in June of this year, Macron launched a desperate gambit. In the mistaken belief that he might achieve democratic clarity, he dissolved parliament, provoking new parliamentary elections. Clarity turned to obscurity and opacity.

Macron’s party in the European elections of June 9 was roundly defeated by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. The French parliamentary elections a month later saw a reinvigorated left, the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire or NFP), rise to the top position. In terms of “majority rule” thinking, that double whammy was the equivalent of a TKO in boxing. The problem is that there’s no referee other than the constitution to stop the combat. And only a unified Assemblée would have the power to impeach a president. The fight has been paused, but the former champion must remain in the ring for another three years! And the stunned, incapacitated fighter must keep the crowd entertained.

The constitution requires that the president must designate a new prime minister, who in turn forms a new government according to his wishes. This isn’t the first time a sitting president has been deprived of a majority. A tradition dating back to 1986 established the precedent that the party or coalition with the most seats in parliament should propose a new prime minister from its ranks. The NFP has done precisely that, very cautiously designating an economist, Lucie Castets. But Macron, aware of his constitutional rights and committed to his Jupiterian idea of leadership, has bucked the tradition and demurred.

Le Monde the situation in these terms: “Macron has justified his refusal to name Castets as head of government by saying it is his duty to ensure ‘institutional stability.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Institutional stability:

What French presidents under the 5th Republic seek and obviously fail to secure when faced with an even more fundamental reality: constitutional instability.

Contextual note

The Paris Olympic Games provided Macron with his first pretext for postponing the constitution of a new government. Now he has adapted a different tactic. Since he alone has the power to nominate a prime minister, he will “ his consultations” with as many irrelevant personalities as possible. He may hope that the longer it goes, the more likely people will be resigned to accepting any solution he throws at them.

This week he has been listening to a range of personalities, including former right-wing president (and convicted felon) Nicolas Sarkozy, who unsurprisingly believes the prime minister should be selected from his party, Les ��é��ܲ�������������s, a party that earned the whopping total of 39 seats, less than 7% of the 577 seats. Sarkozy argues that France is a right-wing nation, probably because he lumps the extreme right into the traditional right.

Whatever choice Macron eventually makes, there is little likelihood that it will augur anything resembling stability. Emmanuel sees himself as the sole pillar of stability. A regime built on the idea of a president standing at the center, like a king on a chessboard, surrounded by loyal bishops and knights committed to his defense, living in safety within his castle walls, may have worked for the expert wielder of power, Louis XIV, whose reign lasted 72 years. As everyone knows, it didn’t work out quite as well for his more “centrist” great-grandson, Louis XVI.

Historical note

Macron, a young, ambitious but largely unknown minister in François Hollande’s colorless administration, emerged into stardom when the ruling Socialist party began to unravel. With no true political experience and no existing party structure to work from, Macron surprised everyone in May 2017, first by coming out of nowhere to lead all other candidates in the first round of voting, and then by beating Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election.

His victory clearly went to his head. But it was less his political genius than a stroke of luck that led to his 2017 success. Like Moses, he benefited from a miraculous parting of the political sea. The Socialists were in disarray after five years of Hollande’s presidency. The traditional right lost its bearings when its obvious frontrunner, François Fillon, mismanaged a scandal he was implicated in and refused to step down in favor of a ”cleaner” candidate. The only credible challenge left was the unambiguously left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whom the political class and the media treated as a dangerous firebrand. Le Pen nudged ahead of both Fillon and Mélenchon by less than 2%. Le Pen trailed Macron by only 2.6%.

In other words, from the start of his presidency, Macron had no truly constituted party and could only be deemed “the center” because he was surrounded on all sides by other political orientations. That was the precise moment he speculated about the taste he believed the French had for a Jupiterian leader.

Very quickly he was contested not by a party but by “the people,” citizens donning the iconic yellow vest the government obliged them to store in the private vehicles. That was when the Red Sea parted again for Macron thanks to a virus, Covid-19, that turned him into a “war president.”

Now he finds himself in a struggle with the entire political class and soon with the population as well. Unlike Moses, Macron never made the effort to get to the other side. The Red (and blue) Sea is closing in on him as he dawdles in the middle. Nobody is likely to be happy with the personality he selects as his prime minister, whoever she or he happens to be.

We’re in for another ride. Fortunately, France definitively banished the guillotine in 1981.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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Politics in France have been coming to a boil. The past elections symbolize the lessons people have drawn from the fact that there is a more substantial influence of the extreme right, including Germany and Austria. French President Emmanuel Macron called for snap elections after the European Union Parliament elections. This move concerned many, seemed counterintuitive and provided further momentum toward the National Rally candidate, Marine Le Pen. On the other hand, there is hope that the next election will be different.

Surging right wing

Germany and Austria are other countries where the extreme right surged in the most recent European parliamentary election. Right now, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats), a center-right political group, holds a of the seats with 188 out of 720 total seats. However, the far-right, represented in Germany by Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has been on the rise. AfD is the strongest in East Germany and among new voters. It finished , with 15.9% of the national vote, behind the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CDU/CSU).

In Austria, the Freedom Party has seen a similar rise in popularity. Austria will hold its regular parliamentary elections in September.

It is helpful, however, to take a step back and avoid drawing strict comparisons between different nations’ political situations. The media has been permanently interested in the far right challenging the center. This obscured the meaning of the center, with the media distorting perceptions of political alignment. If Le Pen were an American, she would be to the left of the democratic party. She advocates for social programs and supports the working class, something that no accepted party in the US is willing to do. Yet the media creates the perception that she is far-right and that the far right is therefore on the rise in France.

Since World War II, France has had a very solid right wing which consolidated around Charles de Gaulle. Francois Mitterand emerged after World War II and formed France’s left wing. Mitterand increased greatly in electoral appeal. He nationalized all big banks and major industries. Until 2017, France expected either the socialist party or a rightwing party more or less in the Gaullist tradition to rule, but that is when France started shifting to legitimizing the far right as an alternative to the two establishment wings of the ruling political spectrum: the socialists and the traditional post-Gaullist right. 

How united is Europe?

The EU Parliament elections are not just a single election; they are 27 national parallel elections. A question that many may ask “Are people voting for the whole of Europe or just their country?” This is what makes elections so difficult on a European level. For example, people in Bratislava will not be interested in issues such as those of the Social Democratic Party in Austria. Voters will focus on the issues and problems of their own countries. This has created an identity problem in Europe.  Europeans are more focused on their national identity and national issues rather than being united as Europeans with European problems. 

The European project must move forward. Countries that trade with each other should not go to war. Europe has progressed in the past decades. When traveling in Europe, people once had to stop at border checkpoints, but now people can drive straight through. Europe also adopted the Euro in 1999, providing a universal currency for Europe. This has allowed for swift and easy transactions and removed the need to calculate exchange rates.

The gradual rise of far-right parties and the challenges to the political center have sparked intense debates about the nature of political alignment and the identity of the electorate. The issue of European unity remains a complex and pressing concern, as national interests often overshadow the broader European agenda. Despite the challenges, hope still exists for a more united and prosperous Europe.��

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Voters returned no absolute majority for any party in the National Assembly. This lower house of parliament has 577 seats, setting the magic number to form a governing coalition at 289. The newly-formed coalition of the Left, the New Popular Front (NPF), holds the most seats, but it falls far short of a majority at . So, in order to pass any legislation, the parties will have to find a way to build a coalition of political convenience.

The second most powerful group is Macron’s coalition, Ensemble, which holds . RN comes in third with – counting some allied members of the more traditional right-wing party Les ��é��ܲ�������������s.

While voting concluded just over a month ago, France is still waiting on a governmen. No prime minister or cabinet have yet been announced, and there is no set deadline in place (and none enforceable per the French Constitution). As France continues to wait, a number of trends will bear paying attention to.

The first test of power

Historically, in France’s Fifth Republic, the president should appoint a prime minister that reflects an absolute majority in the National Assembly. With no absolute majority in place, Macron has more freedom to pick, but if the National Assembly does not approve of the final selection, it does have the power to hold a vote of no confidence to have the prime minister and cabinet resign.

Theoretically, the pick should now come from the largest governing power in the National Assembly, the NPF. The bloc had been on who they would nominate as prime minister, with multiple options having been shot down, but finally, in late July, they announced that would be the candidate.

However, within hours of the announcement, Macron on national television that it “was not a matter of a name, but of what majority can be built.” This was widely seen on the Left as disregard for the election results. Yet Castets does not seem to be a popular choice in France. In the latest polling, of French citizens do not approve of Castets as their prime minister.

No matter the candidate, the prospective prime minister will have to appease a split government. Given the slim margins between parties, this may mean a difficult path ahead.

The far right’s newfound gains

Initial polling that the far right would sweep the vote in France. In the first round, RN with 33.1% of the votes. RN were immediately elected without passing on to a runoff. This was a historic first for a party that previously had never cemented a first round win.

The second round led to very different results because leftist and centrist candidates struck electoral agreements to block the far right by any means possible. Those in Macron’s camp and the NPF on citizens to vote for anything but the far right, and they stepped down in each other’s favor when their counterpart had more support. It worked, and the electoral surge RN had been expecting did not materialize.

Still, the far right has never held as much power in France as it does now. This is uncharted territory for a country that has upheld a strict , bringing together disparate parties to exclude extremists from power.

As the far right continues to build up, the traditional right (Les ��é��ܲ�������������s) , splitting into factions over the question of allying with RN. The split raises questions about the party’s ability to survive in French politics. The infighting has alienated voters, and if the traditional right is unable to build itself back up, this turmoil will push some voters to the extremes.

The future of la Macronie

Macron ran on the premise of enacting policies from both the left and right sides of the spectrum “en même temps” (at the same time). By pushing policies intended to satisfy everyone, he ended up satisfying no one. His approval rating is near an Further, this style of governance has led to the massive disruption in French politics with the jumbling of both the traditional left and right.

Macron will also have an incredibly difficult time recovering from his decision to call these unexpected, destabilizing elections. In the eyes of his own citizens, his credibility is severely undermined. According to the latest polling, French citizens is worried for their political future. In the eyes of his own party, recovering from the breach of trust caused by his decision to dissolve the National Assembly with absolutely no warning, will be close to, if not outright, impossible.

Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, described himself as by the decision to call elections. He found out at the same time that everyone else does, through the news. When it came time to campaign, Attal’s posters showed no sign of the president’s face. Others in the presidential camp . This was the first time that Renaissance members declined to tout their president’s endorsement. He is now seen as a liability, not an asset. The future of Renaissance will be an important element to pay attention to on the road to the French presidential elections in 2027.

Institutional stability

The president is allowed to dissolve the parliament once in a year. With a National Assembly incapable of passing legislation, he could be tempted to do it again. This would ensue further chaos in French domestic politics, and political stability would be a pipe dream for French citizens.

With this instability looming, the French are having debates on everything from to on whether or not a Sixth Republic, i.e. an entirely new constitution, could be established. While this is still a burgeoning debate for some (though the NPF already has it in its proposed political program), the conversation around the power of the executive is happening. Many are arguing for shifting more power to the National Assembly, away from the executive. While a Sixth Republic isn’t expected to happen tomorrow, these conversations have taken a new urgency.

As of now, with no prime minister announced, France is entering into unknown territory. Though the previous government recently resigned, it will remain in power until a new one is established. This transition has historically lasted around ten days, but word has it that the current government will the Summer Olympics in Paris.

Unfortunately, France cannot afford instability at the moment. In addition to hosting the Olympics this year, the country is facing an amount of terrorist threats, and the government continues to rampant Russian disinformation campaigns. All while, the war in Ukraine threatens overall European security. As France figures itself out, there is no denying that this next government will define the future of French, and European, politics for years to come.

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For example, in Germany, the ruling social democratic party was annihilated with only 13.9% of the popular vote. The Conservative Christian Democratic Union won with 30%. In a shocking turn of events, the far-right alternative party Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) came in second with 15.9%. Even though the far-right didn’t win outright, in the former East Germany region, the AFD increased their vote share from 5% to 16% among voters younger than 24. The result is a good litmus test to measure just how far Europe is sliding to the right. 

An attempt to break the far-right fever

France has also become an example of the far-right frenzy. During the elections, the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) won 32% of the vote. That’s more than double the vote share current French president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party received. Created in 1972 by the reactionary Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party is now led by his daughter Marine, who has moderated it somewhat. Although she curtailed the neo-fascist elements within the party, RN remains a nationalist, populist party focused on extremely strict immigration controls.

RN has already left its mark on the French market. Bondholders are wary because RN economic policies are weak and promise spending. France could very well be facing potential instability. Fearing this, Macron called for a snap . He hoped to break the far-right fever dominating his country. If people were made to vote again, he reasoned, they may remeasure the RN. 

If the RN won, RN’s Jordan Bardella would have been declared France’s next prime minister. Because the French constitution allows the head of government to be from a different party than the head of state, Macron would face a fractured and unstable political situation. However, France appears to have avoided disaster for the moment. Leftist and centrist candidates were able to cooperate, dropping out in each other’s favor when one held the edge. In the final result, RN came merely in third place. However, they had still increased their vote share significantly.

Why is this happening?

During the Cold War, there wasn’t a call for concern regarding the far-right — most countries were more concerned about the rise of communism. Now, however, a mass reaction against uncontrolled immigration has contributed to the rise of the far-right. France, for example, needed North African immigrants for factory work. However, these immigrant workers were never integrated into the society and culture. This created a significant “us vs. them” chasm. Europeans feared immigrants would threaten their “pure” society.

The biggest issue, therefore, lies in assimilation. A new population or culture is viewed as exotic up until it reaches 10% of the dominant population. As soon as it reaches that point, the population is suddenly viewed as disruptive and is rejected from the dominant society. It also takes about three generations for an immigrant family to fully integrate. That’s a long time. Something needs to be done about integration and immigration quicker.

The far-right has chosen to point their fingers in the direction of immigration as the cause of sociological issues. In actuality, the blame lies with the political elites who have failed to formulate proper immigration policies. A modern fault line runs through politics: Politicians rely too heavily on spin and not enough on real problems to receive votes. The lack of leadership in acknowledging present problems, most notably immigration, has led to a rise in populist, far-right leaders. 

With the rise in inflation, cost of living, and unemployment, people turn to scapegoats to blame. They have found an easy one in immigration issues. So when a charismatic, populist leader comes along promising an end to such issues, it’s only natural that the voter population will begin to turn right.

As this trend continues, there will be a strengthening of nationalism. Such a rise gives way to a decline in protectionism and multilateralism. A new world order is asserting itself, and it seems like European social democracy is increasingly discredited.

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Europe is in an even more dramatic bind than the US. The ambiguity surrounding Biden himself means that the likelihood of a new Trump White House has never been greater, despite Trump being a convicted felon thanks to the of a criminal court that same June. Europeans are dreading the unpredictable consequences of a new Trump administration.

Even without that factor of ambiguity, Europe is immersed in its own problems. The major event of the month was the initiation of what may turn into a new French Revolution. Reacting to the disastrous showing of his coalition in the European parliamentary elections on June 9, President Emmanuel Macron, as soon as the results were announced, precipitously hatched his daring, potentially suicidal gambit. He called for new to “clarify” the balance of political forces in France. Already struggling to deal with the expense, uncertainty and disappointing evolution of NATO’s tragic war in Ukraine, Europe was thrown into a state of suspended animation as it awaited the outcomes of the British and French elections. Those took place in the first week of July.

On June 13, four days after Macron’s act of folly, Alex Gloy offered this “quick observation” based on the state of the global bond markets. He sees the unmistakable seeds of a European banking crisis.

“These are current 10-year government bond yields (except TYX, which is the US 30-yr). The focus here is on the difference, or spread, in yield between Germany and France. A week ago, that spread was 0.50%. It is rapidly widening, now at 0.71%. This is worrying. Why? You can purchase government bonds in the same currency but get different yields. This does not make sense unless there is a difference in default probability and / or exit from the Euro. Both of which would be catastrophic events for Europe.

Germany has fiscal deficit of 2.5% of GDP, while France is running at 5.5%. Germany has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 63.6%, while France stands at 111%.

Financial markets hate uncertainty, and the outcome of French elections is unknown, with the risk being a populist right-wing government ignoring the fiscal constraints of the Treaty of Maastricht (max 3% deficit, max 60% debt-to-GDP, both which are already being ignored).

France’s fiscal position is now worse than Spain (3.6% deficit, 108% debt-to-GDP). France should tighten its belt, but that would probably cause more social unrest.

The spread-widening in the government bond market has led to pressure on European bank stocks; BNP fell from EUR 72 to 60 and Deutsche Bank from 16.70 to 14.60. Banks usually have positions in government bonds. Another banking crisis is the last thing Europe needs now.

Still, it is worth mentioning that all Euro-members, including Greece, are currently paying less than the UK or the US.”

Related Reading

Money Matters: Revealing Who Is Holding Billions of US Banknotes

Our colleague Edward Quince offered his own reflections, provoked by another destabilizing event in the month of June: the presence of a Russian nuclear off the coast of the US.

“A�����,

Mr. Putin ain’t dumb. The alarming part of his seemingly nonsensical attitude toward the USD is his informed confidence about what is to come next. Note that he almost always refers to the USD in the past tense. I’ll detail the not-so-secret weapon he has up his sleeve after I finish documenting the events surrounding the Russian nuclear submarine docking in Havana, Cuba today. The short answer, however, is ‘BRICS Bridge, blockchain, and gold derivatives.’

When I researched the work done by Russia and China since 2008 to establish a new, more equitable, and less risky finance and trade environment, BRICS emerged as the ultimate cooperation framework and platform. After having read a ton, it is apparent that a tremendous amount of very focused and deliberate work has been done since then. This 2015 Ufa Declaration the goals, the underlying strategy and some tactics behind the major finance and trade initiatives. The key framework there is the Contingent Reserves Arrangement. Nine years and several global crises later, Mr. Putin has told us just a tiny bit about what has been built on that foundation.

On a separate note, I’ve just finished re-reading Henry Kissinger’s ‘.’ The intricate political play that Kissinger orchestrated in the 70s and the 80s now looks like an elaborate short-term trap for China in the American long-term game against Russia. I can only imagine the depth of resentment and distrust towards the US in Beijing these days. Alternatively, it is possible that there has never been any such trust, and China played the long game knowing that one day the USA would inevitably turn adversarial once again. Nevertheless, since there is nobody resembling Mr. Kissinger in Washington now, there seems to be no going back to the status quo to which we all grew so accustomed.”

With the drama continuing to develop, on June 29, I offered my own testimony. I am a voter in the coming French election, and potentially the US election in November.

“As a dual citizen of two nations, each with a president clearly demonstrating suicidal behavior, I have to wonder about the continued political coherence and even institutional solidity of both. Tomorrow I will be voting in an election that in all probability will establish the contour of what promises to be twelve months of political and I expect even deeper cultural chaos. On July 8 France will most likely have a ‘hung by the rafters’ parliament and a situation of maneuvering that will take place as much on the streets as in the Assemblée Nationale.

The point of a presidential as opposed to a parliamentary regime is that at the core of government there is a human being who symbolizes the unity of the nation. Political wrangling is a permanent feature of all democracies, but there is always some kind of symbol that makes even the worst confrontations palatable. In the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and even Spain, the monarchy plays its role in stabilizing the question of national identity. In presidential regimes, it can only be the president and the flag.

On Sunday, June 9, Emmanuel Macron miscalculated when, by announcing the the Assemblée, he effectively declared two things: 

• That any pretense of political unity for the nation was compromised beyond negotiable repair;
• That the president, as a lame duck because of serving his second term, had now become a non-entity, deprived of the quasi-absolute power De Gaulle had defined for the office.

Macron hoped to address the first point but he was in denial about the reality of the second one, despite its being obvious to everyone else, including his own inner circle.

For three quarters of a century Europe has developed as a zone of relative peace and prosperity in the shadow of the US nuclear umbrella and the US dollar, despite the launch of the Euro. In the context of the war in Ukraine, it has now implicitly embraced the growth of what Dwight Eisenhower – alone among all modern presidents – had the temerity to : the military-industrial complex. 

Europeans have long worried about the role of what President Giscard d’Estaing called the “exorbitant privilege” but accepted the floating dollar as a feature of the new world order. De Gaulle led the campaign against the dollar that eventually led to Nixon’s of the dollar and gold, creating a new global landscape supported by the petrodollar and the Eurodollar. De Gaulle also dared to counter the US by withdrawing from NATO’s central command structure, with the futile aim of achieving military autonomy.

Europe is still struggling mightily with these two issues. It will be interesting to see how this year’s elections influence those developments.”

Previous episodes of Money Matters are available here:

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Rishi Sunak, the UK’s most recent Tory Prime Minister, understood that his party’s hold on power was weakening. So he thought he could catch his opponents off guard, forcing the electorate to cling to the idea of continuity in times of uncertainty. He provoked an unprecedented bloodbath that left the Tories with an abject minority in Parliament, and Labour with a crushing : 412 to 121!

Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron had a panicked reaction to being handily distanced by Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally in June’s European parliamentary elections. He called a snap election to take place exactly three weeks later, for the stated sake of “clarification.” The first round of that election confirmed the electorate’s massive rejection of Macron’s policies and even of the man himself.

The first round also allowed the electorate to “proclaim” its for the xenophobic right over “Macronisme.” The second round permitted voters to the left, leaving Macron stranded in a no man’s land: an undefined, powerless middle. Even though he has three years left to preside over the nation, Macron has become the lamest of lame ducks.

But the most obvious example of the negative democracy trend would be the last two United States presidential elections, along with the upcoming one. In 2016, pollsters revealed that both Hillary Clinton, who was nevertheless expected to win, and Donald Trump, the ultimate outsider, held the titles of the two most presidential candidates ever to face off in the modern era.

The 2020 election pitted the consistently unpopular Trump against an aging Democratic workhorse, Joe Biden, who was clearly past his prime. “Sleepy Joe” won the primaries not because he inspired voters, but because the party’s establishment, working in the background, pushed him through. Above all, they wished to nominating the much more popular Democrat: Bernie Sanders. In Negative Democracy, popular candidates are viewed as potential threats to their parties.

Biden was never popular but he had two redeeming factors: his association with former US President Barack Obama and his appearance as a politician who could conduct “business as usual.” He contrasted with the mercurial, unpredictable Trump. Was he villainous? No one was sure. But a majority of voters saw him as the lesser of two evils.

2024 offers a rematch between the already rejected Trump and — as polls seem to indicate — the soon-to-be rejected Biden. Both are now widely perceived as lacking any realistic awareness of the nation’s needs and an ability to address them; Trump because of his personality, Biden because of his age.

In short, the way politicians win elections today is not to prove that they deserve to govern. Rather, they persuade the public that their opponent deserves to be punished for their sins or obvious failings.

Analyzing the rather surprising landslide defeat of Britain’s Conservative Party after 14 years of continuous rule, The Guardian’s columnist Rafael Baer the result as the “imperative to punish the Tories for years of political malpractice.” He claims it “was palpable on the campaign trail in a way that exultant Starmer fandom was not.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Imperative to punish:

A moral sentiment caused by the buildup of a population’s frustration with two things: its powerlessness to influence events and its growing understanding that every government it elects is destined to produce consistently disappointing results.

Contextual note

In theory, democracies hold elections to enable the most creative and constructive elements of the population to make up the governing structures that will ensure collective security and foster conditions of prosperity and well-being. The ideal, in most democracies, has been historically betrayed by the empowerment of parties and their associated factions that have eclipsed “the people” as sources of decision-making. Parties foster the creation of a protected political class whose interests become distinct from the population’s. The existence of a political class fosters the emergence of a courtier class, the myriad lobbyists who enforce the role of private interests over public welfare.

Elections have become the measure of two complementary forms of powerlessness. Democracy itself, as a method of governing designed to convey the “will of the people,” has lost any power it once had. This is compounded by the fact that the ruling elites appear powerless to do anything that doesn’t simply aggravate the existing instability of institutions and, of course, the economy.

Elections, instead of embodying the aspirations of the population, have thus become little more than tools of punishment. That may well be necessary when entire populations judge that their way of life is consistently going downhill and that their social, political and economic culture is becoming seriously degraded. That instinct for punishment could even be salutary, if punishment could be managed with a view to improvement rather than simple rejection.

Historical note

In a famous 1960 for The Atlantic titled, “The Imperative to Punish,” David Bazelon introduced the concept of restorative justice as an alternative to traditional punitive measures. Restorative justice focuses on repairing the harm caused by crime and involving all stakeholders — victims, offenders and the community — in the process of justice. In the context of the 1960s, a period of creative reform symbolized by the civil rights , the on Poverty and US President Lyndon B Johnson’s “,” the idea of restorative justice as an alternative to punishment made sense. But history moved in a different direction.

Concurrently with the reforms, Johnson prosecuted a in Southeast Asia designed to punish Vietnamese nationalists who might be tempted by socialism or communism as an alternative to the US model of god-fearing capitalism. If foreign policy could be based on punishment, why shouldn’t domestic policy follow the same logic? President Nixon and later Reagan pursued that notion. The taste to punish became the driving force in policy-making, foreign or domestic.

This worked out well for the evolving contours of US political parties. Democrats could seek to punish Republicans for being racist and Republicans could insist on punishing Democrats for “over-regulating” and thereby robbing them of their basic freedoms. Namely, the freedom to use any business practices that weren’t outright assassination or theft to get things done. Polluting the environment, for example, should be allowed when required for commercial success. Those who seek to regulate should be punished.

Starting with the premise of civil rights, Democrats began evolving the rules that ended up defining the “identity culture” that established the practices of “cancel culture.” This became an informal system of social punishment that could include getting people fired from their jobs or simply being inundated with death threats on social media.

No one should be surprised that the “satisfaction” of punishing those you disagree with has taken center stage in the psychology of politics in our modern democracies. The “imperative to punish” cited in Baer’s description of the Tory defeat reminds us of the Kantian concept of the “.” Kant’s ethics that define moral principles as categorical — meaning they admit of no exceptions and leave no room to discuss, examine, negotiate, debate and seek “restorative” solutions — has come to dominate Western thinking, especially in the domain of politics. The case can be made that it has perverted the concept and practice of democracy.

We continue to see its nefarious effects in the field of foreign policy. The now well-documented adamant refusal of Biden’s State Department to consider, let alone engage in, negotiations in any of its provoked wars provides perfect examples of the categorical imperative’s misapplication. The cost so far can be measured in hundreds of thousands of lives in and . But it could reach the hundreds of millions as we move closer to creating the conditions in which a spark can ignite conflagration. Armageddon would be the final application of our most cherished “categorical imperative.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This April, in sweeping speech at Sorbonne University in Paris, he his call for a more assertive Europe, a theme he has been spearheading since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Macron articulated his vision for a reinforced and “sovereign” European Union. In his nearly two-hour speech, Macron conveyed his conviction that only a robust European power can salvage the continent from irrelevance in an unstable world. With the privilege of global dominance contested between the United States and China — and the former engaged in, if not distracted by, conflicts in Europe and the Middle East — Macron sees a strengthened EU as the linchpin for navigating these turbulent times.

The resurgence of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) presents the starkest contrast to Macron’s vision for France and the European Union. With its nationalist rhetoric and anti-immigration stance, Le Pen’s party has tapped into disenchantment among vast swathes of the French electorate, particularly in rural and working-class areas.

Liberals lose ground to the Far Right in France and elsewhere

For Macron and his Renaissance party, the challenge lies in countering the RN’s appeal and rejuvenating the party base. The ongoing European Parliament elections that run from June 6 to 9 serve as a litmus test for Macron’s leadership and the viability of his pro-European agenda. Le Pen’s list, led by the emerging figure of Jordan Bardella, 29, is gaining momentum. The Renaissance list, headed by relatively unknown Member of European Parliament (MEP) , struggles to maintain relevance. As of June 3, Renaissance had slipped to a mere according to voting intention polls presented by Politico. RN, on the other hand, held a commanding 33%. This shift marks a stark departure from the competition witnessed in the previous European election five years ago.

The upcoming results of the EU election hold significant weight as this contest serves as the final scheduled national vote in France before the 2027 presidential election. Le Pen is poised to make her fourth and potentially most formidable bid for power. Only two years into his second term, Macron faces the specter of becoming a premature lame duck. He lacks a solid parliamentary majority domestically and faces the constant threat of no-confidence motions.

Moreover, Macron’s European influence is under threat as the European Parliament group to which Renaissance belongs, , faces across European electorates. France’s stature further diminishes amidst chronic high , something that should theoretically trigger an EU disciplinary procedure post-election.

Macron’s speech underscores the significance of the elections as a litmus test for his political standing and the future trajectory of his party. Macron is endeavoring to rally support and reassert his leadership in the face of stiff competition from right-wing adversaries. How Macron navigates these turbulent waters in the coming weeks will undoubtedly shape the political landscape of France and Europe at large.

Macron pushes for continental defense

In his recent address, Emmanuel Macron once again reiterated the “importance” of nuclear deterrence for Europe’s security, hinting at the possibility of broadening Franco-British nuclear cooperation to encompass other European nations. While such a move might appeal to a future UK Labour government, it remains a contentious issue in Germany and much of Eastern Europe. In recent months, Macron has explicitly about nuclear deterrence as a means of leverage required for European security.

In February, in response to reports that Ukraine was on the verge of defeat, Macron floated the possibility of France sending troops to the battlefield. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin that, in case of NATO engagement, Moscow would be prepared to utilize any arms, including tactical nuclear weapons. Macron in turn, his audience that France is also a nuclear power and boasted: “We must first and foremost feel protected because we are a nuclear power. We are ready; we have a doctrine” for the use of nuclear weapons.

However, Macron’s initiatives have failed to dispel the perception that, rather than affecting the outcome of the conflict, they primarily fortify France’s military-industrial interests and prop up the diminishing influence of a mid-sized power. Macron must address these lingering doubts and ensure that his initiatives contribute meaningfully to collective European security.

Fiscal expansion of the EU

Interestingly, in his Sorbonne speech, Macron advocated a significant leap in Europe’s fiscal integration in economic policy. This would be accomplished by enlargening the EU budget, extending the post-pandemic recovery fund or reforming the European Stability Mechanism. However, Macron’s proposals overlooked the imperative of bolstering fiscal discipline at the national level — especially in France.

Even more daunting would be getting other Europeans to buy into the idea of granting expanded taxing authority to the EU. While Macron broke new ground by advocating for broadening the European Central Bank’s mandate to encompass growth and climate objectives, he fell short in addressing the necessary trade-offs and compromises to realize this ambition.

As Europe grapples with the complexities of economic recovery and transformation, Macron’s vision raises pertinent questions about the path forward and the concessions required to achieve meaningful progress. Macron presents a compelling vision for European integration. He advocates for a fortified single market and establishing a European industrial policy, while also championing deregulation and national flexibility.��

However, more than lofty speeches will be needed to get the job done. Macron must articulate a viable theory of change and confront the intricate political realities shaping Europe. For Germany, European sovereignty means prioritizing democratic processes over executive power. Back in 2017, Macron “democratic conventions” across the EU to make European citizens more involved in their own governance. At the Sorbonne, Macron acknowledged the failure of this plan, underscoring the challenge of achieving unity amidst cultural diversity and countering the effects of identity politics centered on migration — to say nothing of the challenge of cultivating what remains a mythical European identity.

Macron has charted out what he believes is a new path for European integration in a perilous future. We will know soon whether European citizens have found him credible.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In order to pass the new immigration bill, Macron negotiated with the far-right majority in the French Senate. Shockingly, he agreed with many of the extreme conservative amendments added to the bill by Marine Le Pen’s party, National Rally. Consequently, the immigration bill has passed successfully.

The National Rally began in the 1960s as the militant, racist, fascist National Front created by Marine’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Many of its ideals remain the same. Thus, Macron’s deal with the party has caused a great political upheaval in France. So far, no ruling president has worked with this far-right party. Now, all of a sudden, Macron and the far right have struck an alliance on immigration. Why has the French president switched teams? The answer lies in the concentration of power in Élysée Palace — the French president’s official residence —and Macron’s narcissistic opportunism.

French elections are not like American ones

Every five years, France goes to the polls and elects presidents and legislators. Earlier the presidential term was seven years. This allowed for a midterm legislative election and often led to cohabitation. This term referred to the phenomenon in which the president and the prime minister, who enjoyed a legislative majority, belonged to opposing parties. This curtailed the power of even charismatic presidents like François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac.

Cohabitation often led to gridlock, so the French now have five-year terms for both the president and the legislators. This constitutional change has concentrated further power in the hands of the president.

In 2022, Emmanuel Macron was reelected, defeating Marine Le Pen. Despite her attempts to clean up National Rally’s appearance, Marine is really just about as far-right as her father Jean-Marie. The French held their noses and voted for Macron, but the vast majority did not want him to have the extensive powers of the presidency. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, which Charles de Gaulle founded in 1958, the president did not win a majority in the French national legislature.

Macron has tricked the French people

Macron and Le Pen squaring off in the last election demonstrated, the traditionally dominant parties of the center-right and the left have lost credibility. Macron replaced the socialists while Le Pen has defenestrated the Gaullists. Of course, Macron came to power first. He gave France the illusion that he was moderate, centrist and willing to listen to the public.

Once in office, it became clear Macron did not have the public’s interest in mind. He fell in popularity after revealing his pro-business, free-enterprise model for the government. Furthermore, Macron’s narcissistic personality began to reveal itself. His narcissisme pervers showed right from the start when he named his own political party — En Marche — curiously with the same abbreviation as his initials.

Extremely narcissistic personalities are often attracted to high office. Patrick Weil’s biography The Madman in the White House captured the increasing narcissism of US President Woodrow Wilson. In his latter days in the White House, Wilson refused to be confined by the constitutional constraints of his office. Weil concludes that excessive power distorts a person’s ability to govern democratically and correctly.

Today, France is in crisis because of an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the president. Like Wilson a century ago, Macron does not want to be confined in his exercise of power. This former minister in a socialist government has now done a deal with the far-right to push through a draconian immigration bill, breaking all political precedent in the Fifth Republic.

The Fifth Republic is not defective

Some, including 51�Թ�’s Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh, argue that the Fifth Republic is dysfunctional. The president just has far too much power, and France today cannot be governed by a republic that Gaulle built in his image. The far right is now rising because the Fifth Republic is failing.

Weil does not think so. He believes that the French constitution does not need further change. The problems in France stem from narcissistic personalities who have become presidents and abused the power of the presidential office.

Related Reading

The World This Week: Another French Revolution

The solution for France is not a sixth republic but a return to the original text of the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Voters have to vote not for narcissists like Macron or Le Pen but for candidates who respect both the spirit and the letter of the constitution.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: France in Crisis: Macron Now in Bed With Far-Right appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the mid-20th century, many African and Middle Eastern immigrants arrived as workers to rebuild France after World War II. First, they were mostly young men who came alone. The French administration intended for them to eventually return to their homelands. Yet they put down roots, and they were eventually able to bring their families to live with them. So, France possesses a large population of Muslim immigrants.

Much of this Muslim community has not fully integrated into French society. In December 2023, French authorities a Muslim high school in Lille, citing administrative problems and teachings incompatible with French values. Muslims feel alienated and marginalized by the authorities, and their relationship with police is often fractious. in the summer of 2023 brought this issue to the fore. Many immigrants, old and new, also face high levels of poverty.

Related Reading

FO° Exclusive: Make Sense of the Hellish Rioting in France

Immigration has become a hot topic across Europe, with right-wing parties sounding the alarm against newcomers who they say do not share European, liberal or Christian values. France is no exception.

France has tried numerous times to lessen the flow of immigrants. Since the 1980s, it has passed a new immigration law nearly every year. These laws have been typically unhelpful, unsuccessfully attempting to deter immigrants by making the bureaucracy tough and cumbersome. All the same, there has been a steady increase in the amount of immigration into France. In 1982, 7.4% of people in France were immigrants. By 2022, that figure rose to 10.3%, or seven million people, as by INSEE. More than a of those people have acquired French citizenship.

What is Macron’s new law?

On December 19, 2023, the French parliament passed a new immigration law.

In France’s semi-presidential system, the head of state does not necessarily control a majority in parliament. The president has enough authority to govern effectively from day to day, but needs support in parliament to pass new legislation. Currently, Macron lacks that support. His centrist Renaissance party does not control a majority in parliament, so it needs to join with either the Left or the Right to pass new legislation. The new immigration law was a compromise between Renaissance and the right-wing Rassemblement National.

Renaissance added provisions to the law that opened the possibility of work for immigrants in some specific economic sectors. (In doing so, Renaissance resisted the trend among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that has seen tougher work and immigration policies passed in the last few years. France needs immigrants to make up for labor shortages as its population ages.) Rassemblement National, on the other hand, secured the of provisions that restricted, for example, family reunification and social benefits for unemployed immigrants. 

Macron refered the law to the Constitutional Council. Upon review, the council decided not to strike the law down, but rather to it by striking down some provisions and not others. Effectively, it scrapped most of the provisions supported by the Right and kept the government’s provisions.

The Constitutional Council made its decision on procedural rather than substantive grounds. This means that there is nothing to prevent the parliament from adopting the same provisions that were struck down in a later law. Immigrants in France thus rest uneasy, not knowing whether their status will be endangered again in the near future.

The French middle class is shrinking and insecure

Why are French voters becoming more diffident about immigration than they had been before? The answer lies in France’s changing social structures.

In France, as in much of the OECD, the economic position of the middle class has become increasingly precarious. Despite its positive effects, globalization has put downward pressure on wages in the Western world. In traditionally high-income, high-expense economies like France, even those who continue to work can now barely make ends meet. As deindustrialization set in, the French economy began to weaken. In 2000, manufacturing represented 19% of the national GDP as compared to 13% in 2022. Business bankruptcies have increased by in France.  Generations of families were left unemployed. With jobs and wages now harder to get, middle-class French increasingly see migrants as competitors for scarce resources.

Native French workers are not extending solidarity to immigrants. They do not see immigrants as part of “us,” as fellow members of society to be helped, but rather as interlopers from outside of society who are a drain on its resources. They resent that the government helps them with the taxes that they pay, taxes which, in their minds, are collected to help “real” French people. Solidarity, a core part of France’s democratic values, is dying.

Loss of Western geostrategic importance

The middle class’s precarious economic position is not the only factor that is making Europeans uneasy. More broadly, the continent is feeling the effects of its shrinking geostrategic importance.

Just a century ago, Western European powers were the dominant and almost the sole actors on the world stage. Now, they have lost their ability to direct events occurring outside of their own continent. Occurrences in Africa or Asia which Europe is helpless to control can drive waves of immigration to its shores.

While France and the rest of Europe struggle with immigration policy issues, they face quite a different threat from another direction: an expansionist and nuclear-armed Russia, which has invaded its neighbor Ukraine.

The Russian invasion has caused a lot of uncertainty in Europe. EU leaders have continuously discussed and debated what is required to stand up to Russia or if Russia can even be defeated. The war in Ukraine not only presents a threat to Europe, but a threat to democracy itself.

In recent months, Macron has stated his refusal to rule out sending to Ukraine. According to Pascal Brice, a former French diplomat, Macron’s thought behind this is to show France’s common determination. Russia has to know Europe’s common determination to defeat Putin, especially because he is the only one who will use the nuclear threat against anyone who opposes him. Indeed, Macron has long called for a broader European defense system, notoriously remarking that NATO is “” back in 2019.

In Brice’s estimation, it is time for Europe to get tough with Russia. Putin has shown himself to be a dictator, and the West cannot expect to have an amicable settlement with someone whose goals are the weakening of European unity and democracy itself. He must be defeated.

Peter Isackson, 51�Թ�’s Chief Strategy Officer, disagrees. He believes that Russia and Europe need to develop a common framework in which to discuss their defense needs together, instead of adopting an excessively antagonistic relationship. If they had done so earlier, they could have potentially avoided the current invasion of Ukraine. Yet even now, negotiation is a viable pathway toward ending the war in Ukraine.

Brice calls for an end to the Putin regime. To Isackson, a leader doesn’t define the nation, the nation defines the person running it. He does not think that Russia will be different or better with a different leader. What is necessary is finding a way to live with Russia all the same.

[ and wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: Where Is French Immigration Law Heading��Now? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Macron’s basic preùise is that “we mustn’t let Russia win.” Should we understand that as the expression of an ideal to inspire hope or as a categorical imperative, that must be accomplished at all costs? And what does he mean? Who is the “we”? France, NATO, Europe, Macron’s government or all morally decent people? He can’t count on Pope Francis, who recently called for Ukraine to summon the “courage to raise the white flag.”

And what does he mean by not letting “Russia win?” Would retaining conquered territory and formalizing Ukraine’s neutrality be considered a “win” for Russia? Macron’s tone appears to signify that he not only wants to prevent Russia’s victory, but to inflict on it the humiliation he insisted, two years ago, must be avoided.

When in February, in the presence of 27 European leaders, he first suggested sending troops to Ukraine, Macron may have assumed no one would take his grandstanding seriously. Unfortunately, both his NATO allies and critics at home took notice and excoriated him for overreaching.

To deflect criticism, Macron cleverly confessed to practicing “strategic ambiguity.” No one should doubt Macron’s taste for ambiguity, but if he had any real sense of strategy he would have understood that the starting point for strategic thinking must be reality rather than the fantasy of French bravery galloping in on a shining steed to miraculously turn the tide. Most experts, even in his own military, are convinced Ukraine simply cannot defeat Russia.

In the interview, Macron offered this curious conditional statement: “If the situation were to deteriorate, we must be ready and we will be ready.” (Si la situation devait se dégrader, nous devons être prêts et nous serons prêts.)

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Situation:

Circumstances that, because they are beyond one’s control, may be invoked in provocative ways to create the illusion that one is capable of control.

Contextual note

Macron’s conditional assertion must be deemed odd, if only because every knowledgeable person about the state of play in Ukraine recognizes see the situation as already deteriorating. This is not a matter of speculation.

Monsieur le Président appears to be saying we must act now. But France cannot act alone. He has even labeled his allies cowards. Perhaps Macron sees himself in the role of NATO’s Jeanne d’Arc before the battle of Orléans, the heroic champion who mounts his horse and sallies forth to inspire courage in the faltering king’s forces, forcing the English – in this case the Russians – to flee.

To play such a role, serious drama is required. Macron describes the war in Ukraine as “existential for our Europe and for France” (“existentielle pour notre Europe et pour la France). The interesting word here is “notre.” What can he possibly mean by “our Europe?” Does he believe there are multiple Europes? Is Russia a different Europe?

More likely, “our” points to a class of people or an ideology within Europe. Macron has never made a secret of his own ideology and class, which is composed of ENA graduates, Rothschild bankers, hauts fonctionnaires (senior bureaucrats) and McKinsey consultants. Macron himself was a Rothschild banker. He notoriously paid McKinsey handsomely to play a significant role in guiding his policies of governance. The Europe of bankers, consultants and private think tanks is real. From the beginning of his career, Macron was groomed inside it and for it. The  Europe he calls “our Europe” is indeed facing an existential threat.

That class of professionals, largely shielded from direct contact with the people of ���ܰ��DZ��’s disparate nations, has governed and managed the European Union for decades. It’s the Europe of banks, multinationals, consultants, lawyers and an army of senior bureaucrats who comfortably make decisions and spend money within the very real and well-defended security of institutions that were designed to stand above the plebian masses with no accountability to the people. Though regularly challenged by multiple parties and movements, the self-satisfied, arrogant technocracy that reigns in Brussels and depends on US-led NATO for its security, is the “existing” Europe that Macron perceives as being existentially threatened.

Those in Europe who challenge an invisible hierarchy of financial and political interests tied by an umbilical cord to its protector, NATO (the US military-industrial complex), fall into three categories: nationalistic populists on the right, anti-capitalist parties on the left and a wide range of sometimes prestigious but largely marginalized intellectuals and independent thinkers. Prominent among them are personalities with historical connections to politics but no longer tied to established parties, such as Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and Dominique de Villepin, former French prime minister. They, and the people of the European community, in the full ideological diversity, appear to belong to something other than Macron’s “notre Europe.”

Historical note

France did have its moment of very real influence during the Cold War. It even had several moments, despite its obvious weakness regarding the two competing superpowers. In 1966, De Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command structure. De Gaulle believed that France should not be bound by decisions made by other NATO members, particularly the United States.

Similarly, under his leadership, France insisted on developing its own nuclear deterrent, including the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. The French nuclear program aimed to ensure that France could defend itself independently, without relying on other nuclear powers.

Perhaps even more significantly in February 1965, de Gaulle announced France’s intention to exchange its U.S. dollar reserves for gold at the official exchange rate, effectively calling what had become the post Bretton Woods bluff. The general dared to call the dollar the “exorbitant privilege” that allowed the US to hold the world hostage to a currency everyone had to have and hold, meaning the US was free to print the money that allowed it to wage wars and conduct covert operations across the globe.

At a time when the US had become comfortable with the idea that a divided Europe was a good thing, even if it meant allowing the Soviet Union to pull strings in the east, De Gaulle advocated for a united Europe that could assert its interests on the global stage. He dared to evoke a Europe stretching “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” Though some in the US and Europe categorized the general as an impertinent nationalist, his thinking was consistently regional. As Henri Guaino, a close collaborator of President Nicolas Sarkozy, recently, De Gaulle “wanted sovereignty for France and independence for Europe.”

Guaino, and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin under President Jacques Chriac, are two prominent voices today who, not content to critique Macron’s bellicose foreign policy, argue strongly in favor of diplomacy rather than intransigent confrontation as the means of resolving conflict. Both invoke the Gaullist tradition.

De Gaulle left office in 1969 and died a year later. The irony of history is that today, six decades on, NATO is not only threatened existentially by its failure to master events in Ukraine but the almighty dollar also appears to be losing its exorbitant privilege as multiple forces line up to weaken its dominance.

No one can predict how the two current wars – in Ukraine and Gaza – will end or drag on. But the brightest minds understand that the Western “rules-based” and dollar-based order has lost a significant measure of its prestige. France’s politics, much like the US, have achieved a level of astoning incoherence. My prediction for France is that De Gaulle’s heritage will be felt again, not in a spirit of Make France Great Again, but by permitting to rethink France’s fundamental “existential” relationships across in Europe and elsewhere. An unpredictable multipolar world is emerging and France, but not Macron, will have something to contribute to it. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Replaying World War I, Macron Wants to Fight “Over There” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

France has long prided itself on its ����ï������é, a principle that seeks to keep religion separate from public life. Critics, however, note that the headscarf and abaya bans risk marginalizing religious minorities. ����ï������é, they argue, should be a curb on religious domination of the public sphere — not a curb on religious expression in public.

Political gridlock, social unrest: symptoms of a country in crisis

The abaya ban comes at a time of great turmoil in France. Since his reelection in April 2022, President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to deal with country-wide over the government’s decision in January 2023 to raise the country’s retirement age and in former French colonies such as Gabon and Niger that threaten to cut off France’s access to oil and other resources.

Anti-government sentiment also boiled over at the end of July in reaction to the police shooting of a 17-year-old Parisian of Moroccan and Algerian descent. Protests over the shooting led to of damage and over , mostly in suburbs populated by Muslim citizens from former French colonies. This was not the first time Macron had to deal with an Islam-related incident. In response to the 2020 of a teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class, Macron : “Islam is a religion that is experiencing a crisis across the world.” This attitude has been echoed in the president’s remarks about the abaya ban. Authorities tasked with enforcing the new law will be “uncompromising,” he , adding that teachers and school administrators will “not be left alone.”

FO° Exclusive: Make Sense of the Hellish Rioting in France

Political pressure might also be a factor in the timing of the crackdown on Islamic symbols in schools. At the end of August, Macron with leaders of France’s right-wing National Rally Party and the left-wing New Economic and Social People’s Union or NUPES coalition to try and break a stalemate in the National Assembly that is stalling the president’s legislative agenda. The abaya ban could be an attempt by the president to signal his capacity for change and concessions on right-leaning issues.

The decision has garnered support from right-wing conservatives, who typically remain distant from Macron’s liberal Renaissance party, but also from far-left socialist and communist parties, who have historically opposed the influence of religion, primarily Catholicism, in affairs of the state.

More moderate liberals are outraged by the abaya ban, arguing that an individual’s right to practice their religion freely is one of the bedrocks of a democratic society. Banning the abaya or other religious clothing sends a message that France is willing to compromise on individual freedom in the name of secularism and that certain cultural and religious practices are not welcome.

There are many Muslim women’s voices: Let’s listen to them

France is a nation known for its rich cultural diversity. Its strength lies in its ability to accommodate and celebrate diverse backgrounds. The Muslim community in France represents this diversity. Opinions on the headscarf and abaya vary, with some more secular Muslims adopting Western fashions. Other Muslim women choose to wear the headscarf and abaya as a matter of personal religious faith and identity. They consider them an important aspect of their relationship with Islam and a symbol of modesty and piety. Other Muslim women view religious clothing as a form of empowerment and a means to assert their identity in a society that frequently stigmatizes them. They argue that the ban on headscarves and abayas is an infringement on their right to practice their faith and cultural identity.

Opponents argue that religious clothing disrupts the educational process and promotes religious proselytism. They assert that it symbolizes the oppression of women and runs counter to the values of ����ï������é. French authorities have also expressed concerns that abayas and headscarves are barriers to assimilation into French society, potentially leading to social and cultural isolation.

Schools can provide a platform for students to learn about different cultures and religions, fostering an environment of mutual respect rather than exclusion. Education should remain at the forefront of this approach, as informed students are more likely to understand the importance of respecting diverse perspectives.

It is entirely possible for France to uphold the principle of secularism while respecting individual religious freedoms and cultural diversity. Rather than banning the abaya, the government should focus on educating and fostering tolerance among our students. The true strength of a secular society lies in its ability to embrace diversity, not stifle it. In doing so, the state can reaffirm the values of liberty, equality and fraternity that France holds dear.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The new defense alliance reflected the logic of the region, which included the majority of the world’s industrially developed nations, all in close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and north of the Tropic of Cancer. Collins dictionary defines the term “North Atlantic” as: “the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, esp the waters separating North America and Europe.”

By focusing on “defense” and its character as an “alliance,” NATO sought to create the perception that it existed as pure potency, rather than as an active force that would intervene militarily in geopolitics. At NATO’s core reigned the idea that peace and non-aggression were the norm. Security was the watchword. It was about potentially defending or protecting the peace within Europe. Because the contest turned into a race—the nuclear arms race—rather than a war, a peaceful consumer society could prosper and grow on both sides of the North Atlantic.

NATO became a logical necessity once the Cold War was officially announced, opposing capitalism and communism. Both sides had nuclear bombs. In Robert Oppenheimer’s borrowed words, both had “become death, a destroyer of worlds.” The entire drama was confined to the northern hemisphere, with the Soviet and American empires engaged in a permanent showdown, with Europe in the middle.  

Since those early days, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the very idea of NATO has undergone radical changes. Technically, there was no further reason for NATO to exist. The communist military menace had ended up in the dustbin of history. But not only did it continue to exist, it began expanding, much like La Fontaine’s frog that wished to be as big as an ox.

At this month’s NATO summit in Vilnius, the media noted that Japan and NATO appeared to agree on a new partnership program. To make it more concrete, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg proposed creating a NATO liaison office in Tokyo. Alas, France’s President Emmanuel Macron –  profiting from the rule that NATO decisions must be decided unanimously –  prevented that resolution from being passed.

Stoltenberg had the Tokyo liaison office proposal in an interview with CNN in May. On that occasion, he insisted that “Japan is a very close and important partner for NATO.” On NATO’s own, we can read today the assertion: “No partner is closer than Japan.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Close:

1. Near, in geographical terms
2. Emotionally connected
3. Ideologically formatted thanks to an asymmetric relationship in which a dominant power can dictate to subservient powers the policy orientation that undergirds its own value system and ensure the subordinates will serve its interests.

Contextual note

NATO’s Orwellian “Newspeak” retains only the third definition. After all, the distance between Tokyo and Brussels is exactly 9,442 km. The distance between Tokyo and Washington is 10,900 km, which is almost exactly halfway around the world at that latitude. So, the first definition has no meaning.

The second definition is about personal feelings. It could have meaning, but only if it were legitimate to draw conclusions about entire populations on the basis of what military and political strategists feel on both sides. Members of the political warrior class quite naturally sense some kind of universal bond when assuming there is a common enemy. But clearly neither Europeans, Japanese nor even the American people feel emotionally connected to Japan. 99.99% of the global population outside of Japan, even among those who admire Japanese culture, literally feels no emotional connection with the Japanese. The fact that the Japanese themselves have notoriously cultivated a “Gaijin complex” (distrust of foreigners) attests to this reality. 

Even while asserting a concordance of “values” between Tokyo and Brussels, Stoltenberg personally shows no evident capacity to identify with Japan’s hyper-collectivist culture, the contrary of Western individualism. In the NATO context, the dictionary’s second meaning of “close” makes no more sense than the first. In the annals of lexicography, our Devil’s Dictionary, therefore, stands as unique in providing an accurate description of Stoltenberg’s use of language. Close describes what is distant.

NATO expansion, the central fact that provoked the war in Ukraine, is one thing. But this kind of linguistic expansion— or rather inflation—is outdoing even La Fontaine’s frog. Should the world accept with a shrug that the North Atlantic now encompasses the South Pacific? We might rather be tempted to ask ourselves this question: Which nations in the world have direct access to both oceans? There are two: Canada and the US. In terms of power politics, Canada is a featherweight. But fragmented Europe, so distant from the Pacific, isn’t even part of the discussion. It should be clear by now that NATO is quite simply a tool of US foreign policy.

NATO’s obsession with the Pacific clearly means that the treaty organization is no longer about maintaining peace in Europe at all. Instead, it is about Washington’s plans for war with China. Beltway politicians, diplomats and media increasingly evoke this as the inevitable next step in geopolitical action. Macron alone seems to have that the motivating factor is not peace, but global conquest. Sensitive to the meaning of words, the French president argued: “Whatever people say, geography is stubborn.” He then added this truism: “The Indo-Pacific is not the North Atlantic, so we must not give the impression that NATO is somehow building legitimacy and a geographically established presence in other areas.”

Undaunted, Stoltenberg on July 12: “Security is not regional, it is global—so we are determined to continue deepening our cooperation.”

Put more bluntly, NATO has evolved from a tool designed to provide a soft landing after World War II into a willing initiator of World War III. Speaking with reporters at Vilnius, Stoltenberg called China a NATO “adversary,” and said, “China is increasingly challenging the rules-based international order, refusing to condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine, threatening Taiwan and carrying out a substantial military build-up.”

What Stolteberg failed to mention is that the Global South in its entirety is also challenging the rules-based international order, refusing to condemn Russia and demonstrating a studied indifference to the question of who owns and controls Taiwan. Moreover, most of the Global South recognizes that China has a long way to go to match the military build-up of NATO (i.e. the US military-industrial complex and its client states). Does that also make the Global South NATO’s enemy? Stoltenberg didn’t say.

Historical note

At this point in history, we can have some idea – however equivocal – of where NATO has been and what it still represents. After all, as an expanding alliance, at its base it still groups together in its core all the nations that, over the past 500 years, have practiced the most outrageous forms of colonialism on every continent. Their current wealth reflects that history. But things are rapidly changing. What gave some the impression of being a stabilizing factor in the past may prove to be the opposite in an evolving context.

After 1991, Cold War architect was not alone in observing that NATO had outlived its usefulness as defined by its initial mission. Created to respond to an atmosphere of Cold War paranoia focused on a rival economic system that could legitimately be suspected of seeking to spread its ideology across Europe and elsewhere in the world, the paranoia should have faded away. The rational leaders of the victorious capitalist West needed simply to redirect their attention towards constructing a new world order in conformity with Francis Fukyama’s blueprint for the “end of history.”

They chose a different path. In an article on The Tricontinental, Vijay Prashad traces the complex evolution of NATO since its beginnings. He highlights its permanent, though never publicly avowed ambition to stretch its influence well beyond the North Atlantic. He concludes by speculating that NATO’s ambition now has less and less to do with military prowess and security concerns than with the ambition of establishing its moral bullying power and incarnating its own rules-based order. “Slowly, NATO is positioning itself as a substitute for the U.N., suggesting that it—and not the actual international community—is the arbiter and guardian of the world’s ‘interests, security and values.’”

Amazingly, there are commentators among the former colonial powers who are still wondering why the nations of the Global South have not simply fallen into line. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Wants to Break Up Stoltenberg’s New Love Affair appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Race relations in French politics

The event has reignited concerns about police violence and systemic racism, with longstanding grievances from rights groups and residents of low-income, racially diverse suburbs. participated in peaceful marches and expressed widespread distrust of the police. Many could be heard chanting, “No justice, no peace!” Some of the protests turned violent as rioters clashed with law enforcement, set buildings and vehicles on fire, and looted stores. Many police officers were injured, and hundreds of people were arrested.

On the other side, groups such as the Marine Le Pen-led National Front (now called National Rally) have used the riots as an opportunity to their anti-immigration and nationalist agenda. They have portrayed the riots as evidence of the failure of multiculturalism and have called for stricter immigration policies to prevent the perceived threat to French culture and identity.

Relations between the police and young, working-class men from minority ethnic backgrounds were before the current protests, and campaigners are demanding answers regarding policing practices in France, particularly regarding the excessive use of force and racialized policing. Poor police-community relations, including instances of police harassment, racial profiling and excessive use of force, are significant contributing factors to tensions in the outlying neighborhoods known as banlieues. Perceived systemic bias and abuse by law enforcement have led to anger and resentment, which has manifested itself in protests.

Is the past repeating itself? A look at France’s 2005 riots

The riots and protests have now spread to various cities, including Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille as well as other parts of Paris. French President Emmanuel has so far ruled out declaring a state of emergency but condemned the violence. Macron held several to address the situation and to prevent a repeat of the 2005 riots that followed the deaths of two teenagers hiding from the police.

On November 8, 2005, shortly after the began, President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency that granted the authorities enhanced powers to enforce curfews and conduct arrests. The government deployed thousands of police and security forces to restore order, but its heavy-handed tactics and alleged police brutality further exacerbated tensions. The handling of the riots and the perceived lack of empathy from political leaders deepened the sense of mistrust and alienation among residents of the affected areas.

The events prompted a national conversation about integration, social cohesion and the need for greater investment in disadvantaged neighborhoods. In response to the riots, the government implemented several measures aimed at addressing the underlying issues including increased funding for urban renewal programs, job creation initiatives and efforts to improve police-community relations. The events also led to a reevaluation of French urban policy and a recognition of the need for greater inclusion and equal opportunities for residents of marginalized communities.

The long-term impact of the riots and the effectiveness of the government’s response remain subjects of debate. While some positive changes were implemented, socio-economic disparities and issues of discrimination persisted in certain neighborhoods. The 2005 riots also had political implications. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was Interior Minister at the time, decided to run for president, and a key plank in his platform was a to policing, which he called “culture du résultat.” This policy set “goals” for the number of arrests and detection rates and used statistics to measure effectiveness. The aggressive policing strategy helped Sarkozy win the presidency in 2007 and was kept in place even after Sarkozy lost his position in 2012.

Community policing

in France was first introduced as a strategy in the 1990s, aiming to enhance cooperation between the police and local communities to address crime and improve public safety. The policy was implemented by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who served as the Minister of the Interior from 1997 to 2000 under President Jacques Chirac. However, the experiment in community policing was soon deemed a failure. An increase in terrorist attacks, the politicization of security issues and new managerial thinking pushed community-oriented policing off the reform agenda, where it has largely remained. Instead, political leaders, like Sarkozy, used “tough on crime” rhetoric and proposed “law-and-order” measures to appeal to public sentiment and enhance their political standing. This approach tends to prioritize reactive and punitive measures rather than proactive community engagement.

France should reorient its approach towards community policing by implementing a range of essential measures. First and foremost, there is a pressing need to prioritize comprehensive training programs for law enforcement officers, emphasizing cultural sensitivity, implicit bias awareness, de-escalation techniques and conflict resolution. Simultaneously, robust accountability mechanisms must be established to address instances of misconduct, excessive use of force or discriminatory behavior within law enforcement agencies. Independent oversight bodies responsible for monitoring and ensuring police accountability ought to be established. These oversight mechanisms should have the authority and resources to investigate complaints, review police practices and make recommendations for improvement. Furthermore, fostering dialogue and consultation between the police and the public through dedicated platforms can play a pivotal role in building trust, addressing concerns and facilitating collaborative decision-making processes.

The recent surge of unrest underscores the urgent need for improved police-community relations while addressing systemic issues of racism. Implementing community policing, comprehensive officer training and accountability measures are vital steps to prevent further tensions and promote social cohesion.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“Chad, you surely remember that back in 2019 the Trump administration made the extraordinary decision that a man called Juan Guaidó, who had never been elected or even considered as a presidential candidate, should be recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Donald Trump justified this by claiming the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro was a dictator who had managed democracy in his favor. After his withdrawal from the Paris climate accords and the Iran deal, Trump had acquired a reputation for making peremptory foreign policy decisions. Astonishingly, the European Union despite having made known its discomfort with Trump’s policies and personality, followed suit, recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. Two years later, in January 2021, just before the end of Trump’s term, the EU quietly withdrew their recognition of Guaidó. How can we explain the Europeans’ willingness to do something so obviously arbitrary and undemocratic?”

Chad surprised me by immediately resorting to a familiar strategy designed to dismiss probing questions.

“It’s important to note that the issue of recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela is a complex and multi-faceted one, and opinions on this matter can vary.”

Usually Chad takes some time before reaching the conclusion that there are too many contradictory opinions to take any one of them seriously. This time I had to react.

“Stop, stop! Please, Chad. I understand. No need to continue. Once you’ve trotted out your patented ‘complex and multifaceted,’ there’s no reason to add any other arguments to it. Case closed.”

Chad paused, stared at me for a moment and then insisted on adding this reflection. “The decision by some European nations to recognize Juan Guaidó may have been influenced by pressure from the United States. Historically, the United States has had strong ties with Europe, and there may have been a desire to align with American policy, particularly under the Trump administration.”

The Trump factor

Now the alacrity of Europeans  to follow the Trump administration surprised me, so I followed up with this question. “Why would you think the Europeans are ‘particularly’ inclined to follow Trump’s lead? That sounds contradictory to me.”

Chad apologized for giving a wrong impression and clarified by asserting that “the United States has historically been an important ally and partner for many European nations, and there is often a desire to maintain a close relationship and align on key policy issues. Despite concerns and disagreements with certain aspects of the Trump administration’s policies, European nations generally value the transatlantic relationship and may have felt compelled to maintain some level of cooperation or alignment, including in matters related to Venezuela.”

Now we were making some progress. The real question concerns what kind of relationship is implied when one party fells “compelled” to fall in line with another party’s arbitrary policies. This evoked in my mind more recent events and shared my .thought with Chad.

“Would that justify French President Emmanuel Marcron’s recently expressed concern about European nations falling into the role of what he called vassals of the US on the Taiwan situation with China.”

“Yes,” Chad responded, “the concerns expressed by President Emmanuel Macron about European nations potentially becoming vassals of the United States are valid and reflect a broader discussion within Europe regarding strategic autonomy and the balance of power in international relations. Macron, along with other European leaders, has emphasized the need for Europe to assert its own interests and pursue a more independent foreign policy.

Chad then surprised me by another assertion. “European nations, including France, have expressed the view that they should maintain their own strategic interests and make decisions based on their own assessments of geopolitical risks and opportunities.”

“Wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “I admit that France has insisted on strategic autonomy at least since De Gaulle, and maybe Germany has at times shown tendencies in that direction. But I don’t see any other European countries taking that stance, especially now that they have aligned behind the US as the leader of NATO in confronting Russia, despite the damage not just to their sense of autonomy but also their economy. Germany in particular has abjectly accepted policieis and acts by the US that have had the effective of crippling its economy.”

NATO’s strategic ambiguity

Chad’s response was predictable.

“It is important to note that European countries also value the transatlantic relationship and recognize the benefits of cooperation with the United States, particularly within the NATO framework. NATO serves as a vital alliance for collective defense and has played a crucial role in deterring potential security threats, including from Russia.”

“As Trump himself pointed out,” I retorted, “Europeans have become complacent with a situation in which the US makes the essential investment in their defense. But that has impeded even the hope of autonomy. And now they are enduring the consequences of Washington’s aggressive policy aimed at weakening Russia. This has produced a profound feeling of malaise. Although, no one seems willing to rock the boat for the moment, the economic consequences will eventually take their toll on European solidarity. I know you don’t know the answer to this, but, given your understanding of past historical trends, at one point will either the governments change course or the people revolt? Or will they only change course if the people revolt?”

I knew Chad would both acknowledge my point and find a way of avoiding a direct answer.

“The economic consequences of certain policies or actions, as you mentioned, can certainly impact European solidarity and influence public sentiment. Economic factors have historically played a role in shaping political landscapes and driving changes in policies. However, it is important to remember that political decisions are multifaceted, and a range of factors, including geopolitical considerations and national interests, come into play.”

I should have known that this would lead to the inevitable “multifaceted” defense strategy. If there’s one thing Chad will always teach us, it’s that whenever are crucial decision needs to be made, those who see no interest in challenging the status quo will always have a sledge hammer response that is specifically intended to sound delicate and nuanced.

I couldn’t, however, disagree with Chad’s final conclusion.

“Ultimately, the future course of European governments and the responses of the people will depend on a complex interplay of political, economic, and social dynamics.”

It’s always about interplay, a concept far more interesting, dynamic and instructive than simply noticing that issues tend to be “complex and multifaceted.” The very idea of interplay contains the concept of play, which means that something will have to give and history will see an outcome. That outcome will produce another instance of interplay.

In other words, Francis Fukuyama was wrong. There is no end to history. The vassals can continue to hope they will one day be free.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51�Թ� recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: the Vassalization of Europe appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Shared with journalists on his flight back from China, Macron’s thoughts were focused not on Ukraine but on the hypothesis that the US might seek to use the issue of Taiwan’s status to engage NATO in a proxy war with China, following a pattern similar to Ukraine. Western media nearly unanimously upbraided Macron, if not for violating a sacred commitment or disrespect for the moral authority of NATO, at least for its inappropriate timing. Responsible people don’t make destabilizing statements like that in times of war, when everyone is expected to pitch in.

Clearly nobody wanted to hear, let alone analyze the significance of the point Macron seemed to be making. Taiwan is, after all, officially a province of China, though it has been permitted to function autonomously. Aware of the increasingly belligerent rhetoric in Washington, the French president feared that the US might be tempted to act in ways intended to provoke a military action by China. This would subsequently engage NATO and oblige France to follow. Macron saw that hypothesis as justifying a European declaration of independence from NATO.

I was curious how much Chad happened to know about this episode or the general question of how NATO’s solidarity plays out in cases of extreme confrontation.

“Reading between the lines,” I said, “especially given things he has said in the past indicating his lack of confidence in NATO, Macron appears ready to consider breaking with NATO over the Taiwan issue. In the context of NATO’s and France’s ongoing engagement in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russia, is there any legal justification for Macron’s position?”

Chad immediately clarified the legal context.

“NATO operates on the principle of collective defense, where an attack against one member is considered an attack against all members. This principle is enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that the members of NATO will assist any member that is the subject of an armed attack.

However, the decision to invoke Article 5 is a political one, and each member has the sovereign right to decide whether or not to participate in a particular military action. The decision to participate in military operations is based on national policies, and each country has the right to formulate and execute its foreign policy independently.

In the case of Ukraine, while it is not a member of NATO, the alliance has provided political and military support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. This support has included economic assistance, training and advice for Ukrainian armed forces, and sanctions against Russia. However, NATO has not invoked Article 5 in this conflict, as it is not an armed attack against a member state.

In the context of a hypothetical conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, it is unclear whether such a conflict would be considered an armed attack against a NATO member state. However, if France believed that its sovereignty was being violated by its presence in NATO and its obligation to participate in a particular military action, it may consider breaking with the alliance over that issue. Whether such a move would be legally justified would depend on the specific circumstances and the interpretation of the relevant international treaties and agreements.”

Chad’s answer was helpful. The question of mutual security commitments from so many nations with contrasting interests is by definition complex. There are no simple answers. Hoping to get some clarity, I continued with another question.

“Some analysts claim that what is clearly a proxy war in Ukraine is not about the defense of Ukraine as much as about preparing regime change in Russia. They suggest that the same logic is at play concerning Taiwan. It would mean using a bordering territory to destabilize a rival great power and eventually bring down the current regime. Does anything in the history of recent US foreign policy substantiate this interpretation?”

“It is true that the US has a history of involvement in regime change operations in other countries. Some notable examples include the 1953 coup in Iran, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and the 1973 coup in Chile. In more recent years, there have been accusations of US involvement in regime change attempts in countries such as Venezuela and Syria.

In the case of Ukraine, the US and its European allies have been supportive of Ukraine’s pro-Western government and have provided political and economic assistance in the face of Russian aggression. However, it is unclear to what extent this support is motivated by a desire to bring about regime change in Russia. While some analysts may hold this view, others may argue that the primary motivation is to counter Russian influence in the region and support Ukraine’s sovereignty.

With regards to Taiwan, the US has a long-standing policy of supporting Taiwan’s de facto independence from China, and has provided military and economic support to Taiwan for decades. However, the US has also pursued a policy of engagement with China, recognizing it as a rising global power and seeking to maintain a stable and constructive relationship. While there may be concerns about China’s behavior in the region and its potential threat to Taiwan, it is unclear to what extent the US would be willing to engage in a conflict with China over Taiwan, and whether regime change in China is a primary objective.”

Again, I appreciated Chad’s recognition of the complexity of the issues.

“You’re absolutely right to say that none of this is clear” I said approvingly. “The question on everyone’s mind today is what happens when the rhetoric gets so heated there is no way to back down. We are hearing more and more voices in politics and the media telling us that Americans should think of China as an enemy. In other words, Americans are being told they are at war with a nation that has a population four times greater than the US. We are also hearing members of Congress push for the independence of Taiwan, in violation of the accepted One China policy. And despite the fact that the Taiwanese people have consistently responded in surveys that they do not seek independence from China, but merely the autonomy of the current status quo. With a looming presidential election in the US, isn’t it likely or simply possible that if politicians and the media insist that China is the enemy, there is a real danger of direct confrontation? Couldn’t something similar to the Ukraine situation occur?”

“It is certainly a possibility that heated rhetoric and actions could lead to direct confrontation between the US and China. The current US-China relationship is complex, and tensions have risen in recent years over issues such as trade, human rights, and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. While some politicians and media outlets in the US have been increasingly vocal about China as an adversary, others have called for more constructive engagement and cooperation with China.”

“I take that point, but I’m really worried about what the effect of the presidential campaign over the next 18 months will have. I think even you, with your insistence on always seeing a balance between two opposing sides, have noticed that political rhetoric in the US is reaching dangerous levels and that the famous “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality might be leading us to a brink.”

Chad nodded sadly as I concluded, “No time for that today. Let’s pick up the discussion tomorrow.”

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51�Թ� recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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But let’s begin with another number entirely: 145,000 — as in, 145,000 uniformed soldiers striding down Washington’s . That’s the number of troops who marched down that very street in May 1865 after the United States defeated the Confederate States of America. Similar legions of rifle-toting troops did the after World War I ended with the defeat of Germany and its allies in 1918. And rolling through the urban canyons of ? That followed the triumph over the Axis in 1945. That’s what winning used to look like in America — star-spangled, soldier-clogged streets and victory parades.

Enthralled by a martial Bastille Day celebration while visiting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in July 2017, President Donald Trump called for just such a parade in Washington.  After its estimated cost reportedly ballooned from to as much as , the American Legion weighed in. That veterans association, which boasts , issued an August statement suggesting that the planned parade should be put on hold “until such time as we can celebrate victory in the War on Terrorism and bring our military home.” Soon after, the president that he had canceled the parade and blamed local Washington officials for driving up the costs (even though he was evidently never by the Pentagon on what its price tag might be).

The American Legion on the fiscal irresponsibility of Trump’s proposed march, but its postponement should have raised an even more significant question: What would “victory” in the war on terror even look like? What, in fact, constitutes an American military victory in the world today? Would it in any way resemble the end of the Civil War, or of the war to end all wars, or of the war that made that moniker obsolete? And here’s another question: Is victory a necessary prerequisite for a military parade?

The easiest of those questions to resolve is the last one and the American Legion should already know the answer. Members of that veterans group played key roles in a mammoth “” parade in New York City in 1967 and in a 1973 parade in that same city veterans of that war. Then, 10 years after the last US troops snuck out of South Vietnam — and scrambling aboard helicopters as Saigon fell — the Big Apple would host yet another parade honoring Vietnam veterans, reportedly the such celebration in the city’s history. So, quite obviously, winning a war isn’t a prerequisite for a winning parade.

And that’s only one of many lessons the disastrous American War in Vietnam still offers us. More salient perhaps are those that highlight the limits of military might and destructive force on this planet or that focus on the ability of North Vietnam, a “little fourth-rate” country — to quote Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor of that moment — to best a superpower that had previously (with much assistance) defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at the same time. The Vietnam War — and Kissinger — provide a useful lens through which to examine the remaining questions about victory and what it means today, but more on that later.

For the moment, just remember: 4,000,000,029,057, Vietnam War, Kissinger.

Peace in Our Time… or Some Time… or No Time

Now, let’s take a moment to consider the ur-conflict of the war on terror, Afghanistan, where the US began battling the Taliban in October 2001. America’s victory there came with lightning speed. The next year, announced that the group had been “defeated.” In 2004, the commander-in-chief reported that the Taliban was “.” Yet, somehow, they were. By 2011, General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in Afghanistan, that his troops had “reversed the momentum of the Taliban.” Two years later, then-commander General Joseph Dunford spoke of “the inevitability of our success” there.

Last August, President Trump unveiled his “Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia.” Its “core pillar” was “a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions”; in other words, the “arbitrary timetables” for withdrawal of the Obama years were out. “We will push onward to victory with power in our hearts,” President Trump decreed. “America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.”

The president also announced that he was putting that war squarely in the hands of the military. “Micromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles,” he announced. “They are won in the field drawing upon the judgment and expertise of wartime commanders and frontline soldiers acting in real time, with real authority, and with a clear mission to defeat the enemy.” The man given that authority was General John Nicholson who had, in fact, been running the American war there since 2016. The general was jubilant and within months agreed that the conflict had “” (something, by the way, that Obama-era Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta also — in 2012).

Today, almost 17 years after the war began, two years after Nicholson took the reins, one year after Trump articulated his new plan, victory in any traditional sense is nowhere in sight. Despite spending around $900 billion in Afghanistan, as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction earlier this year, “between 2001 and 2017, US government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed.” According to a July 30, 2018, report by that same inspector general, the Taliban was by then contesting control of or controlled about of that country, while Afghan government control and influence over districts had by about 16% since Nicholson’s predecessor, General John Campbell, was in command.

And that was before, last month, the Taliban launched a large-scale attack on a provincial capital, Ghazni, a strategically important city, and held it for five days, while control of much of the province itself. Finally driven from the city, the Taliban promptly overran a military base in Baghlan Province during its withdrawal. And that was just one day after taking another Afghan military base. In fact, for the previous two months, the had government checkpoints and outposts on a near-daily basis. And keep in mind that the Taliban is now only a fraction of the story. The US set out to defeat it and al-Qaeda in 2001. Today, Washington faces exponentially in Afghanistan — 21 in all, including an imported franchise from the Iraq War front, ISIS, that grew larger during Nicholson’s tenure.

Given this seemingly dismal state of affairs, you might wonder what happened to Nicholson. Was he cashiered? ? Quietly ushered out of Afghanistan in disgrace? Hardly. Like the 15 US commanders who preceded him, the four-star general simply rotated out and, at his final from the war zone late last month, was nothing if not upbeat.

“I believe the South Asia Strategy is the right approach. And now we see that approach delivering progress on reconciliation that we had not seen previously,” he announced. “We’ve also seen a clear progression in the Taliban’s public statements, from their 14 February letter to the American people to the recent Eid al-Adha message, where [Taliban leader] Emir Hibatullah acknowledged for the first time that negotiations will, quote, ‘ensure an end to the war,’ end quote.”

In the event that you missed those statements from a chastened Taliban on the threshold of begging for peace, let me quote from the opening of , issued late last month:

“This year Eid­ al­-Adha approaches us as our Jihadi struggle against the American occupation is on the threshold of victory due to the help of Allah Almighty. The infidel invading forces have lost all will of combat, their strategy has failed, advanced technology and military equipment rendered useless, [the] sedition and corruption­-sowing group defeated, and the arrogant American generals have been compelled to bow to the Jihadic greatness of the Afghan nation.”

And those conciliatory statements of peace and reconciliation touted by Nicholson? The Taliban says that in order to end “this long war” the “lone option is to end the occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more.”

In June, the American nominated to take command of the war, Lieutenant General Scott Miller, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee where Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled him on what he would do differently in order to bring the conflict to a conclusion. “I cannot guarantee you a timeline or an end date,” was Miller’s confident .

Did the senators then send him packing? Hardly. He was, in fact, easily confirmed and starts work this month. Nor is there any chance Congress will use its power of the purse to end the war. The 2019 budget request for US operations in Afghanistan — topping out at — will certainly be approved.

#Winning

All of this seeming futility brings us back to the Vietnam War, Kissinger, and that magic number, 4,000,000,029,057 — as well as the question of what an American military victory would look like today. It might surprise you, but it turns out that winning wars is still possible and, perhaps even more surprising, the US military seems to be doing just that.

Let me explain.

In Vietnam, that military aimed to “.” It never did and the United States suffered a crushing defeat. Henry Kissinger — who presided over the last years of that conflict as national security advisor and then secretary of state — provided his own on one of the core tenets of asymmetric warfare: “The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” Perhaps because that eternally well-regarded but hapless statesman articulated it, that formula was bound — like else he — to .

In this century, the United States has found a way to turn Kissinger’s martial maxim on its head and so rewrite the axioms of armed conflict. This redefinition can be proved by a simple equation:

0 + 1,000,000,000,000 + 17 +17 + 23,744 + 3,000,000,000,000 + 5 + 5,200 + 74 = 4,000,000,029,057

Expressed differently, the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17 years in Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 “” (the most ever recorded) in 2017 alone; has spent around $3 trillion, primarily on that war and the rest of the war on terror, including the ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld , in 2002, would be over in only “five days or five weeks or five months,” but where approximately remain today; and yet 74% of the American people still express in the US military.

Let the math and the implications wash over you for a moment. Such a calculus definitively disproves the notion that “the conventional army loses if it does not win.” It also helps answer the question of victory in the war on terror. It turns out that the US military, whose budget and influence in Washington have only grown in these years, now wins simply by not losing — a multi-trillion-dollar conventional army held to the standards of success once applied only to under-armed, under-funded guerilla groups.

Unlike in the Vietnam War years, three presidents and the Pentagon, unbothered by fiscal constraints, substantive congressional opposition, or a significant antiwar movement, have been effectively pursuing this strategy, which requires nothing more than a steady supply of troops, contractors, and other assorted camp followers; an endless parade of Senate-sanctioned commanders; and an annual outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars. By these standards, Donald Trump’s open-ended, timetable-free “Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia” may prove to be the winningest war plan ever. As he described it:

“From now on, victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.”

Think about that for a moment. Victory’s definition begins with “attacking our enemies” and ends with the prevention of possible terror attacks. Let me reiterate: “victory” is defined as “attacking our enemies.” Under President Trump’s strategy, it seems, every time the US bombs or shells or shoots at a member of one of those 20-plus terror groups in Afghanistan, the US is winning or, perhaps, has won. And this strategy is not specifically Afghan-centric. It can easily be applied to American warzones in the Middle East and Africa — anywhere, really.

Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the US military has finally solved the conundrum of how to “out-guerrilla the guerrilla.” And it couldn’t have been simpler. You just adopt the same definition of victory. As a result, a conventional army — at least the US military — now loses only if it stops fighting. So long as unaccountable commanders wage benchmark-free wars without congressional constraint, the United States simply cannot lose. You can’t argue with the math. Call it the rule of 4,000,000,029,057.

That calculus and that sum also prove, quite clearly, that America’s beleaguered commander-in-chief has gotten a raw deal on his victory parade. With apologies to the American Legion, the US military is now — under the new rules of warfare — triumphant and deserves the type of celebration proposed by President Trump. After almost two decades of warfare, the armed forces have lowered the bar for victory to the level of their enemy, the Taliban. What was once the mark of failure for a conventional army is now the benchmark for success. It’s a remarkable feat and deserving, at the very least, of furious flag-waving, , and all the age-old trappings of victory. [first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Apart from Macron’s supporters, the commentators across the political chessboard saw the blowout more like a stalemate than a checkmate. The left had been divided during the first round. It now appears ready to at least consider uniting its disparate forces for June’s two rounds of legislative elections, which everyone on the left is now calling the “third round” of the presidential election. 

The defeated Marine Le Pen put forth a similar message, hinting that her relative “success,” which marked a significant improvement on 2017 (over 41%, up from 34%) opened the possibility of leading a populist movement that she hopes will attract voters from the left as well. Éric Zemmour, the other far-right candidate, a dyed-in-the-wool xenophobe, who at one point appeared to challenge Le Pen’s hold on the rightwing fringe, evoked his ambition for a purely nationalist and basically racist coalition that would avoid the indignity of reaching out to the left.

The buzzword of the evening was nevertheless the idea of a “third round,” in which an adversary might deliver Macron a knockout punch. The Macronists immediately mocked such talk as a denial of democracy, in the minutes following the president’s resounding majority. But as the various interested parties on all sides invited by the television channel France 2 developed their analysis, a consensus emerged that all was not well in the realm of Macronia.

The demise of France’s traditional parties

On the positive side for Macron’s faithful or at least for his political marketers, the traditional parties on the left and right had been humiliated once again. It was even more brutal this time around than in 2017, when Macron first swept through the miraculous gap in the political Red Sea to reach the promised land without even having to dawdle in the desert. The ��é��ܲ�������������s and Socialists, once the valiant wielders of the scepter of power, are clearly left with little to hope for other than possibly being invited, as individuals, into the new government Macron will be appointing this week to demonstrate his willingness to construct a new alliance. But looming beyond the now concluded five-year compromise Macron engineered and rather ineptly managed during his first term, is the vision of a France now divided into largely incoherent blocs defined less by political vision than by exasperation with all the traditional solutions, left, right and center.

A Fifth Act for the Fifth Republic

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Le Pen and Zemmour have demonstrated that there exists a substantial pool of voters not averse to xenophobic reasoning. But those same voters tend to hail from the working class or the rural lower middle classes. They voted for Le Pen less out of the conviction that she would be a good leader than to protest against the political and financial elite that Macron represents in their eyes. Half a century ago, most of Le Pen’s voters were faithful to the Communist Party.

If the former communist bloc of voters gradually drifted away from a Mitterand-led governing Socialist coalition to align behind the far-right Front National, embodied by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Socialists settled on their own rightward drift. They leaned increasingly towards the center, much as the Clinton Democrats had done in the US. That left a gaping hole on the left, which no political personality had the force or the name recognition to fill. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former minister, finally stepped into the role, seeking to counter the trend towards the technocratic center, a political position that appeared to suit the culture and mood of the post-Mitterand generation of Socialists.

Ever since declaring independence from the party in 2009, Mélenchon has been vilified by his Socialist brethren for the crime of contesting its visibly centrist and increasingly corporate elitist drift. This was the same party, led by then president François Hollande, that named the youthful former banker Macron minister of the economy. 

Mélenchon’s persistence during Hollande’s presidency as a provocative progressive, contesting his former party’s orthodoxy, already positioned him in 2017 as the most distinctive, if not necessarily most attractive personality on the left.  Thanks to his more than respectable third-place showing in the first round two weeks ago, he has emerged as the eventual “spiritual” leader of a newly unified left that could bring together the now marginal Communist Party (with just 2.5% of the vote), the Ecologists and even the Socialists, though they remain reticent to acknowledge Mélenchon’s ascent.

Can the left overcome its divisions?

Unlike the famous that formally allied the Socialists, Communists and the center-left Radicaux de Gauche and brought François Mitterand to power in the 1981 presidential election, Mélenchon has nothing concrete to build on other than exasperation of all the other parties with Macron. Preceding the second round, the head of La France Insoumise (“France unbowed”) cleverly honed his rhetoric to aim at being “elected” prime minister in June, even though he knows full well that the prime minister is appointed by the president, not elected by the people. It is his way of both highlighting the incoherence of the Fifth Republic’s electoral system, while at the same time offering Macron the opportunity to run an experiment in government that would mirror the history of the past five years. During Macron’s first term, an officially centrist president consistently appointed prime ministers from the traditional right, betraying the hopes of some on the left for more balance. Mélenchon is proposing a similar solution, but this time pointing left.

The timing of this strategy couldn’t be better. According to an IPSOS of French voters, “57% want to see the main left-wing parties form an alliance and present common candidates in the constituencies.” Importantly, 56% of those polled have stated they do not wish to see Macron obtain a majority, which means they hope to see another “cohabitation” in which the president shares power with an opposition party in parliament. Only 35% of French voters, 6% fewer than voted for Le Pen, would support a coalition of the two extreme rightwing parties, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Zemmour’s ��𳦴DzԱ��ê�ٱ�. Voters who support the traditional right are split between seeking an alliance with the extreme right (22%) or with Macron’s République En Marche (25%). An overwhelming 53% of ��é��ܲ������������� voters eschew the idea of an alliance with either.

What this means is that the next few weeks will be very interesting to watch. Can the man accused of being “the president of the rich” lead a government focused on the policies of the left? Or does he have the wherewithal and the political talent to confront what may become a populist uprising that draws energy from both the left and the right?

Macron, the revolutionary?

Two years ago when the COVID-19 outbreak forced the French government to take action, I noted in these columns that “French President Emmanuel Macron, of all people, seems to detect the beginning of a calling into question of the entire consumerist free market system, without giving much of a sense of what might replace it.” Perhaps he is ready to take seriously his own two-year old epiphany by appealing to the insights of a coalition on the left led by a prime minister named Mélenchon. After all, this time around, Macron has nothing to lose, since he cannot seek a third term. He might see this as his last chance to recover from the massive unpopularity that threatened his reelection and was saved only by his deft maneuvering aimed at ensuring that Marine Le Pen would be his hapless rival in the second round.

The World This Week: Another French Revolution

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More likely, Macron will try in the coming weeks to assemble a range of individuals from different sides, with variable symbolic value. He presumably hopes that this will persuade people of his capacity to assemble his own coherent majority. Macron’s attempt is highly unlikely to succeed and is likely to suffer a worse fate than his previous right-leaning, improvised coalitions.

Macron’s real achievement is to have violated, not once but twice, the entire logic of the Fifth Republic that since its Gaullist beginnings always supposed the president would be the leader of a powerful governing party. In his first five-year stint he profited from the mental confusion in French electors’ heads, trying to understand the vacuum that had suddenly appeared, as he cobbled together what could only be seen as a temporary and to a large degree illusory solution. The confusion quickly provoked the Yellow Vest movement that called the entire montage into question. The unexpected arrival of a pandemic and a lockdown took the protesters off the street and put Macron back in the driver’s seat. A temporary situation was thus prolonged but its fragility has become even more evident than before.

So now the French nation confronts a moment of truth, when the nature of its institutions must be given a makeover. Not because it would improve their look, but because they are on the verge of a permanent crisis. It seems unlikely that some simple solution will appear or that Macron can convince the people to continue to trust him to make, Jupiter-like, all the right decisions that might guide the nation through the troubles that lie ahead. 

In his victory speech, Macron said absolutely nothing of substance. He congratulated and thanked his supporters for the victory and announced all the good things he is in favor of, promising, as expected, to respond to the needs and desires of “all” the people. On the same evening, violent broke out in Paris, Nantes, Lyon and Marseille, with spontaneous crowds contesting the election. The protesters from the right, upset by Le Pen’s failed bid, were joined by others from the left, who shouted slogans such as: “Macron, Le Pen, one solution: revolution.” Others shouted: “No fascists in our neighborhoods” and “Macron resign.”

Unlike the “Stop the steal” protests in the US following Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, the French do not complain that the election was rigged, nor do they wish to see its results overturned. They are unhappy with a system that fails to represent their interests or needs. Having already effectively rejected the traditional parties and practically erased them from the electoral map, they are now focused on calling into question the curious political anomaly that Emmanuel Macron embodies in their eyes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Won But the Election Isn’t Over appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The second surprise was the strong showing of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a non-establishment leftist, who, it now transpires, would have overtaken Le Pen had any of the other candidates dropped out to line up behind him. It’s a moral victory of sorts for voters on the left, who have now been excluded from the final round of the two most recent presidential elections. The compensation is that, with legislative elections looming in the immediate aftermath of the April 24^th presidential face-off, it will inevitably lead to some kind of intriguing regrouping or redefinition.

In its reporting on the election, The New York Times focused on the one issue that is of most interest to its American readers: the impact on what it calls the “Western unity” US President Joe Biden has so solidly engineered in his response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Times foreign editor, Roger Cohen the fear that, “in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory” France will become “anti-NATO and more pro-Russia.” He adds that this “would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” In other words, make no mistake about it, The New York Times is rooting for Macron.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Anti-NATO:

Opposed to the ideal the United States government imagines for Europe, defining it as a continent composed of free, enlightened democracies irremediably dependent — both economically and militarily — on the benevolent leadership of a powerful American Deep State and the sincere brotherly love offered by the American military-industrial complex.

Contextual note

The Times may have reason to worry. While the odds still favor Macron, Le Pen could possibly duplicate Donald Trump’s incredible overcoming of the odds in 2016 when he won the US presidency, and largely for the same reasons. Macron has been a contested leader, branded by opponents on the left and right as the “president of the rich.” Hillary Clinton similarly suffered from her image of being a tool of her Wall Street donors. There comes a point in every nation’s life when the people seem ready to take a chance with what appears to reasonable people as a bad bet.

Perhaps that time has come for France. Its electors exercised what they call “republican discipline” against far-right politicians when Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. He harvested 82% of the vote to Le Pen’s 18%. In 2017, though Macron was still an unknown entity with no serious support from either of the major political groupings, the young man easily defeated the far-right candidate with 64% of the vote to Le Pen’s 36%.

Prognosticating statisticians might simply follow the curve and assume that the downward slope will lead this time to a 50-50 election. They may be right. But the reason lies less in an arithmetical trend than in the growth of a largely non-partisan populist revolt directed against what is perceived to be an occult power establishment comprised of powerful industrialists, bankers, unrepresentative parties, corrupt politicians and a political class marked by an attitude of subservience to the American empire. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, has himself tried to burnish his image as a neutral, pan-European visionary who seeks to break free from the chokehold held by the power brokers of Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia and Wall Street. His attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin before and after the Russian invasion were undoubtedly designed to bolster that image.

The explanation everyone likes to give for Marine Le Pen’s success in distancing her rivals – including fellow xenophobe, Eric Zemmour – is her focus on inflation. James Carville may be applauding from afar. It is, after all “the , stupid.” The issue has been there throughout Macron’s term. It was the COVID lockdown and not Macron’s policies that cut short the dramatic “yellow vest” movement that was still smoldering when the pandemic struck. The French have not forgotten their own need for economic survival while living in a society in which the rich keep getting richer. Voters remember Macron’s joyous elimination of the wealth tax and the alacrity with which he announced higher gas taxes would fill the gap.

A musician I work with regularly told me recently: “I’m not voting in the first round, but I’ll vote against Macron in the second round.” In other words, of the possible rivals in the second round – Le Pen (far right), Mélenchon (progressive left), some even predicted Valérie Pécresse (right) – he would have voted for any one of them, just to eliminate Macron. I don’t believe he’s a racist, but he is now ready to be voting for a woman who has put xenophobia at the core of her political program.

Historical note

If we tally up the scores of the candidates who are clearly anti-NATO — without including Macron who keeps his distance but adheres to the US alliance in the current campaign against Russia — the total climbs towards 60%. Historically, France is the only European country to have declared independence from NATO, when De Gaulle withdrew from NATO’s military structure and banished all NATO installations from the nation’s territory in 1966.

Roger Cohen’s and The Times’ concern may be justified, even if Macron wins the election. Even more so if the results are close. Very few commentators, even here in France, have begun trying to tease out what’s likely to emerge from June’s legislative elections. With the two traditional establishment parties on the ropes and utterly leaderless, is there any chance that a reassuringly “coherent order” dear to establishment politicians might reappear? Even if Macron wins, he never really managed to assemble a stable majority in his first term. The real questions now are these: among the defeated, who will talk to whom? And who will even grudgingly accept to defer to whose leadership? If Le Pen wins, it is unlikely she will be able to muster anything resembling a loyal majority. It is often said that “the French voters’ heart is on the left, but their vote is on the right.” With a president so far to the right, the voters won’t deliver a presidential majority in parliament, as they have so often done in the past.

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Like the US and the UK, France’s democratic institutions have become profoundly dysfunctional. In no way does the political class even attempt to implement the “will of the people.” The globalized economy, with its arcane networks of power, had already diminished the meaning of democracy. The US is now consciously splitting in two that same globalized economy through its campaign of sanctions against Russia, possibly as a broader strategic move designed to create a degree of chaos that will ultimately embarrass its real enemy, China.

That radical split points in one direction: militarizing even further an economy already dominated by military technology. And as we have seen, a militarized economy means an increasingly militarized society, in which surveillance, propaganda, control and enforced conformity in the name of security cancel any appeal not just to the will, but even to the needs of the people.

It is a real pity that Jean-Luc Mélenchon didn’t make it to the second round, if only to enrich a largely impoverished debate. Independently of any of his political orientations concerning the economy or foreign policy, the leader of his party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), was already insisting in the previous election five years ago that the nation needed to replace with a 6^th Republic an out-of-date 5^th Republic created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Mélenchon’s idea of a 6^th Republic contained less presidential power and weaker parties, meaning better access for the people.

A lot of water has flowed under the Pont Neuf since 1958, and neither of the candidates appears interested in reducing presidential powers. But the result of this election demonstrates clearly that both presidential power and the ability of parties to give direction to the politics of the nation have become non-existent as tools of democratic government. The results show that they have reached a point of no return. No one should be surprised to see —  at some point in time after the legislative elections —  France being rocked by a constitutional crisis on the scale of the one Pakistan lived through this past week. At which point, a 6^th Republic may emerge from the ashes, Phoenix-like, but with more than a few burnt feathers.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Democracy and France’s Theater of the Absurd appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 4: Tragic

Even though he hesitated until the last minute to make it official on Thursday, everyone in France knew that their president, Emmanuel Macron, would be up for reelection in a contest whose first round will take place on April 10, followed by the second-round runoff on April 24.

The strategic delay in his decision-making has been officially explained by the combination of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the much more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dossier for which Macron has been very active in recent months. The race is very difficult to call given the range of opponents, but Macron is favored to win the first round. Though it’s anyone’s guess how the second round may play out or even who the opposing candidate is likely to be.

How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future?

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With the Ukraine crisis dominating the headlines, Macron stepped up this week, almost at the same time as US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, to give a rousing speech with a similar theme, insisting on solidarity with the Ukrainians and the defense of democracy. But unlike his American counterpart, whose speech read like a celebration of his administration’s and his nation’s moral commitment to the Ukrainian cause, Macron went a bit further, invoking the “tragic” dimension of the current situation with these : “To this brutal return of tragedy in history, we owe it to ourselves to respond with historic decisions.” He added the idea that “Europe has entered a new era” and hinted that it would be an era defined in terms of “energy independence” and “European defense.”  

Macron’s vision of a different future may be interpreted more as a campaign promise than a realistic forecast of how European identity will evolve in the future. But it is a theme that Macron has heavily invested in, an idea he has been promoting for a long time. Despite past failure to move the needle, he may be onto something this time concerning the future of ���ܰ��DZ��’s security policies, which are as much under attack as Kyiv itself.

The crisis in Ukraine reveals not only the threat Russia potentially represents for some European nations, but also the risk associated with ���ܰ��DZ��’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas. Even more significantly — though discussion of this topic must wait for some sort of resolution to the Ukrainian drama — the crisis has revealed the troubling degree to which European countries have become the hostages of the monster known as NATO.

The calling into question of NATO may sound paradoxical at the very moment when every country in the prosperous West has expressed its heartfelt solidarity with Ukraine and its bitter condemnation of Russia’s invasion. Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the “unification” of Europe in opposition to Russia and see this as a prelude to the reinforcement of NATO. That is possible, but at this early stage in the conflict, it sounds like a hasty conclusion.

Macron is hinting at a world beyond NATO. He is certainly right to assume that he isn’t the only European leader who, without complaining too loudly, is privately assessing Washington’s responsibility in the conflict. After all, the US is the nation that, despite France and Germany’s resistance, drew the red line defending the iron-clad principle of Ukraine’s inalienable right to join NATO.  

Macron’s position should help his chances in the coming election. He cannot be accused of electoral opportunism as he has proved himself consistent and sincere in his mission to redefine ���ܰ��DZ��’s security in European rather than North Atlantic terms. It hasn’t worked yet despite his and, to some extent, Germany’s previous efforts, but that predictable disappointment occurred before the tragedy that is now engulfing Europe. When the dust settles on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, all Europeans (and maybe even the UK’s Boris Johnson) will begin parsing the complex lessons produced by a terribly mismanaged fiasco that is still ongoing and shows some signs of possibly leading to a nuclear conflagration.

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For the moment, the Americans have presented the Russian assault as a combat between good and evil. Europe and its media have, in their very real but to some extent staged outrage, followed suit. But at some point in the near future, Europeans will sit down and attempt to assess not just the winners and losers as the US tends to do, but the volume of evil that is attributable to both sides. European cultures tend to be far less binary and Manichean than US culture, which has demonstrated in this crisis its inimitable capacity to discard the kind of nuance that can, at least on some occasions, actually prevent or at least forestall tragedy.

The idea of tragedy, understood to be a noble art form, is taken seriously in France, a nation that produced two famous authors of tragedy, Corneille and Racine. Apart from a brief episode in the 18^th century (partly due to jealousy), France has always admired Shakespeare and Schiller. The French know that authentic tragedy is never about the battle between good and evil. The literary genre that exploits that kind of binary logic is called melodrama. Tragedy always contains something corresponding to Aristotle’s intuition of its being built around the notion of a tragic flaw.

In his analysis of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle attributed the flaw to the tragic hero, seen as admirable and good, but affected by something that undermines his good fortune. But the flaw may also exist in the system and its rules, in the government or the culture of the play, in the environment in which tragic heroes and heroines are permitted to act. As one famous tragic hero noted, there may be “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” something that to which the tragedy itself is drawing the audience’s attention.

When he characterizes the Ukraine conflict as a tragedy, Emmanuel Macron, like other Europeans familiar with the history of the past century, is thinking not so much of the literary tradition as the devastating wars that have taken place on the continent’s soil. This is a privilege not equally available to Americans, whose only lasting memory of war on their own soil is that of a civil war that happened over 150 years ago.

The idea of history Americans learn at school and through the media, even in the case of their own civil war, is always about a struggle between good and evil. Slavery defined the South as evil, despite the fact that Southerners were true Americans. Because all conflicts are framed as a combat between good and evil, Americans are encouraged to think of their nation as a “force for good.” America is exceptional and has been called the “indispensable nation.” Many attribute to the French leader Charles de Gaulle the reflection that “the graveyard is full of indispensable people.” History too is full of indispensable nations and even empires.

Today, everyone in Europe perceives the Ukraine situation as a worrying tragedy that is still building toward its most destructive climax. But for Macron, whose reelection is far from assured within the chaotic political environment that currently reigns in France, it may turn out to be a serendipitous tragedy. It may turn out to be the moment of enlightenment in which his dream of a Europe no longer tethered to the United States may define and implement its own security system. As he begins to hone his official reelection campaign, Macron can pursue that goal and, at the same time, hope that it will convince his electors that he’s the one who can carry it out. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The price tag of €17 billion ($19.1 billion) means that Dassault Aviation, which exists to supply France itself, has for the first time sold more equipment to six foreign countries than to the French armed forces. Macron may think of it as an act designed to spread the lethal wealth, making the world a more equitable place — at least as far as lethality is concerned.

The New York Times Manages the Unknown

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Some human rights organizations in France that have taken the time over the past six years to notice what Mohammed bin Salman was up to in his chosen approach to the use of lethal weapons (which include bone saws for use in Saudi consulates) dared to criticize the encounter. Unfazed by the reproach, Macron had the perfect , quoted by Le Monde: “What’s good for French women and men, I will ardently defend.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

What’s good (for):

Anything that produces cash, whether in moral terms it serves the cause of good or evil or just the multiplication of consumer goods.

Contextual Note

Anything Macron ardently defends is by definition part of France’s defense policy. In the land of “�����������é, é����������é, �ڰ����ٱ���Ծ���é,” the “liberty” of French women and men to earn their salaries by producing lethal weapons is fundamental. It sustains the liberty of their bosses and politicians — skilled at what could be called diplomatic marketing — to sell those weapons to despotic regimes across the globe. This, in turn, promotes the “equality” (of class) and the “fraternity” (of culture) shared by wealthy business leaders, successful French politicians, bankers and foreign despots. As Voltaire’s Pangloss would say, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Unlike US President Joe Biden, who, bullied by moralists at home, refuses to talk to the Saudi crown prince, treating him as an international pariah, Macron has earned Mohammed bin Salman’s undying respect. And he has done so in the name of what’s good for the French people. He is of course riffing on the, “what’s good for General Motors is good for the United States,” but he has the good sense to associate it with democracy rather than the corporate oligarchy Americans have adopted as their form of democracy. The US is, after all, the land in which “.”

Le Monde appears to accept as a fatality Macron’s logic that focuses on “jobs created in France by this unprecedented purchase order.” By the same token, when Adolf Hitler took the unprecedented initiative of launching Auschwitz or George W. Bush building the Guantanamo prison, they were creating jobs.

Neither does the French journal critique Macron’s claim that it is all about their common commitment to fight terrorism, a pretext that over the past two decades has served to legitimatize ever brutally authoritarian policy of both liberal democracies and the world’s worst tyrants. The fact that Saudi Arabia has consistently encouraged terrorism and appears, at some level, to have facilitated the 9/11 attacks, doesn’t seem to bother Macron. After all, tyrants with stable governments have the same need as liberal democracies to ensure their security against malcontents tempted by terrorism.

Macron has another argument to explain his intent to develop good relations with Mohammed bin Salman, when he claims that “one might decide, following the Khashoggi affair, not to have any policy in the region … but I believe that France has a role to play. It doesn’t mean we’re complacent or that we are willing to forget. It means we must be a demanding partner, but we must keep the dialogue open and remain engaged.” What France is “demanding” can be measured in billions of euros.

Just to bring home the point that cynicism trumps moral scruples, Macron insists that the current standoff between Mohammed bin Salman and Joe Biden could be “good for” France (creating “favorable opportunities”). If the Biden administration finds itself obliged to demonstrate a new-found sense of moral sensibility after four years of Donald Trump’s brazenly naked cynicism, that provides a pragmatically cynical European country with a significant occasion to exploit.

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In the article, Philippe Ricard, Le Monde’s correspondent in Dubai, allows himself a touch of irony aimed at deflating Macron’s pretentions. He cites Macron’s own lame attempt at self-serving irony as he asserts, “Saudi Arabia organized the G20 over a year ago and I haven’t noticed that many powers have boycotted the G20.” Seizing the opportunity, Ricard comments, “Mr. Macron failed to specify that the meeting, in November 2020, was held by video conference, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In fairness to Le Monde, by quoting Macron’s shoddy justifications for his good relations with totalitarian regimes without reframing them, Ricard knows that most of the paper’s relatively sophisticated French readers will understand the hypocrisy. The typical Le Monde reader gets the message. Unlike most Americans, the French have been trained not to take most political discourse at face value. Politics is never about sincere expression. This capacity to deconstruct political discourse may be the last remnant of the ancient European educational tradition, where the study of rhetoric was a major component of the liberal arts curriculum.

Historical Note

Emmanuel Macron typically used one other somewhat more substantial rhetorical tool to justify his rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. He insisted on pleading on behalf of Lebanon, a nation suffering from a deepening crisis, literally a failed state, thanks in part to the refusal of Mohammed bin Salman to assist a fellow Arab nation that has impertinently failed to follow his orders on multiple occasions and, more recently, openly criticized the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Macron is cleverly using the historical relationship between France and Lebanon, despite its admitted ambiguity, to affirm a moral position aimed at humanitarian assistance.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, as the West set about divvying up the spoils, Lebanon became effectively a French protectorate. Now, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and his conscious distancing himself from Mohammed bin Salman, Macron sees an opportunity for France and perhaps Europe to assume a more proactive role in a Middle East that is no longer as clearly attached to the American empire.

Mandated by the League of Nations following World War I, according to the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, France assumed control of what was then the region of Syria. France immediately sought to separate Lebanon from Syria to ensure the existence of a state with a Christian (Maronite) majority. This led to friction in the following decades but turned the newly created state of Lebanon into a zone known for its diversity and tolerance and its strong ties to France. All that changed, of course, after the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine (formerly controlled by the British), especially after the fiasco of the Suez crisis in 1956 that resulted in a major humiliation for France and the UK, while opening the door to mounting US influence in the region.

Al Jazeera Macron as asserting that France and Saudi Arabia together “want to commit ourselves to supporting the Lebanese people and therefore do everything possible to ensure that trade and economic reopening can take place.” The article concludes that “there’s no doubt that a new page has been opened in the relationship between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.”

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr notes that Macron’s initiative “will help revive brotherly relations.” There may be neither liberty, nor equality in Saudi Arabia, but Macron apparently has done something to promote fraternity in Lebanon, a country that was once known for that virtue. This could prove to be a minor moment in what is turning out to be a series of acts that signal a major historical shift in the region. In the absence of the US as the indefectible ally of Saudi Arabia, Sunnis and Shias may begin seeking to rediscover their own sense of fraternity.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Promotes Fraternity in the Middle East appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Macron’s Campaign to Reveal France’s Historical Sins

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Out of frustration with Algeria’s lack of cooperation in repatriating its citizens illegally residing in France, Macron’s government decided to reduce the number of authorized visas for Algeria and Morocco by 50% and Tunisia by 30%. To justify this move, Macron accused the Algerian government of mental games. As by Le Monde, “Macron considers that since its independence in 1962, Algeria has based its development on a ‘memorial rent’ fostered by its politico-military system.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Memorial rent:

The only possible English equivalent of an untranslatable term invented by the French historian Benjamin Stora and hijacked by Emmanuel Macron, who believes that his 2017 election as president of the republic made him the nation’s and the world’s historian-in-chief

Contextual Note

In July 2020, seeking to resolve the conundrum of tense French-Algerian relations, Emmanuel Macron commissioned historian Benjamin Stora to prepare a report on “the memories of colonization and the Algerian war.”

In January, Stora delivered his copy. Eschewing the interpretation of specific events and facts, which will always remain controversial and painful to consider, the historian chose to focus on the cultural and psychological effects left by the memory of those events on both sides of the Mediterranean. Those whose lives were affected by the long war of independence, according to Stora, have remained constrained within a permanent state of mutual misunderstanding. 

Stora proposed the metaphor of “memorial rent” to characterize how the different groups have mobilized a set of recriminations concerning the injustice done to them in the past. They cite this as the psychological “rent” due to them by their adversaries. 

On the French side, there are those who can be either nostalgic or ashamed of their colonial adventure and France’s self-proclaimed . This includes officials and soldiers, but also the Harkis — Algerian Muslims who fought alongside the French army — and the pieds-noirs or the Europeans settled in Algeria but repatriated after the war.

On the Algerian side, there are those who identified with the struggle for independence as a political cause and a less politically motivated majority, who appreciated independence without actively embracing the cause. Many Algerians were alienated by the political and ideological infighting that the revolution fatally produced.

After long decades of official hostility between France and Algeria, people in both countries welcomed Macron’s declared intention to resolve the inherited problems and define a new relationship. The task could never be easy since France, even when excluded in the most absolute terms from Algeria’s internal politics, has always been lurking in the background. Numerous economic, linguistic and cultural links have maintained a necessary but distant relationship between the nations and their peoples.

Anyone who lives and works in the business world in France realizes that generations of North Africans have found their permanent place within French culture, even if their presence in the social structure is subjected to a curiously ambiguous dynamic. North Africans have simultaneously been encouraged (and accepted) and discouraged (and rejected) from being fully integrated into the French social fabric.

Stora insisted on the notion of memorial rent as a way of accounting for the mentalities that still inhabit the two populations and their governments. The Algerians cannot forget the reality of colonization. Having definitively renounced its colonial mission, France seeks to live up to its ideals of “�����������é, é����������é, �ڰ����ٱ���Ծ���é,” in the name of modern Western liberalism.

Macron, the maverick, wished to distinguish himself from his predecessors by finding some common ground and opening a new horizon of cooperation. He hoped that by honestly acknowledging what was reprehensible in France’s past in Algeria, the two nations could begin a fraternal dialogue that had been shattered by the revolution.

Macron now feels his act of good faith has not been reciprocated. He nevertheless insists that he maintains excellent relations with the current Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Perhaps he sees a kinship to Donald Trump’s account of his relationship with Kim Jung-un. It contains the idea that a sentiment of personal friendship — even if totally imaginary in Trump’s case — accompanied by a willingness to dialogue on a person-to-person basis, could lead to long-term understanding.

Macron is not alone in noting that Algeria’s system of government appears seriously sclerotic. A majority of Algerians appear to share his analysis. Massive protests last year by the pro-democratic popular movement known as Hirak permitted the destitution of the doddering, despotic and now deceased President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Last week, Macron dared to express his sentiment that Tebboune, for all his good intentions, was the prisoner of a system that he described as “very hard.” Though diplomatically delicate, it was a point worth making.

But after insisting that resolving the question of historical memory as described by Stora was the key to progress, Macron made a major mistake. Playing the amateur historian, he questioned whether Algeria had ever existed “as a nation” before French colonization, a period in which the region of Algeria was a precinct of the Ottoman Empire.

In other words, Macron implicitly called into question the historical legitimacy of Algeria as a nation-state. For Algerians, and other observers as well, that stands as a clear example of European political hubris.

To be fair, Macron cited a valid historical fact. But it implied a message not dissimilar to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s contention in a 2007 in Dakar that “the African has not fully entered into history.” In Sarkozy’s passably racist mind, Europe alone defined the drift and logic of history. At the time, Senegalese writer Boris Diop, remarked: “Maybe he does not realise to what extent we felt insulted.”

Many ordinary Algerians today feel the same way about Macron’s reflection on the status of Algeria. It clearly signifies that Macron thinks of Algeria as a second-class nation at best, lacking the dignity of European nation-states.

Historical Note

Le Monde’s editorial board that “Emmanuel Macron was right to make reconciliation between the painful experiences on both sides the axis of his ‘memorial policy.’” An outside observer might note that the idea a “memorial policy” would be unimaginable in most other cultures and historical contexts. The only significant precedents concerning national policies intended to produce an official account of the collective memory may be Israel’s remembrance of the Holocaust and South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission.

But these three cases — Israel, South Africa and France — are all very different. In the Israeli case, there was no nation to reconcile with, Germany having been totally transformed after the war, followed by the subsequent creation of Israel. In South Africa, the formerly oppressed and their oppressors had to find a way of changing places by allowing a black majority to exercise its prerogatives.

Macron’s historicist approach, seeking to identify an entire people’s memorial content, may be seen, like so much else in French culture, as typically Cartesian. It transforms Descartes’ celebrated axiom, “I think, therefore I am” into “I remember, therefore I was.” This is as dangerous as it is potentially helpful because, while it seeks to reconcile, it creates false equations. Macron’s own discourse, when he invokes history to delegitimize Algeria as a nation, reveals the risk.

The president went even further when he of failing to recognize its own past as a colonial power. The mention of Turkey, whose president last year not only criticized Macron but called into question his “,” would seem to indicate that for all his supposed Cartesian rationality, Macron can at times become unhinged, especially in the months before a presidential election.

Apparently aware of his mistake, Macron now is seeking to lower the tensions. But as political scientist Hasni Abidi observes, in the , Macron’s “mea culpa would be denounced by the parties of the right.” At the same time, Abidi believes the French may see Macron as a serial troublemaker adept at “creating multiple conflicts with Turkey, Mali, Australia or the US.” The election takes place in April. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Algeria to France: No Thanks for the Memories�� appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This week, we jump from French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal of a new law intended to produce electoral momentum in the run-up to the presidential election to Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s campaign to avoid dishonoring the great tradition of white supremacy. We then move on to congressional Democrats’ greater sense of loyalty to the military-industrial complex than to their elected president and also the military threat that China’s peaceful overtures in Africa appear to represent for the US. Finally, we look at the Financial Times’ realistic, but unorthodox reading of the global debt crisis. 

Macron’s Revised Motto: �����������é (diminished), Egalité (Two-tiered) and ����ٰܳ���������é

It used to be that countries like Switzerland could claim the privilege of neutrality. The notion applied to political entities. President Macron of France has extended it to people in the name of combating “separatism,” the latest and deadliest sin against what he imagines to be republican integrity. Parliament is now deliberating on a bill designed literally to neuter the French by imposing neutrality as a behavioral norm. Macron sees the effort to inculcate and enforce “republican values” as the key to winning reelection in 2022.

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“Introduced by hardline French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the bill contains a slew of measures on the neutrality of the civil service, the fight against online hatred, and the protection of civil servants such as teachers,” informs us. The explains that this “law also extends strict religious neutrality obligations beyond civil servants to anyone who is a private contractor of a public service, like bus drivers.”

����ٰܳ���������é:

A legal concept that provides a pretext for targeting the Muslim community in France for failing to live up to republican standards, a requirement that not only judges people on their aptitude to adhere to a modern faith known as “republican principles” (which supersedes any other creed or philosophy a person may identify with), but also proclaims that those principles are universal and should be shared by any rational person anywhere in the world

The Context

The law voted by parliament on July 23 seeks to eliminate “separatism” by removing a few of the traditional liberties the French formerly enjoyed. It also seeks to foment a climate of suspicion against anyone who resists signing on to a behavioral code designed to protect members of the current secular order.

To ensure that some of Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant voters may be tempted to drift across to vote for Macron in next year’s election, the president has proposed a law clearly intended to demonstrate his personal pleasure in intimidating Muslims.

Radical Ideology According to Senator Josh Hawley

Republicans in the United States believe in freedom of expression so long as thought itself is controlled. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley that white exceptionalism is the unimpeachable foundation of the American way of life. “Over the past year, Americans have watched stunned as a radical ideology spread through our country’s elite institutions—one that teaches America is an irredeemably racist nation founded by white supremacists,” Hawley said. “We cannot afford for our children to lose faith in the noble ideals this country was founded on.”

Radical ideology:

The citing of any facts of history that might contradict the self-proclaimed normal and noble ideology of those who believe that the power structure they are a part of is predestined not only to rule the world, but also to restrict useful, objective knowledge of the world

The Context

When Hawley claims that we “have to make sure that our children understand what makes this country great, the ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for, and the love of country that unites us all,” the key concept is “make sure.” This is the language not of education but of indoctrination, a characteristic traditionally associated with totalitarian regimes that mobilize whatever resources are required to “make sure” people toe the line.

The idea of “making sure” that children “understand” should be seen as an aporia, a simple contradiction, since true understanding means appreciating what one cannot be sure of — in other words, of putting things in perspective. Hawley clearly wants to remove what he calls the “ideals” from their context. This is more about undermining than understanding.

There are similarities between Macron’s and Hawley’s approach to normalizing understanding and testing for loyalty.

The Democrats’ Competing Priorities 

US President Joe Biden has claimed that transformative FDR-style reforms are his priority and opposed Donald Trump’s race to further bloat the defense budget. Biden’s party in Congress is implementing its own priorities, similar to Trump’s.

“One has to wonder what is even the point of a Senate Democratic majority if they’re going to not only continue Trump policies but work with Senate Republicans to undermine [Biden’s] priorities. Utterly pathetic,” Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War.

Priority:

Something political leaders want the public to believe is the first thing they wish to accomplish, even when they have no intention of implementing the stated policy and also expect it will not be implemented

The Context

During last year’s presidential campaign, reported that Biden said that “if elected president, he doesn’t foresee major reductions in the U.S. defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from ‘near-peer’ powers such as China and Russia.” The website nevertheless suspected that “internal pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, combined with pandemic-related economic pressures, may ultimately add up to budget cuts at a Biden Pentagon.”

In a comic historical twist, Biden did not propose a reduction in the defense budget, but instead a modest increase despite drawing down the US commitment in the Middle East. The Senate Armed Services Committee, with a majority of Democrats, applied its pressure not to reduce the budget, but to spend even more than Biden demanded. The only “internal pressure” came from one isolated progressive, outvoted by 25 Democrats and Republicans.

The moral of the story is clear. The president cannot run the country because even the policies he prefers (sincerely or insincerely) will be overturned by the all-powerful military-industrial complex that controls Congress. Defense is no longer about defending the nation, which is already extremely well defended. It’s about supporting the defense industries that are at the core of the economy and the focus of politicians’ attention. Spending freely on defense is the norm even in a nation that hates any spending other than consumer spending. The taxpayers will never complain, because they have been taught that producing arsenals that will never be needed is consistent with the belief in the “ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for,” to quote Hawley again.

As the wealth gap continues to grow and the effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing climate crisis have spread more misery across the nation, the Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee appear to blissfully ignore the observation of a former Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

The US Counters a Global Overture Threat

It goes without saying that, given the multiplicity of threats to “national security,” the US is supposed to be everywhere in the world as a military presence. For two decades, terrorism was the main pretext, but its attraction has faded, allowing other missions to emerge, especially in Africa.

“Now, in addition to fighting violent extremist groups, they have to counter Chinese and Russian overtures in a region where great powers are increasingly competing for access, influence, and resources,” writes Stavros Atlamazoglou in

Overture:

Any initiative taken by a rival power in territories currently dominated by Western colonial and neocolonial powers, especially in regions where US troops are already present as a reminder that these are the West’s private hunting grounds

The Context

America’s hard power, its famed military might, appears to have a new challenge. This time it isn’t a foreign army, insurgents or terrorist cells. It is, as Atlamazoglou explains, something far more frightening: “Chinese aid, in the form of loans or infrastructure development,” part of “Beijing’s quest for natural resources and global legitimacy.” How dare the most populous nation on earth seek “natural resources and global legitimacy?” No one has called them off the bench to play the same game Western powers have excelled at for the past 500 years.

Then there is the Russian variant, which is more respectful of the well-established American model. “Russia sells arms and provides political advisors in addition to hunting for lucrative contracts for natural resources and other geopolitical benefits,” Atlamazoglou writes. The two former rivals have remained faithful to the methods developed in that golden age politicians remember as the Cold War.

Atlamazoglou relies heavily on the testimony of John Black, a retired Special Forces warrant officer, who observes that American ambassadors need “to look at the country as a whole and take more risks, use [the US] military arm to effect real change within a country.” The stirring examples of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya demonstrate how “real change” can take place when you accept to “take more risks.”

Black understands the risk, apparently viscerally: “China or Russia might not hesitate to work with a dictator with an abdominal [sic] human-rights record to further their geopolitical goals.” Could he have possibly meant “abominable?” Or does this describe a brutal regime that weaponizes diarrhea? Citing the US commitment to the rule of law, Black implies that the US would never cavort with a dictator possessed of an abominable human-rights record.

How did the usually serious Business Insider allow such an “abdominal” article to appear?  

The Great Reset: The Effect of Coordination or Chaos?

The magnates of Davos recently agreed to mobilize their forces to implement what they call,” ushering in a new golden age of socially responsible capitalism. All it requires is some concerted action under their leadership.  

Gillian Tett, writing for the , seems to envision a different scenario: “The total global debt is now more than three times the size of the global economy, since debt — and money — has expanded inexorably since 1971. It seems most unlikely this can ever be repaid just by growth; sooner or later — and it may be much later — this will probably cause a direct or indirect restructuring or a social or financial implosion.”

Restructuring:

The process by which the laws of inertia teach human beings with political and economic power, who believe they possess the intelligence capable of problem-solving, that such a belief can only be an illusion

The Context

Humanity finds itself struggling with a straightforward situation: multiple crises related to health, climate and an economy functioning on increasingly absurd principles. Theoretically, they can all be addressed through a harmonious global focus on rational resource management followed by intelligent decision-making. But history demonstrates on a daily basis that society has delegated decision-making to: first, individuals within nations (consumers and voters); second, nations (each competing one another); and third, those who govern the nations (theoretically, politicians whose sole aim is to hold onto power once they have acquired it and who are beholden to anyone who assists them in achieving that goal).

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In other words, the more universal the problem, the less likely it will be that it may be solved. Local and national crises continue to exist, but they have now become dominated by universal crises. The consumer economy and the quasi-democratic nation-states are structured, in terms of decision-making, in a way that makes any voluntary effort at restructuring impossible.

Not only do our economies and political systems need restructuring. Our thinking about who we are and how we function as a society needs some serious revision.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Thought Suppression Flourishes in France and Washington appeared first on 51�Թ�.

But the aftermath — marked by the “stop the steal” movement, a riotous occupation of the Capitol building and a continued spirit of revolt by a significant proportion of the citizenry as well as some prominent politicians — reveals that the spectacular numbers achieved by both candidates in the presidential election were a sign of high fever in the body politic rather than healthy democratic engagement. Many commentators noticed that voting against a particular candidate — Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump in 2020 — rather than voting for a preferred candidate may have been the determining factor in those two elections.

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Iran’s presidential election on June 18 was notable for its low turnout. But that is what everyone expected. Iran’s centrally controlled electoral system, emanating from a strictly hierarchical governmental structure in which the power of the president is extremely restricted, produces elections that are more accurately referred to as “selections.”

Though the two-party system in the US, sometimes referred to as a “,” leaves itself open to a similar critique, Western democracies still hold onto the idea that elections are expressions of vox populi, reflecting the will of the people. The general trend noted in recent years and in many democratic nations toward levels of abstention that often dip below 50% indicates that belief in democracy as a viable representative form of government may be far less solid than politicians and educators like to affirm.

France set a record on June 20 for its combined departmental and regional elections, two distinct opportunities to vote on the same day in the same place. With nearly 33.3% showing up to vote, two-thirds of the electorate simply didn’t bother. The only worse showing was in a referendum in 2000, where only 30% of the electorate bothered to vote on shortening the length of a presidential term. On Sunday, the abstention figure was dramatic enough, in any case, for President Emmanuel Macron’s press secretary to it “abyssale” (abysmal).

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Abyssale:

A French adjective, usually translated in English as “abysmal,” but with a more literal meaning that serves to compare what is being described to a literal abyss, something most French people also consider to be an appropriate characterization of the level of competence and efficacy of the current French government and more generally of the political class

Contextual Note

Macron’s government has every reason to deem the result of this first round abysmal. Occurring less than a year before the 2022 presidential election in which Macron hopes to break the recent trend of one-term presidents (Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande), the media and the pollsters regarded these local elections primarily as an indicator of what to expect in next May’s contest. The majority party — itself a “bricolage,” an assemblage cobbled together after Macron’s freak parting of the Red Sea in 2017 — performed particularly badly, not even attaining the 10% required to remain in the running for the second round in five of the 13 regions. 

For most of his term, Macron has had low approval ratings. He has never earned the admiration of the masses that presidents of the Fifth Republic once managed to achieve, though there have been moments when the French were willing to respect his apparent competence. This was especially true after his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are other moments, far more frequent, in which his popularity has not only faded, but Macron himself has become an object of public scorn. The yellow vest movement that raged in 2018 and 2019 is the closest thing in modern times to the kind of popular revolt immortalized during the French Revolution that more than two centuries ago, at least provisionally, abolished the monarchy.

The commentators were even more surprised by the unexpectedly low score of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front. The media have been building up the idea that the second round of next year’s presidential election will inevitably be a remake of 2017, with a rising Le Pen challenging a fading Macron, a recipe for anguished suspense among those less tempted by fascism. Over the next week, and immediately following the second-round results, the pundits will begin drawing conclusions about what this tells us about who will actually be present in the second round next year and how they may fare. 

The same pundits may even decide that it means nothing at all, given the rate of abstention. Prognostication has suddenly become a more difficult exercise. The manifest indifference of the electorate to everything that politicians believe is important does, however, tell us something about the state of democracy in France in what may be the waning years of the Fifth Republic. L’Obs, a left-center weekly, cites what it calls “,” a weariness with the very rituals of democracy.

Historical Note

The one dramatic indicator early commentators have highlighted is the apparent victory of the traditional right that had formerly been humiliated, finding itself in a no-man’s-land between Emmanuel Macron’s increasingly right-wing neoliberal center and Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic right-wing nationalism. Some see it as a sign of rejuvenation for the Gaullist tradition. The former ��é��ܲ�������������, Xavier Bertrand, who has a credible claim to representing the right in next year’s election, has been trying to resist Macron’s sedulous attempt to laminate the traditional right by adopting not only its policy themes, but also the demagogic Islamophobia of Le Pen’s party.

President Macron, the self-declared centrist, was counting on using his status as incumbent to position himself in a way that would make him attractive to a full range of voters on the right, while assuming that in his contest with Le Pen in the second round, he would also pick up most of the voters on the left who would be afraid to abstain. This could be compared on some points with Joe Biden’s successful strategy in the 2020 US presidential election.

Les ��é��ܲ�������������s appear as the real winners for the moment, if only because they have thrown a wrench into Macron’s 2022 strategy. There now may be a stronger likelihood that Bertrand will reach the second round opposite Macron, or possibly even opposite Le Pen. This is a cause of deep embarrassment, if not consternation. The combination of Le Pen’s low score and Bertrand’s success means that the traditional right — whose continuity dates back to Jacques Chirac and, ultimately, Charles De Gaulle, the founder of the Fifth Republic — may have recovered its mojo that so suddenly faded in 2017 following the scandals of its leading candidate, Francois Fillon, and its most recent president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter was recently convicted for electoral fraud and has been sentenced to six months in prison.

The media hasn’t begun asking the real historical question that underlies this curious drama. The parties are one thing, but what about the French people? What do they think, and what do they want at this historical “inflection point,” to quote Biden? The yellow vest spirit is still floating in the air, maybe even permeating the atmosphere.

The only candidate to have dared to talk about the eventuality of a Sixth Republic is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the left-wing populist candidate who fared honorably in the first round of the 2017 election at a moment when the once conquering Socialist Party imploded. The French media refuse to take Melenchon seriously, except as a foil to the legitimate pretenders. He has been cast in the role of the French Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, with a stronger intelligence, a more marked strain of rebelliousness against the establishment, but less charisma. Though he could never win a presidential election, he is still the strongest political personality on the left.

With other crises brewing — a pandemic still dragging on, hints of a possible new global financial crisis, a deepening climate crisis, exacerbated European instability, complemented by shaky leadership in the US — the French may simply be wondering how voting for anyone promises to accomplish anything worthwhile.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�. Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article referred to Xavier Bertrand as the current leader of Les ��é��ܲ�������������s. Updated on June 24, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post France’s Electoral Abyss appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Since his election, French President Emmanuel Macron has demonstrated what some French patriots feel is a morbid curiosity about the history of France’s relations with the African continent. In the first three months of 2021, two reports by French historians tasked by Macron to tell the truth have been released. The first concerns France’s role in the Algerian War of Independence between 1954 and 1962, and the second, the Rwandan genocide.

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Le Monde the 1,200-page Rwandan report as “solid, established by independent researchers and founded on newly opened archives.” Shortly after taking office in 2017, Macron asked historian Vincent Duclert to elucidate France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. Al Jazeera the report as criticizing “the French authorities under [Francois] Mitterrand for adopting a ‘binary view’ that set Habyarimana as a ‘Hutu ally’ against an ‘enemy’ of Tutsi forces backed by Uganda, and then offering military intervention only ‘belatedly’ when it was too late to halt the genocide.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Binary view:

A prevalent mindset among leaders responsible for foreign policy in powerful nations, whose tendency to reduce every problem to a contest between two diametrically opposed points of view permits them to justify the most cynical and cruelly destructive policies

Contextual Note

In the aftermath of the genocide, analysts speculated about whom to blame, not only concerning the genocide itself but also the failure to prevent it from spinning out of control. As the leader of the nation whose role as “policeman of the world” became consolidated after the fall of the Soviet Union, US President Bill Clinton exhibited an apparent “” to tribal slaughter in Africa. It included deliberate “efforts to constrain U.N. peacekeeping.” Canadian General Romeo Dallaire accused Clinton of establishing “a policy that he did not want to know,” even though since 1992, US intelligence had been aware of a serious Hutu plan to carry out genocide.

French President Francois Mitterand’s guilt, it now turns out, was far more patent and direct than Clinton’s. The historians who authored the French report call it “a defeat of thinking” on the part of an administration never held for its “continual blindness of its support for a racist, corrupt and violent regime.” Astonishingly, the report reveals that “French intelligence knew it was Hutu extremists that shot President Habyarimana’s plane down, which was seen as the trigger for the genocide.” Le Monde attributes Mitterand’s blindness to his “personal relationship” with the slain Hutu president.

Historical Note

By sneaking through the gaping cracks in the traditional parties on the right and left to be elected president, Emmanuel Macron became the leader of a new party created for the purpose of providing him with a majority in the 2017 parliamentary election that followed his historic victory. As a political maverick, Macron felt himself liberated from at least some of the shackles of history.

He first dared to do what Fifth Republic presidents of the past had carefully avoided when, as a candidate, he attacked the very idea of colonization, which not only played an essential role in France’s past, but continued to produce its effects through the of Francafrique. In an in Algiers, the Algerian capital, early in the 2017 presidential campaign, Macron described colonization as a “genuinely barbaric” practice, adding that it “constitutes a part of our past that we have to confront by also apologising to those against whom we committed these acts.”

Politicians on the right predictably denounced what they qualified as Macron’s “hatred of our history, this perpetual repentance that is unworthy of a candidate for the presidency of the republic.” This is the usual complaint of the nationalist right in every Western nation. Recently, columnist Ben Weingarten that Nikole Hannah-Jones’ for The New York Times Magazine was motivated by “hatred for America.” Patriots in every country tend to believe that exposing any embarrassing historical truth is tantamount to hate and intolerance of their own noble traditions. Telling the truth is treasonous.

In January 2021, the historian Benjamin Stora presented the report Macron commissioned him to produce on France’s historical relationship with Algeria. Stora proposed the “creation of a joint ‘Memory and Truth’ commission.” The report also recommended “restitution, recognition of certain crimes, publication of lists of the disappeared, access to archives” and “creation of places of memory.” Suddenly, Macron realized that he had received more than he bargained for. As the website JusticeInfo.net , “The French presidency said there was ‘no question of showing repentance’ or of ‘presenting an apology’ for the occupation of Algeria or the bloody eight-year war that ended 132 years of French rule.”

These two examples demonstrate France’s curious relationship with history. They also tell us about how powerful nations elaborate and execute their foreign policy. France is not alone. Every nation’s policy starts from a sense of national interest. The ensuing analysis begins by assessing threats to it. These may be military, economic or even cultural. In the case of military threat, the nation in question will be branded either an enemy or, if diplomatic politeness prevails, an adversary. When the discord is purely economic, the other nation will most likely be called a competitor or a rival. When the threat is cultural — as when Lebanon and Israel square off against each other about who makes the most authentic hummus — foreign policy experts will simply shut up and enjoy the show.

On the other hand, three forms of cultural competition — linguistic, tribal and religious rivalries — have real implications for the exercise of power and may seriously influence the perception of whether what is at stake is enmity, rivalry or friendly competition. The danger in such cases lies in confusing cultural frictions with political ambitions.

The two French reports reveal that the very idea of “national interest” may not be as innocent as it sounds. It can also mean “extranational indifference,” or worse. Indifference turns out to be not just a harmless alternative to the aggressive pursuit of national interest. In some cases, it translates as a convenient pretext for the toleration or even encouragement of brutally inhuman practices. That is why Rwanda may be a stain on both Francois Mitterand’s and Bill Clinton’s legacies.

Another feature of modern policy may appear less extreme than the tolerance of genocide while being just as deadly. As , Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies and others have repeatedly asserted, the imposition of drastic sanctions has become a major weapon in the US foreign policy arsenal. Sanctions essentially and often sadistically target civilian populations with little effect on the targeted leaders. Sanctions have become an automatic reflex mobilized not just against enemies or rivals, but also against the economically disobedient, nations that purchase goods from the wrong designated supplier.

In 2012, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing for The Guardian, noted that the Obama administration’s on Iran were “pushing ordinary Iranians to the edge of poverty, destroying the quality of their lives, isolating them from the outside world and most importantly, blocking their path to democracy.” Nine years later, those sanctions were made more extreme under Donald Trump and continue unabated under President Joe Biden. All the consequences Dehghan listed have continued, with no effect on the hard-line Iranian regime’s hold on power. Can anyone pretend that such policies are consistent with a commitment to human rights? Do they reveal the existence of even an ounce of empathy for human beings other than one’s own voters?

The French at least have solicited truthful historical research about their past. But politicians like Macron, who have encouraged the research, inevitably turn out to be too embarrassed by the truth to seek any form of reparation. After commissioning it, they prefer to deny the need for it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron’s Campaign to Reveal France’s Historical Sins appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Fifth Republic had a few moments of glory marked by at least three somewhat illustrious personalities who became president. The actions of these three men left a mark on the memory of the French. Their names? Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac. The only recent president to make a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to achieve their stature, Nicolas Sarkozy, was just this week of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison.

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Macron hoped to surpass them all but has clearly failed. Instead of playing by the consecrated rules of the Fifth Republic dominated by powerful parties, he profited from a sudden and unexpected vacuum within both the traditional right and the traditional left to sneak through the cracks and create the illusion that a system permanently dominated by the “alternance” of right and left could be run from the center. 

It was quite an achievement, but Macron failed to understand that modern French political thinking is not about vague ideas or even attractive personalities. It remains based on the notion of “engagement” (commitment) in favor of one or another strong position. The center Macron so proudly claimed to represent has always been seen as spineless and fundamentally unexciting. At best it reflects a commitment to bureaucracy, which the French have no respect for but cannot live without.

In 2017, it looked like a free ride for Macron that would last five years thanks to a guaranteed majority in parliament, no viable opposition and a public initially willing to entertain the centrist experiment. But it has become a living hell. Macron never managed to build his own party into something that could represent a political force, despite his massive majority elected to parliament on the coattails of his 2017 electoral victory.

Now, Macron finds himself embroiled in a controversy of his own creation. Its focus has been defining Islam as the enemy and intellectuals sympathizing with Muslims as the enemy within. In November 2020, The Atlantic that “Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has bemoaned the influence of American critical race theory on the French social sciences, blaming them for undermining France’s race- and ethnicity-blind universalism, and for giving comfort to ‘islamo-gauchisme,’ or ‘Islamo-leftism.’” Then, just two weeks ago, France’s higher education minister, Frederique Vidal, set off an uproar in the media and in academe itself when she an “investigation” be carried out into “Islamo-leftist” influence within the universities and research community.

This spectacular initiative has ended up having a closer resemblance to QAnon than to traditional French intellectual creativity and freedom. Vidal now wants the French to believe that universities and research institutes are harboring a cabal that englobes the French left (irresponsible intellectuals with ideas no sane Frenchmen would endorse) and Islamist extremists (murderous jihadist activists) in an unholy alliance that is threatening the security of the Republic.

Why? Because a number of serious thinkers have dared to detect a link between the history of European colonialism, including the extension of some its practices into the present, and the rise of violent revolt by Islamic extremists against a system they believe to be oppressive of their people and their people’s well-being. Detecting historical links — or at least certain specific links — has become a crime that can no longer be tolerated.

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Islamo-gauchiste:

A faux portmanteau word invented by Emmanuel Macron’s government to create the belief that two segments of French society, each with its own tradition of respectability — leftist thinkers and the Muslims who were part of the booty of the former French empire — are plotting to overthrow the modern mainstream, neoliberal, corporatist and implicitly racist consensus that Macron’s party believes to be the main voting bloc in French society today

Contextual Note

Macron’s desire to profit from the fear of Muslims that has attracted voters to his main rival, Marine Le Pen, is understandable, though risky since its anti-intellectual belligerence alienates many to the left of center. More surprising is one of its oddest features, that its promoters have coupled it with an appeal to a long-standing trend among the French of anti-Americanism. It claims to be anti-Islamic, anti-intellectual and anti-American, all at the same time.

It isn’t enough to attack French researchers who propose readings of history that make French colonial incursions into Muslim lands look inglorious. The Macronists are now affirming that this acknowledgment of France’s historical injustice toward its minorities is an example of slavish emulation of American “critical race theory” that has now infected the minds of a generation of French academics. It’s all the fault of American “wokism,” which has no place in French culture.

Le Monde has long been the serious newspaper of the intellectual rather than the activist left. Since the end of the Second World War, it has stood as the alternative to the other “serious” newspaper, Le Figaro, which reflected the positions of the establishment right and more specifically the Gaullists. De Gaulle, after all, was the founder of the Fifth Republic.

Macron claims to be neither right nor left, but his electoral strategy has clearly pushed him to commit to policies agreeable to the right. Responding to the proposal of an investigation into academic Islamo-gauchisme, Le Monde published the appeal launched by 600 academics condemning Vidal’s obscurantist effort. The signatories included the immensely successful Thomas Piketty, highly respected on the left. No one would think of branding Piketty as an Islamo-gauchiste.

Historical Note

For nearly a century, the French have complained about the attack on the noble purity of the language of Racine and Voltaire by the importation of English words. In the past, governments have legislated to prevent modern French vocabulary from being overwhelmed by trendy American coinages. That hasn’t prevented French people, and especially professionals, from using the very “anglicisms” they are expected to patriotically deplore. “Low-cost” could simply be called “pas cher” but not by people in business, who prefer the English term. Buzz, open space, leader, flop, play-list, best-of and the verb “booster” (to boost) are commonly spoken. Many deem these words illegal occupiers, on a par with the postcolonial invasion of North African immigrants. Neither of them has any business being here and sapping French culture.

Interviewed by the magazine L’Obs, political analyst Olivier Roy provides an of the French president’s absurd and futile attempt to strategize his reelection: “Emmanuel Macron believes he is playing a grand strategic game by aiming to reach the second round of the next presidential elections in a face-off against Marine Le Pen.” Macron’s ministers are no longer working for the French republic. They are working for Macron’s reelection in 2022. 

Recent polls show Le Pen within two points of Macron. For Jean-Michel Blanquer and Frederique Vidal, to steal votes from Le Pen’s white working-class constituency, intellectuals on the left must be branded as traitors to the white European republic. They may be unhappy, but just as US President Joe Biden did with progressive Democrats, the Macronists count on the vast majority on the left to vote against Le Pen.

What Macron fails to realize is that his quandary is closer to the Democratic Party’s failure in the 2016 US presidential election than its success in 2020. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, people now see him as a shabby, ineffective pillar of a discredited establishment. Nobody likes Macron enough to want to see him hanging around for another five years. As Roy points out, the strategy he has devised is absurd. He cannot win over Le Pen voters. His commitment to Europe has made him their enemy. And now polls show that many on the left will no longer be intimidated to vote for someone so committed to betraying them and their intellectual culture.

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 promises to be the year of political pandemonium.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Enriches French Vocabulary and Impoverishes Political Thought appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Over the next few months, observers will be wondering how President Joe Biden intends to play the game of balancing change and continuity, especially after Donald Trump’s radical attempt to rewrite the rules of the game. One of the key issues on which Trump carried out his fanatical zeal was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran deal.

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Biden’s team has affirmed its intention to rejoin the nuclear deal, breaking with Trump and returning to Barack Obama’s status quo. But voices in the Biden administration have indicated that it will only happen if there is a significant change in the terms, which was also Trump’s position. As speculation mounts concerning Biden’s intentions, Al Jazeera offers the following subtitle to an on the JCPOA: “Iranian foreign ministry says deal ‘unchangeable’ after French President Macron calls for talks to include Saudi Arabia.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Unchangeable:

Not subject to the normal practice of politicians, which consists of exploiting every absurd pretext available to them in a political game to move the goalposts before restarting a game that they have themselves interrupted

Contextual Note

Trump, the former US president, promised change and to a certain extent delivered it. The most significant change in US foreign policy he managed to accomplish was sowing confusion across the globe by practicing an incomprehensible policy labeled “America First.” When applied to the Middle East and led by his viceroy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, it could have been called “Israel first.” This included some serious initiatives such as moving the US Embassy to Tel Aviv, endorsing the colonization of the Golan Heights, consolidating a kind of triumvirate of interests between the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and positioning Israel as an indefectible ally and trading partner of the Sunni oil states in the Gulf, thereby undermining the traditional obligation of Arab states to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 was an important component of Trump’s Israel first policy. For Trump, withdrawing from the deal was the ultimate symbol of his break with the politics of the Obama administration. Many assume that it will be the emblematic symbol of the Biden administration’s rupture with the Trump era. But it turns out to be far more complicated than just returning to the status quo ante Trump. Whether it’s the consequence of President Biden’s timidity or the success of Trump’s nationalistic propaganda, the Biden team appears to feel bound to imposing new conditions, perhaps to prove that Biden is not just a duplicate of Obama. Israeli interests play a role in that repositioning.

The easiest route for a Democratic president would be to apologize for Trump’s hubris, call the whole thing a mistake and proclaim the USA’s good faith by quietly returning to the deal on the same terms after that inadvertent interruption. But to be credible, American presidents must show they are tough. True tough guys don’t bend to the other party’s terms even when they are the one that betrayed all the other partners’ trust. Tough guys require compensation for their willingness to make a friendly gesture.

Curiously, French President Emmanuel Macron has stepped in to play a secondary tough guy role by casually insisting that Saudi Arabia should now be associated with the deal, a proposition that makes no sense at all. Macron has several good reasons to appear as a tough guy. He has an election coming up next year where he is pitted against the xenophobic Marine Le Pen. Part of his strategy in recent months has been to demonstrate that with Arabs and Muslims he’s capable of being a tough guy. He helpfully instructed the Muslim world in November 2020 that Islam was in crisis, just in case Muslims themselves hadn’t noticed. 

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, struck back with this cutting : “If the French authorities are worried about selling their huge cargoes of arms to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, it is better to reconsider their policies.” The Iranians cannot have missed the fact that Macron offered his remarks not to the signatories of the agreement or even to his own French media, but to the Saudi TV channel, Al Arabiya. Khatibzadeh was spot on about Macron’s real motive.

Historical Note

Since 1992, the departure of every sitting US president has always been followed by the arrival of a president from the opposing party. In 2001, Republican George W. Bush promised to reign as a “compassionate conservative,” a strategy designed to reassure the nation and create a sense of continuity with the Democrat, Bill Clinton. Bush subsequently demonstrated the full extent of his compassion by offering massive tax breaks to the rich and then going to war with a major portion of humanity.

Democrat Barack Obama owed his election to the enthusiasm of voters who rallied behind his theme of “hope and change” and his opposition to Bush’s wars in the Middle East. The Nobel committee was so impressed it immediately Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. Once in action, “hope and change” oddly morphed into “pretty much the same thing,” but with better PR than the Bush-Cheney team. That consolidated a different kind of change, within the Democratic Party itself, which now felt totally comfortable embracing the traditional free market ideology of the Republicans. It fulfilled the trend that Clinton had launched in the 1990s.

Obama, the peace candidate of 2008 who defeated the hawkish wife of Bill Clinton in the Democratic primaries, became the US president who dropped the most bombs on foreign countries. Under the Espionage Act, he more of the whistleblowers he had promised to protect than all other presidents combined. He installed and defended a profoundly military conception of US democracy, which extended to the militarizing of urban law enforcement, to the extreme detriment of the black community. His practical understanding of change was to shift as far away from his campaign promises as possible.

Donald Trump presented himself in the 2016 election as the ultimate outlier. To win over the voters disappointed by Obama’s policies, he promised to change everything. He definitely changed the idea of presidential style and its methods of communication. Trump promised much more, such as draining the swamp and bringing home US troops after ending the wars. He did neither. Instead, the institutions of the US found themselves more deeply ensconced in an immobile status quo imposed by an oligarchy that had been in place for decades. What did change, however, was the image of the US across the globe. US prestige reached an all-time low.

All this highlights the weird relationship US politics now has with the very idea of change. What was once framed as the nation’s historic mission to ameliorate the conditions of humanity by spreading democracy and modernizing the economy (the ideology some call neoliberalism) now could be seen as a cynical tactic for promoting any number of vested interests, all in the name of positive change. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and the 2015 Paris climate accord — two agreements that most of humanity considered vital to the future — the idea of change would always come from the whim of an executive suddenly achieved a legitimacy that no previous president had dared to affirm.

Trumpism appears to have left a serious trace on all forms of political discourse in the US. It has validated cynicism and opportunism in a way that was previously unthinkable. It has modified the expectations of political actors and of the public itself. Although the accumulation of power by the executive has been in the works for some time, Joe Biden’s signing a mountain of executive orders in his first days in office validates the legitimacy of Trump’s innovation.

Americans once believed that a signed contract was law and could not be changed even in changing circumstances. That assumption in US culture appears to have changed.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Unchanged or Unchained: What’s in Store for the JCPOA? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is Peace Religious or Secular?

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“Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” stated French President Emmanuel Macron, as he unveiled his plan to defend French secularism against Islamic extremism in early October. This prompted a backlash from Muslim communities around the world. The events escalated further amidst the beheading of a French teacher who shared with his class derogatory caricatures featuring Prophet Muhammad. In an act of defiance, Macron insisted the French will make no concessions and would “not cease drawing caricatures” as Paris displayed of the cartoons in question on government buildings.

Post-Truth Era

The current situation is a classic case of a post-truth-era dilemma. Each camp firmly believes it is the keeper of a universal, irrefutable truth, while in reality it lives inside its own ideological bubble and refuses to accept that there are other truths out there and probably a transcendental one that is beyond all opposing paradigms.

Post-truth — which was named the in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary in the midst of the divisions caused by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump — is a philosophical concept that signals a context where shared rational facts are replaced by subjective and emotional beliefs that shape public opinion. French humanism is rooted in centuries of reforms ending in a rupture between the state and the church. Muslim societies lived a completely different historical reality, where metaphysics are central and populations still romanticize the theological concept of the umma (global Muslim community).

In an ideal world, both “truths” would be able to coexist peacefully. Nevertheless, France never overcame its colonial mindset with its good old “civilizing mission.” Macron arrogantly insinuates that it is the white man’s burden to modernize and secularize a Muslim world “in crisis.” Acts of terror committed by Muslims are indubitably repugnant and humanly unacceptable, but so is radical secularization and the extremist modernization dogma that blindly attempts to assimilate citizens into the fifth republic’s grinding machine.

Defenders of the French perspective would say: Why don’t followers of other religions get angry when we draw Jesus or Moses? This is a shallow and simplistic comparison that does not take into consideration the cultural and anthropological particularity of the Muslim community, nor the sanguinary colonial encounter it had with France just decades back in Africa. It also characterizes the obstinate myopia with which the country of Marianne continues to deal with its almost 6 million Muslims.

Maybe the most revealing inconsistency in the French discourse can be summed up in a saying repeated by those who call to boycott French products: “Insulting a black person is racism, insulting a Jew is anti-Semitism, insulting a woman is sexism, but insulting a Muslim is freedom of expression.”  

Both Sides Demonize the Other

Of course, not all French people are rigid defenders of the values of the republic. Many philosophers, artists and journalists came out to condemn the French president’s provocations. However, as in many post-truth dichotomies, both antagonists compete to demonize the other, which fuels further hate and animosity. Moreover, instead of fighting violent extremism, it can do just the opposite, such as with the previous Danish cartoon controversy of 2005 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. Meanwhile, Muslims are flooding the internet with hashtags and memes against Macron, while countries like Kuwait removed French products from its shelves and the Turkish president even questioned the mental health of his counterpart in Paris.

To answer Macron’s statement, we can regrettably say that France is a country in crisis because of its failure to address systemic racism against Muslims and its refusal to embrace cultural plurality and hybridity. In the French context, Edward Said’s “” can no longer be used as an excuse to hide the clash of truths between radical secularism and Muslims refusing to kill God for Marianne.

*[An earlier version of this article was published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Muslims Will Not Kill God for Marianne appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?

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Earlier this week, 51�Թ�’s founder, CEO and editor-in-chief, Atul Singh, teaming up with the great and respected scholar Ishtiaq Ahmed, published an article with the title, “Macron Claims Islam Is in ‘Crisis.’ Erdogan Disagrees.” Citing the public quarrel that recently broke out between the French and Turkish presidents, the authors review various moments of violence in the political history of Muslim expansion in Asia.

France finds itself undergoing a historical psychodrama with existential implications. At the beginning of October, Macron asserted that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” accusing it of the anti-republican crime of “separatism.” Commentators avoided noticing that this was a clever ploy on Macron’s part to distract attention from the fact that France and Europe have been in an existential crisis for some time. Pointing to someone else’s crisis is an efficient way of hiding one’s own.

Above all, Macron wants to convince voters in France that he, far better than the nationalist Marine Le Pen, has the stature to confront the consequences of Islam’s global crisis. The president has built a fragile center-right power base, and his main challengers in the 2022 election are on the right and the extreme right. He must at all costs occupy some of their terrain. The Muslim threat is the hot-button issue that has the most immediate impact.

Shortly after President Macron’s denunciation of the global crisis of Islam, the gruesome killing and beheading of Samuel Paty took place. The history teacher’s 18-year-old assassin, born in Chechnya, had been educated in French public schools from the age of 6. �ʲ��ٲ�’s crime had been to show his class the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Islam in a lesson about freedom of speech. Macron has since made a point of the “liberty of blasphemy” as a basic right, protesting that he not “renounce the caricatures,” which for some may sound as if he is endorsing their content.

The article by Ahmed and Singh builds up to a fundamental question: “Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism?” After noting that “[m]any Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative,” the authors boldly announce their “contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Religion of peace:

Every religion at its spiritual core, just as every religion as soon as it is appropriated or overtaken by political forces becomes a religion of war

Contextual Note

Throughout mankind’s history, there have been so many sects, cults, churches and spiritual philosophies that generalizing about religion itself can only be a futile exercise. Generalizing about any single religion, especially one shared by more than a billion people and that has lasted over a thousand years, is equally fraught with ambiguity. Attributing to a religion the ambition of conquering the world begs so many questions of history, economy, political organization and culture that no discussion, however rational, can hope to produce an acceptable general conclusion.

St. Augustine observed that if fire is used to produce warmth, we see it as good and peaceful, but if used to burn and destroy, it appears aggressive and evil. The same is true of any religion. History offers examples of both the good and evil uses of religion. Searching the sacred texts of any religion will provide examples of exhortations that may at times suggest aggressive inclinations and at others, peace and harmony.

It is not the task of a Devil’s Dictionary’s to defend any particular religion or religion in general, but rather to recognize those occasions when even secular thought — and more particularly political thought — hides the fact that it has its own dogmas, often as categoric and absolute as the most puritanical religion.

Most media commentators have refused to notice what is obvious about the situation in France. ������������é in the hands of French politicians has become a surrogate religion. It has produced a belief system with doctrines increasingly formulated as dogmas. Political scientist Olivier Roy wonders whether Macron isn’t seeking to the separation of church and state, the foundation of ����ï������é, by focusing only on Islam. Macron’s stance implies that “the simple fact of placing God above men is a declaration of separatism.” ����ï������é risks becoming a religion of war, not peace.

Emulating the Catholic Church, Macron’s government turned Paty into a republican saint and martyr when it instantly conferred upon him the Légion d’honneur. In the days following his killing, some had proposed to have him interred at the Pantheon, to be entombed with the “gods” of the republic. In contrast, the Vatican requires an elaborate procedure, the passage of time and the intervention of the before canonizing its saints and martyrs.

One prominent voice in French politics has suggested a subtle but necessary distinction that Macron’s government and the media prefer to avoid. Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the head of the party La France Insoumise, has consistently in the past for severe punitive measures directed not at “Islam in crisis,” “radical Islam” or even fundamentalism, but at the actors of “political Islam,” a term Roy defines as “the contemporary movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology.” For this crime, Macron’s minister of education calls Mélanchon a “Islamo-gauchiste.”

Historical note

Though the characterization of Islam by Ishtiaq Ahmed and Atul Singh appears abusive in its generality, there is a very real sense in which is true. All systems of thought that claim to be universal are tempted by despotism. If we define secular peace as a state of shared understanding and harmonious interaction across an entire population, we must recognize that it implies some degree of submission and conformity to an order, usually a political order. It’s a question of degree and the means of enforcement available. France’s Reign of Terror was conceived by secular rationalists. Throughout history, submission and conformity have been achieved through fear and intimidation, conquest and slaughter.

Both Christianity and Islam claim to be universal. In the history of both religions, we have seen examples that tended toward two extremes: the generous belief that the religion is accessible to all people and the insistence that all people in a specific region embrace it. The determining factor has always been the political climate and social traditions within which the universality of the religion and its moral system have been applied or imposed.

The same is true of secular religions such as French republicanism and American exceptionalism. These non-religious cults play a determining role in the nations’ foreign policy. The US and France have each created a political religion that they believe is not only proper to their nation, but represents a universal model that other nations should emulate. In both cases, the separation of church and state plays an important role, clearing the way for universal adherence to the declared values of the republic and the civic religion.

Some point out that Islam differs from Christianity, whose founder insisted on rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but not what is God’s. They may argue that Islam has never taken the trouble to distinguish between religious and political authority and has, throughout history, consistently invited confusion between the two. But in the Muslim world, the tradition of Sufism dates back to the early Umayyad period. Though it never had any pretension of becoming dominant, its historical reality demonstrates the awareness of a radical distinction between the spiritual (faith) and the worldly (politics).

In short, religions play the role that history allows them to play. They also influence the politics we in the West, somewhat presumptuously, consider to be the unique basis of history. Moral philosophy always accompanies religion and can at times play a dominant role. But more often, political forces associated with religion manage to push it aside or mold it into something new. Whether any dominant religion becomes a religion of war or peace lies in the eyes of the beholder at a specific moment of history.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Peace Religious or Secular? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

�ʲ��ٲ�’s , Abdullakh Anzorov, is an 18-year-old of Chechen origin. He arrived in France at the age of 6 as a refugee and was granted asylum. In an audio message in Russian, Anzorov claimed to have “avenged the prophet” whom Paty had portrayed “in an insulting way.” Before he was murdered, Paty was the victim of an online hate campaign orchestrated by the father of a student who reportedly might not even have been in the class.

As Agnès Poirier wrote in , since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015, the French seem to be “living [their] lives between terrorist assaults.” Since then, she writes, “Islamists in France have targeted and murdered journalists, cartoonists, policemen and women, soldiers, Jews, young people at a concert, football fans, families at a Bastille Day fireworks show, an 86-year-old priest celebrating mass in his little Normandy church, tourists at a Christmas market… the list goes on.”

Emmanuel Macron, France’s Islamophobe-in-Chief

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Yet �ʲ��ٲ�’s killing has touched a chord. Arguably, no country venerates its history teachers more than France. After defeat against Prince Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia in 1870, the Third Republic emerged. In the 1880s, it took away education from the Catholic Church, making it free, mandatory and secular. Poirier observes that the “peaceful infantry of teachers” has since “been the bedrock of the French republic.”

She poignantly points out that the first generations of teachers were nicknamed “the Black Hussars of the Republic” because they had to battle the local priest for influence. Thanks to these teachers, as per Poirier, “religion was eventually relegated to the spiritual realm.” More than others, history teachers are the keepers of the revolutionary and republican flame, exposing young minds to Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot et al and emancipating their thinking.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the brutal beheading an “Islamist terrorist attack.” At a ceremony at Sorbonne University, he conferred the on Paty. Macron awarded France’s highest honor posthumously to the late history teacher because he died for trying to explain freedom of speech.

Macron has since defended the right of French citizens to publish anything, howsoever offensive others might find that to be. Earlier this month, he , “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country.” His comments enraged many Muslims inside and outside France.

�ʲ��ٲ�’s killing has shaken France to the core. After more than a century, religion is back to the forefront in the country. This time, it is not Catholicism but Islam.

A History of Blood and Gore

At the heart of the matter is a simple question: Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism? Many Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative. After all, the Catholic Church burned and launched the Inquisition. Jews fled Spain to find refuge in lands. These authors take the contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.

Writing about Islam’s links to violence and terrorism is sensitive and controversial. There are nuances to be sure. However, most scholars know fully well that Islam has a . It rests on the assumption that justice would not be served unless the will of Allah is established all over the world. As per this theory, non-believers in Islam have three choices.

First, they can convert to Islam and become part of the , the global community of Muslims who recognize there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his final messenger. Second, they can refuse to submit to Allah, but they must then flee their homes or face the sword. Third, they can surrender to Muslims and pay jizya, a poll tox for non-Muslims in a state run according to Islamic principles.

Both Sunnis and Shias prize jihad, which denotes both personal struggle and just war. Both Sunnis and Shias believe that jihad is the duty of an Islamic state, should certain conditions arise. There is little daylight between Sunnis and Shias on their ideas of jihad against non-believers. Many Muslim jurists considered the non-acceptance of Islam by non-Muslims an act of aggression that had to be countered through jihad. Like Christianity, Islam lays claim to universality and jihad is its version of a crusade.

Arguably, the most interesting reform of Islamic law occurred when Arabs conquered Sindh in the eighth century. For the first time, Islam encountered Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. A puritanical Abrahamic faith encountered much older spiritual traditions of the Indus and Gangetic river basins. These pagan polytheists were not covered by the Quran. Its verses recognized Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and the imprecisely defined Sabians. These religions are based on divine revelations and came to be known as , the People of the Book.

The Indo-Gangetic spiritual traditions were clearly not the People of the Book. When Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, he approached the then-caliph in Damascus for how to deal with Indian polytheists. The fuqaha (Islamic jurists) and the ulema (clergy) in Damascus ruled that these new religions ultimately believed in the very same god as Muslims and the People of the Book. Therefore, through the exercise of qiyas — analogical reasoning as applied to the deduction of Islamic juridical principles — these non-Muslim Sindhis were to be treated as protected minorities if they paid the jizya.

As waves of Muslim invaders came to the Indian subcontinent, conversion took place both through peaceful and violent means. Lower-caste Hindus turned to Islam because it offered a greater sense of community, charity for the poor and egalitarianism. Yet violence was par for the course too. Idols were smashed, temples desecrated and local communities slaughtered.

Muslims who claim that theirs is a religion of peace could do well to remember that even the golden age of Islam is full of blood. The first three caliphs were assassinated. and were brave generals who led aggressive armies and did not hesitate to spill blood.

The exemplifies the violence that has accompanied Islam from its early days. In 680, Umayyad Caliph Yazid I’s troops massacred the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. For Shias, it remains an annual holy day of public mourning. This was a bloodthirsty struggle for succession and has led to a Shia-Sunni divide that runs deep to this day.

The Umayyad Empire’s extravagance and decadence led to a successful Abbasid rebellion in 750. The victors invited over 80 Umayyad family members to a grand feast on the pretext of reconciliation. In reality, this feat was the infamous in which the Umayyads were killed in cold blood. was the only Umayyad who escaped, and he fled all the way to Spain to set up the kingdom of al-Andalus.

Violence in Modern Times

Over time, Arab rule became benign. There is a strong argument to be made that Muslim rule was more tolerant than Christian rule in many matters. Minorities who paid jizya carried on with their business and way of life. The Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals governed multi-ethnic empires even as Europe imploded into religious wars.

Once Europe took to technological, industrial and military innovation, the rest of the world fell under its sway. Tottering Muslim empires were no exception. This defeat still rankles among many Muslims. Many have turned inward and hark back to a glory period of Islamic dominance. They dream of the days when Muslim armies swept all before them, including Jerusalem in 1187 or Constantinople in 1453.

After World War II, European colonial rule has been replaced by American economic domination. Oil was discovered in key parts of the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, it was Western companies that took much of the profits. Till today, the price of oil is denominated in dollars. The formation and domination of Israel in the Middle East added to this Muslim angst. In 1979, a millenarian revolution succeeded in Iran. In the same year, militants seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca, and it took two weeks of pitched battles for Saudi forces to regain control. The militants might have lost, but Saudi Arabia emulated Iran in hardening sharia and giving more power to the ulema.

In Iran, the new regime killed thousands who did not agree with it. They included liberals and leftists. Led by hardline clerics, the Iranian regime liquidated the minority Bahai sect in Iran. It set out to export its Islamic revolution. In response, the Saudis began to export their own puritanical Wahhabi Islam. Saudi money poured all the way from and India to and Chechnya.

This took place at the height of the Cold War. This was a time when the West in general and Washington in particular were terrified of the Soviet Union. The fear of communism led Americans to intervene in Iran, Vietnam and elsewhere. They made a Faustian pact with militant Islam. The CIA worked with god-fearing Islamists to fight godless communists. These Islamists went on to become a trusty sword arm for the US against the communist menace of the Soviet Union. Nowhere was this best exemplified than the jihad Americans funded in Afghanistan against the Soviets. As is hilariously captured in , the Saudis matched the Americans dollar for dollar.

Eventually, the Soviet Union fell and the West won. As nationalism, socialism and pan-Arabism stood discredited, the battle-hardened jihadis stood ready to take their place. Conservative, fundamentalist, extreme and radical Islamists soon found their spot in the sun. The Molotov cocktail of violence and terrorism spread throughout Muslim societies. Disgruntled young Muslim men in the West found this cocktail particularly irresistible. In the post-9/11 world, there is a mountain of literature that chronicles all this and more.

American action after the attacks on September 11, 2001, have strengthened rather than weakened this culture of violence and terrorism. George W. Bush’s war on terror has proved an unmitigated disaster. In 2003, the Americans unleashed chaos in Iraq by dismantling the Baathist regime and leaving nothing in its place. A Shia-Sunni civil war followed. Iran became a touch too powerful in Iraq. Sunnis who had been dominant during the Baathist era under Saddam Hussein were left leaderless and felt marginalized. In the aftermath, the Islamic State emerged in the vacuum. Syria imploded as well and the Sykes-Picot construct collapsed. The Islamic State’s messianic message of violence and terrorism not only garnered local support, but it also drew in recruits from Europe, South Asia and elsewhere.

Eventually, Syria, Iran and Russia allied together even as the UK and the US collaborated quietly to crush the Islamic State. They were able to destroy it militarily, but radical Islamist ideology lives on. It is the same ideology that powered the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan jihad and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Now, it is inspiring Anzorovs to behead Patys.

A Clash of Cultures

In the aftermath of �ʲ��ٲ�’s beheading, France and Turkey have . Macron has championed freedom of expression, which includes the liberty of publishing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. Like many of his countrymen, Macron sees freedom of expression as an essential part of France’s secular values. ����ï������é, the French version of secularism, is enshrined in the very first article of the constitution. It declares, “France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic.” Macron has pledged to “to defend secular values and fight radical Islam.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan takes objection to Macron’s position. He believes that there must be limits to freedom of expression. With millions of Muslims in France and over a billion around the world, the French should desist from insulting Prophet Muhammad. Erdogan sees Macron as having a problem with Islam and Muslims. In a speech, the Turkish leader declared, “Macron needs treatment on a mental level.” In response, France has said Erdogan’s comments are unacceptable and recalled its ambassador to Turkey.

A new kind of Islamism has now entered the scene. Unlike clerics in Iran or royals in Saudi Arabia, Erdogan is a democratically elected leader. Ironically, he rose to power in Turkey thanks to the country’s growing democratization, which in turn was fueled by its quest to join the European Union. In Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkey, the Islamist Erdogan seized power and brought in a very different vision for the future.

Erdogan jettisoned Ataturk’s Europeanization of Turkey. Instead, he decided to become the popular, democratic voice for Islam. He has championed causes like Palestine, Kashmir and Xinjiang that resonate with Muslims worldwide. Even as the Turkish economy stumbles, Erdogan is taking on Macron as a defender of Islam. Erdogan gains inspiration from the Ottoman Empire. Until a century ago, the Ottoman sultan was also the caliph, the spiritual leader of the Sunni world. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi’s first mass movement in 1919 demanded the restoration of the Ottoman caliphate.

President Erdogan wants to bring back Ottoman cultural glory to Turkey. One by one, he is smashing up the symbols of secular Turkey. A few years ago, Erdogan built a 1,000-room white palace on 50 acres of Ataturk Forest Farm, breaking environmental codes and contravening court orders. On July 10, 2020, he reversed the 1934 decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a museum. Now, this architectural marvel is a mosque again.

France is a land of joie de vivre, which favors bikinis over burkinis. ����ï������é emerged after a bitter struggle with the Catholic Church, is central to the republic and is an article of faith. In contrast, Turkey is rolling back Ataturk’s version of ����ï������é. Erdogan is striving to emerge as the popular Islamic leader who takes on the West, India and even China. He has thus thrown the gauntlet to Macron.

Erdogan has geopolitical reasons to rile Macron. Turkey and France are on opposing sides in Libya’s civil war as well as the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. France has deployed jets and frigates to counter Turkish oil and gas exploration in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Now, the two countries are squaring off on religion.

The Turkish president is not alone in Macron. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has also accused Macron of “attacking Islam.” Erdogan is urging a boycott of French goods. Many others in the Muslim are also calling for such a boycott. Some shops in Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar have already removed French products. Protests have broken out in Libya, Syria and Gaza.

Secularism vs. Faith

Erdogan’s actions and the support they have garnered raise uncomfortable questions. In the Westphalian system of nation-states, what right does he have to tell Macron how to run his country? More importantly, his rhetoric raises a key question about the world. Who decides what is offensive? Can a popularly elected leader of a former imperial power speak up for co-religionists to another former imperial power or anyone else? If so, are we seeing a drift toward Samuel Huntington’s famous proposition about a clash of civilizations?

This question assumes importance in the light of the past. When Spanish conquistadores took over Latin America, they did not just rape, torture and kill. They killed the local gods and ensured the triumph of the Christian one. In “Things Fall Apart,” the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe chronicles how Christianity went hand in hand with colonization in Africa. In India, Muslim invaders sacked temples. In Iran, Safavids destroyed Sunni mosques and converted them into Shia ones. In recent years, many have seen secularism as a way out of this maze of centuries-old religious conflict.

Intellectually, secularism is the legacy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It involves the shrinking of religion from the public to the private sphere. After all, religious wars tore apart Europe for more than a century and a half. Today, France is thankfully not ruled according to l’ancien regime’s of “un roi, une foi, une loi” (one king, one faith, one law). Unlike Huguenots, Muslims have not been subjected to St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. ����ï������é may not be perfect, but it is much better than the alternative.

Unfortunately, Muslim societies have failed to embrace secularism. From Indonesia and Pakistan to Iran and Turkey, there is a disturbing intolerance afoot. Of course, the West fanned the flames, but now this conflagration inspired by religion is singeing societies, states and even the international order. Earlier this year, the Islamic State group Sikhs in Kabul. By September, most of the Hindus and Sikhs Afghanistan. It is important to note that these communities had lived in Afghanistan for centuries and even stayed on during the heydays of the Taliban.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of American-style capitalism to provide prosperity or opportunity, people are turning again to religion. On October 22, a Polish court banned almost all . In Eastern Europe and Russia, the influence of the church has been increasing. Even benign Buddhists have turned malign and are targeting minorities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Yet the scale of what is going on in the Muslim world is different. There are tectonic shifts underway from Islamabad to Istanbul that are disturbing. Minorities are fleeing Muslim countries and radical Islamists like Anzorov are taking to the sword.

Does Macron have a point? Is Islam truly in crisis?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2016, following Brexit and Donald Trump’s election in the US, populist extremism appeared to have overtaken the English-speaking world. It was rapidly spreading across Europe and elsewhere. The most obvious populists are branded right-wing. They demonstrate a taste for nationalism, authoritarianism and majoritarianism. They include Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban. The left-wing populists appear as reformers and even revolutionaries, ready to upset the status quo and alienate any number of vested interests. They include Bernie Sanders, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In 2017, Macron miraculously parted the waters of the French political Red Sea when he managed to split the political spectrum down the middle, neutralizing the traditional ruling parties on the right and left. As a centrist, he claimed to be capable of embracing the diversity of the nation. During his electoral campaign, he reached out to Barack Obama, who publicly supported him. This bolstered the image of Macron as an open-minded, globalizing liberal. The former Rothschild banker also had his neoliberal credentials, affirming his identification with the mainstream values of the existing economic superstructure, the traditional enemy of both right-wing and left-wing populists.

Emmanuel Macron’s Campaign to Stifle Debate in France

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So why is Macron now embracing Islamophobia, the policy most clearly associated with right-wing populism? Can it be that the centrist Macron, who has built the strongest part of his reputation on the anti-nationalistic idea of strengthening the European Union, is at heart a populist? 

Writing in The Conversation, Charles Barthold and Marin Fougère what may be called the populist method of French president: “Macron crafts his speeches to cater to the emotions and demands of the public, be it through ramping up the rhetoric on climate change or pushing for further European Union integration — whether or not he actually has the policies to match his words.” He shares with pure populists a deep sense of electoral opportunism. He simply lacks the fanatically loyal base that they cultivate and seek to excite.

With the trial of the authors of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in the news, Macron has decided to use his pulpit to about the largely discredited thesis Samuel Huntington famously launched in 1993: . In what sounds like a call to arms, Macron says “we must attack radical Islamism.” He offers this deliberately vague but hugely provocative historical judgment: “Islam is a religion experiencing a crisis today, everywhere in the world.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Experiencing a crisis:

The usual diagnosis made by those undergoing a crisis against those whom they seek to use as a scapegoat to explain their own crisis.

Contextual Note

Macron attempts to clarify the nature of the crisis when he explains that it concerns “tensions between fundamentalisms.” What does he mean? Is he referring to the rivalry between Sunnis and Shia? Are the “religious and political projects” he mentions those of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran? He never clarifies this. His aim is less to elucidate historical trends than to exploit a sense of fear.

The full text of reveals his intentions. He introduces his remarks on the crisis of Islam by proudly pointing to his own “humility.” He admits he is not a specialist. In other words, what he is about to say has no scientific authority. Instead, he generously offers “to share his understanding of things as he sees them.” After all, who needs experts when everyone knows that what counts are the subjective feelings of a leader? The method resembles Donald Trump’s, who routinely excoriates experts as frauds. The gentler and subtler Macron uses the prestige of his office to simply leave the experts on the sidelines.

Macron follows this up with a laughably incoherent allusion to a nation he calls “our friend, Tunisia.” He explains that “Thirty years ago, the situation was radically different in the application of this religion, the way of living it, and the tensions that we live in our society are present in this one which is undoubtedly one of the most educated, developed in the region.” Is he more surprised by the fact that some things change over time or that some educated people may not think and act in the same way he does? Both can be attributed to a special form of French, and Macronian, hubris.

Macron resorts to the method of sounding logical when he announces: “There is therefore a crisis of Islam.” “Therefore” implies that the evidence he has presented concerning Tunisia is conclusive. The debate is over. He has made his case. That enables him to lament a “reinvented jihad” which he oddly defines as “the destruction of the other.” He then describes the litany of horrors routinely cited by Islamophobes across the globe. He even obeys the command enjoined by hosts of Fox News or Bill Maher to “say the words” and identify the evil: “We must name it.” Naming is blaming, and clearly Islam is to blame, a message he expects the non-Muslim voting majority of France to appreciate.

Macron clearly believes Islamophobia is a winning strategy. But France, unlike the United States, is a nation that also appreciates intellectual nuance. And so the president goes on to admit, in a way that Trump would never be tempted to do, that his nation bears some of the blame for today’s evils by allowing ghettoes to be created and failing to realize �����澱��é, a French word for integration. He even refers to the failure of France to come to terms with the trauma of its colonial past, while at the same time demonstrating his own obvious failure to do so.  

Historical Note

Macron’s party, La République en Marche! (Republic on the Move, or EM!), is an example of what the French call bricolage, meaning basically cobbling things together and hoping they work. The fact that his party is still more or less intact says less about Macron’s political skills than it does about the sclerosis of the Fifth Republic’s political institutions and the dominant, if not regal role of the president.

From the start, EM! was a dog’s dinner. Now it is at risk of spilling out of the bowl at any moment. That may explain why Macron occasionally feels the need for a populist fix, and Islamophobia is the only reliable fix for a centrist. For decades the Le Pens, both father and daughter, have deftly exploited the growing anti-immigrant sentiment of the working class. Thanks to that strategy, Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly National Front) managed to capture what was once the Communist Party’s working-class constituency after it had fallen into irrelevance.

The difference between Macron’s electorally convenient Islamophobia and Marine Le Pen’s becomes clear in his discourse. He wants Muslims to integrate, to become ordinary French people, whereas Le Pen — like Trump in reference to certain young, darker-skinned legislators — simply wants them to “go home.” Presumably, Macron and Le Pen would be satisfied if the Muslims simply stayed out of sight. But that would pose another problem. It would remove the convenient distraction of blaming another culture for the failures of one’s own.  

France and other European nations share with the United States an underlying problem rooted in their history. Just as the US has never managed to come to grips with its slaveholding past, former European colonial empires have never worked out how to deal not just with their own colonial history. To some extent, this reflects and incapacity to deal with history itself, whose reality they prefer to deny. This is especially true of France, a nation that, like the US, believes its own political culture of human rights and the championing of freedom represents universal norms. Both the French and the Americans should ask themselves this question: Who is experiencing the deepest crisis today? The answer should be obvious.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron, France’s Islamophobe-in-Chief appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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How do we know this? Simple. Ask Boris Johnson. Or Joe Biden. Or Emmanuel Macron. They are all looking to Franklin D. Roosevelt for inspiration, the man credited with finding a response to the first Great Depression in the 1930s and thereby saving liberal capitalism from the communist wave that had already taken over Russia and the fascist tsunami that was spilling across Germany, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula.

For years, Bernie Sanders has been recommending the Rooseveltian model as a preventive measure in expectation of unnamed disasters to come. But no one feared a depression while believing that our leaders know how to handle recessions. Politicians, pundits and bankers could dismiss Senator Sanders as an out-of-touch old politician playing the role of pied piper by attracting gullible youngsters to his antiquated cause.

The Frailty of White Fragility

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The “squad” that emerged after the 2018 midterm elections in the US, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, modernized Sanders’ theme. In a brilliant rebranding exercise, they picked up the reference to Roosevelt’s New Deal and dropped the color “Green” in front of it. Critics, nevertheless, dismissed it as an irrelevant example of tree-hugging whose principal purpose was to hamburgers as well as people’s guns.

In December 2019, Boris Johnson, the UK’s favorite post-Python political agitator, handily defeated the hyper-Rooseveltian Jeremy Corbyn, proving once and for all the insignificance of the historically discredited Keynesian reasoning applied by Roosevelt. Margaret Thatcher’s legacy was destined to live on once Prime Minister Johnson managed to “get Brexit done.”

Then, just as the world was resigned to witnessing the final chaotic act of Brexit and four more years of Donald Trump in the White House, COVID-19 crashed the party and brutally changed everyone’s perception of the economy. Digging out their cookbooks from the 1930s, the leaders of the West suddenly went searching for FDR’s secret recipe.

The New York Times the fruit of Boris’ research: “Mr. Johnson, regrouping after a rocky three months of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, has invoked Roosevelt’s name and the legacy of the New Deal in promising that the British government will intensify its plans for ambitious public works projects and other spending to recover from the outbreak.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

New Deal:

Something more modern than old deals and different from any of the fanciful deals contained in Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” an idea originating in the world of poker where the truly competent dealer knows how to deal from the bottom of the deck without being detected

Contextual Note

Writing for The Guardian, Heather Steward and Larry Elliot their doubts about Johnson’s sincerity: “Some observers derided Johnson’s suggestion that his plan bore any resemblance to the 1930s White House.” One commentator, Professor Anand Menon, deems that the notion that Johnson might “turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful.” This wouldn’t be the first time Johnson has made fanciful claims for political purposes.

Most progressives in the US remain highly skeptical of Joe Biden’s bid to be the FDR. The fact that he has surrounded himself with personalities such as the former head of the Treasury, Larry Summers, and the chief of staff under the Obama administration, Rahm Emmanuel, justifies their suspicions. Both men are proponents of Wall Street-style democracy, which generally means socialism for the banks and capitalistic risk for the people. They are “New Democrats,” not “New Dealers.”

The New Democrats, under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, expurgated the last traces of Rooseveltian logic from the Democratic Party in their quest to define a “third way.” It ultimately boiled down to embracing the trickle-down economics that had long been the orthodoxy of Republicans, dating back at least to Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

On June 28, France’s Emmanuel Macron suffered a potentially debilitating humiliation at the polls in the final phase of local elections, which had been brutally interrupted by the lockdown that began the day after the first round in March. Contrary to the expectations of some, President Macron’s centrist party isn’t being overtaken by the traditional right that seemed on the verge of taking over the government in 2017. Nor is he being challenged by the traditional French left that had gone through its own phase of “third way” style accommodation of dominant financial interests before being discredited for doing so under the presidency of Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party. Instead, the Green party has emerged as the channel the people have chosen to express the emotions that were visibly present in the yellow vest movement.

And so, the day after watching the Green party take over numerous major towns in France, Macron is reduced to : “The time has come to do something.” He promises that he wants “to go further.” He hasn’t yet mentioned Roosevelt, but at the beginning of the pandemic, Macron evoked the spirit of World War II and the vital importance of the welfare state. The reinforced opposition has proposed a French version of the Green New Deal, but without the radical scope of the American one. Macron has now verbally accepted to act on nearly all of its hundreds of demands.

As of today, the next American FDR, Joe Biden, has no power to act. As the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he simply hopes the trends continue culminating in his election in November. How he will elect to play the FDR role nobody can foresee. The only thing certain about Boris Johnson is that he will remain a fanciful politician. Emmanuel Macron has the best chance of succeeding, not because of his own position or authority, but because he may manage to move the poker game to the European level with the help of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. The obstacles are great, but if the two accomplices can make some headway, there’s a slight chance that Macron can stabilize things, provided he finds a way of meeting what may be a bigger challenge: bringing the ecologists on board.

The only thing that’s certain is that uncertainty reigns at a moment in history where the price to pay — in the case both of success and failure — is going to be prodigious.

Historical Note

The idea of a “new deal” arose somewhat spontaneously in American literature in the 1880s as the awareness of the injustice and inequality bred by the excesses of what Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age” began to trouble the minds of creative writers. In his novel, “The Princess Casamassima, Henry James had the princess make this comment: “I’m one of those who believe that a great new deal is destined to take place … I believe, in a word, in the action of people for themselves … and I’m ready to act with them — in any intelligent or intelligible way.”

In his satirical narrative, “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” Twain’s time-traveling hero, a modern American transported to Arthurian Britain, attempts to transform the economy along modern lines and at one point says: “I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.”

Whether some 40 years later Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware of what two of the nation’s greatest writers were thinking in the face of the excesses of industrial capitalism, the idea of “a new deal” had clearly taken root in the American psyche. Now, nearly a century after FDR, can the leaders of the developed nations find a way of reshuffling their cards and offering a new deal? The answer to that question will depend on whether they can manage to get the deck in their own hands. For the moment, it seems to be held firmly in the grip of those who control the flow of money. Most governments lost that control long ago, even before Roosevelt.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Who’s the Dealer and What’s the Deal? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Hospitals Once Offered Charity — Now They Demand It

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The minister began his response by, “I am strongly attached to public debate.” That sounded like an invitation to the kind of discussion that is now taking place in the US following nationwide protests after Floyd’s death in police custody. Castaner appeared to be calling for the debate to begin. But to clarify what he meant, Castaner added, “The freedom of public debate doesn’t allow anyone to say everything and anything.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Public debate:

A space occupied for a majority of the time by public authorities in purportedly democratic nations, who have designed it as an environment to stimulate discourse approving their actions, but which is occasionally disturbed by individuals who allow themselves to deviate from the approved discourse before being promptly and publicly reprimanded and branded as mendacious and disloyal

Contextual Note

Castaner’s statement cited above contains two significant words in the French original. “Everything” is the unambiguous translation of “tout.” “Anything” is a colorless attempt to translate the expression “n’importe quoi,” which literally means “no matter what.” The expression is commonly used in everyday parlance to dismiss a proposition, a suggestion or an idea as totally absurd, inappropriate, ridiculous, defying belief or simply untrue. The tone that accompanies it is far more arrogant and condescending than its translation, “anything.” In some contexts, it’s the polite and indirect French equivalent of “bullshit.”

The minister was reacting to the assertion of the French-Algerian actress and singer Camelia Jordana, who,during an interview on French national television, to claim that “Men and women who work in the suburbs get massacred for no other reason than the color of their skin. It’s a fact.”

In a true debate, Castaner might focus on the exaggeration conveyed by the idea of a massacre. He might also engage with the idea that it isn’t only the color of their skin, but also the culture within which minorities are confined through a policy of governmental and social neglect with regard to education and social services. But, in a true public debate, Jordana might then answer that race becomes the outward sign of the cultural divide based on historical injustice. She might also add that by specifically designating the suburbs, she was calling attention to the contemporary socio-geographic reality of French society.

But for all his sworn attachment to public debate, Castaner prefers to cut it short. In this instance, he used a rhetorical strategy popular in France that consists of redefining the term one is using to make it appear to mean the opposite of what everyone takes it to mean. He defines debate not by what it allows but by what it presumably forbids, and, in his reading, that includes “everything” and “anything” (or any old bullshit). 

The French adore debating and are generally very good at it, though they do have a tendency to privilege rhetoric over logic. Good debate should seek a balance between the two. It would have sounded highly unpatriotic — indeed un-French — for Castaner to deny his attachment to public debate. It would be like an American insulting the flag. But his (and French President Emmanuel Macron’s) manner of “debating” the yellow vests movement during their protests was closer to US President Donald Trump’s in the face of the protests in America over Floyd’s death — though without the tweets — than it was to the great tradition of public debate dating back to France’s 18th-century Enlightenment.

Historical Note

The debates of the Enlightenment had an important historical effect. In 1789, the French people revolted against the monarchy. When the dust first cleared, they had theoretically abolished class privilege and promoted the notion of equality, giving a voice to the people. Although it wasn’t immediate, and there were very significant lapses into empire as well as restoration of the monarchy, by the end of the 19th century, France had settled on democracy as the best embodiment of its values made sacred by the revolution: “�����������é, é����������é, �ڰ����ٱ���Ծ���é.” Those three ideals define the conditions in which public debate becomes not only possible but necessary.

Public debate stands as the bedrock of any democracy since laws cannot be drafted and adopted without debate. The minister of a nation that takes liberty, equality and fraternity seriously ought to understand that public debate is all about allowing discussion to occur before any definitive political position can be established. It not only permits but encourages the confrontation of disparate ideas, some of which may end up discredited after debate has offered the justification for doing so, but never before the debate has actually occurred.

The European Scientific Journal offers a of public debate that most people find reasonable: “Public debate is essentially a series of forums where people’s opinions, interests and expectations are expressed on an issue that concerns the whole or part of the society.” It further defines the process of debate, which takes place through forums “that bear the traces of how people wish to be governed in the context of preferences and expectations that have been voiced.” More significantly, it underscores the goal of public debate, reducing to a minimum the “risk of power abuse … in an administration which is constantly supervised and held accountable through public debate.”

Despite its spectacular revolution, France has never quite abandoned the idea of royal privilege. Under the current Fifth Republic (founded in 1958), France has seen several presidents who, despite the nation’s democratic institutions, thought of themselves and their authority as beyond or above debate. The founder of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle, set the standard simply by being such an imposing figure thanks to his physique (just under 6 feet, 4 inches tall), his legendary status as the general of the resistance, and his air of military authority as he reigned — rather than presided — over the democratic institutions defined in its new constitution.

The Fifth Republic has seen a curious alternance between tall and short presidents. De Gaulle, Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Chirac were tall and used that feature to affirm their authority. Three rather diminutive (height-challenged) presidents — Francois Mitterand, Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron — invented ways of appearing to stand above their taller contemporaries. 

During his 14 years in office, Mitterand’s lordly behavior led satirists to refer to him as “Dieu” (God). A family relates that at 14, young Francois, who pondered entering a seminary, claimed, “I want to be king or pope.” �մǻ岹��’s rather short president, Macron, achieved the monumental feat in 2017 of splitting the powerful parties on the left and the right to assume the presidency, just as Moses split the Red Sea. Upon taking office, Macron famously invoked the notion of being a .

Sarkozy was a bit different. The French called him “Sarko ��’A��é������������” (the American) because of his taste for bling-bling, celebrity culture and the idea in his mind that he could rise to the level of imperial power he associated with contemporary American presidents… without even managing to speak English (his celebrity wife, Carla Bruni, handled that for him).

When Christophe Castaner defends the police against those who have noticed their systematic brutality toward minorities, he is acting not as a participant in a public debate, but as the minister who is there to execute Jupiter’s will. For all his lip service toward national solidarity, Macron is positioning himself as a president of law and order. He is due to speak on the subject on June 14. But he has already made a designed to set the tone: “Academia is the guilty party” (“le monde universitaire a été coupable”). Their specific crime is “the ethnicization of the social question” (translation: playing the race card).

In other words, all the blame belongs to those whose profession consists of researching and feeding public debate.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron’s Campaign to Stifle Debate in France appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The News Media and Public Health Crises

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Trump has already been lauded by the media for launching missiles at Syria and Iraq and has consistently, albeit much more discreetly, drone-bombed numerous other countries across the globe. At the same time, his administration has assisted Saudi Arabia in the destruction of lives, mosques and hospitals in Yemen. Yet Trump has, for the first time, unabashedly the coveted status of being a wartime president. 

In 2001, President Bush initiated his “global war on terror” against an elusive enemy adept at making itself invisible. Trump can far more credibly proclaim that he’s at war with an “invisible enemy” — invisible, that is, to anyone not equipped with a microscope. There are, after all, many ways of being invisible. Bush’s terrorist enemies made themselves invisible to ordinary surveillance and military technology. The novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, may be visible under a microscope, but people transmit it invisibly to others, which is far more frightening.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Wartime president:

1. A synonym for president of the United States, a nation that is almost constantly involved in wars (226 out of its 244 years of existence, according to some accounts).

2. An honorary title for specific US presidents who take pride in pointing to what the public perceives as the unequivocally evil nature of their enemy

Contextual Note

CNN notes that when it no longer appeared tenable to dismiss the coronavirus as a minor inconvenience, Trump from reassuring the nation and underplaying the drama to resolutely rising to the occasion in the role of the heroic leader. “Trump now views the crisis at hand as a once-in-a-generation battle — a reality that people around him have been trying to convey for weeks,” CNN reports.

Like French President Emmanuel Macron, who in a recent televised address repeated over and over again the phrase, “we are at war,” Trump seems to have realized that leading the nation to battle can be a winning electoral strategy. It may indeed be the only one possible after weeks of seeming indifference to a challenge he repeatedly called the third major hoax, following the Mueller investigation and his inconsequential impeachment.

Trump’s new discourse and tone represent an attempt to recall the spirit of heroism and solidarity associated with the memories of the nation’s response to World War II. At a White House briefing, he : “Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation.” Calling attention to his duty as president to join Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt in a noble historic mission, Trump added: “Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together.”

The contrast between the three Western leaders most prominently in news — Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron — in their handling of the struggle to defeat the coronavirus tells an interesting story about the leaders themselves and the cultures of three nations.

Macron was the first to step up. In a televised address, he set the tone a week ago by invoking the spirit of wartime sacrifice that should guide the French as a nation in combating the threat of the coronavirus. He followed up on March 16 with another televised address and his explicit call to war while announcing strictly enforced measures of sequestration for the entire citizenry. His authority — for once appearing “Jupiterian” (an of Macron’s) — was accepted and even welcomed by the population.

Trump at first hesitated, even about the nature of his role, since as US president he has no direct authority over the states and cities. He then realized that as commander-in-chief, the crisis was inviting him to step into a role of authority and at least give the impression of being the knowledgeable leader capable of making things happen. But instead of imitating Macron and defining all the measures, Trump, in his role as capitalist-in-chief, called together the CEOs of private companies whom the population could trust to organize the war against the enemy.

Trump’s verbal hesitation and shaky grammar when he finally did blurt out the idea of being a “wartime president” on March 18 showed that unlike Bush with the global war on terror or Barack Obama when he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Trump sees it as more of an electoral roleplay than a mission. Moreover, that Trump “seemed to minimize the urgency of the decision, later tweeting that he ‘only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.’” He added this : “Hopefully there will be no need.’” And by insisting on calling it the “Chinese Virus,” Trump persisted in treating it as somebody else’s problem.

Macron predictably affirmed the preeminent role of the Jacobin state to put things in order. Trump is playing on the quintessentially American political meme of the public sector sounding tough while relying on the private sector to get things done.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson provides an interesting contrast. The Guardian notes that for a man who claims to adulate Winston Churchill and has even written a of the legendary prime minister, Johnson displays a very un-Churchillian allergy to mobilizing the population by appealing to the citizens’ patriotic duty. Instead of “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Johnson has spent the week standing up for an Englishman’s right to stand at the bar and order another pint (of bitter, of course). 

Writing in The Guardian, political editor Heather Stewart that “nothing in Johnson’s background or political makeup have prepared him for telling the British public to stay out of the pub.” She adds: “He has so far been unable to muster either the dirigisme of Emmanuel Macron or the moral heft of Leo Varadkar when urging the public to do the right thing, and stay at home.”

Historical Note

The lesson of this comparison of two presidents and a prime minister facing a situation they see as comparable to war is as clear as it is amusing.

France beheaded its last Bourbon king in 1793 and subsequently flirted with two dynastic emperors, before settling on the first of five Republics in the course of the 19th century. Yet its culture has consistently remained compatible with the principles of monarchy. Charles De Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and even Giscard d’Estaing cultivated a certain panache of monarchy in their style of governing, spreading a royal fragrance like pheromones in every corner of the republic. While throughout the Fifth Republic presidents insisted on the principle of democracy, Emmanuel Macron was the first to consciously evoke the idea of the president’s royal prerogatives, giving it a classical twist with his idea of Jupiterian rule.

Boris Johnson presides over the nation that long ago adopted as its motto: “Every Englishman’s home is his castle.” The proverb was 400 years ago but, contrary to the current reaction to the coronavirus outbreak, retreating to one’s castle had nothing to do with social distancing. Instead, it pointed to the sacred rights of individuals who, within their private realms, could be a law unto themselves. When they exercised the same rights in the public sphere, they were simply called “eccentric” and often admired for it. The English will always think of themselves as free as long as they observe the rule of fair play that they believe effectively governs social relations. All of this highlights the fact that Johnson is very much an Englishman rather than a Briton.

Winston Churchill, the half-American British aristocrat descended from a legendary 18th-century general, the Duke of Marlborough, hailed from a different tradition that combined an American “can do” force of will with an atavistic nostalgia for the glory of formal combat that turned him into the perfect wartime prime minister capable of resisting Adolf Hitler (with a little help from his American friends). 

This brings us back to the American, Donald Trump, a businessman-turned-politician, who has consistently bowed to the great 19th-century tradition of the snake oil salesman. He’ll make the promises people want to hear, but never overcommits. He shamelessly backtracks when challenged, claiming that whatever pleases the crowd and appears to be most effective is what he meant all along. As a salesman, he’s all things to all men: a living oxymoron; an anti-racist white supremacist; a wartime president intent on bringing back the troops (and then leaving them on the battlefield); a “grab them by the pussy” man who respects women; and a person concerned with everyone’s health, except those who are weak-willed enough to get sick. Like all Americans, he’s task-oriented and can sacrifice a principle or two to focus on the task and then congratulate himself on getting it done. Trump’s main task today is to get reelected in November. That’s what he is now focusing on.

Trump profits from the federal concept at the core of America’s political system. Not only does that mean a few unrepresentative states (swing states) — rather than the people of the nation — elect the president through the Electoral College, but it also means that coherent and consistent decision-making is no single person’s or even institution’s responsibility because decisions, however cacophonous and poorly coordinated, are every state’s or even city’s responsibility.

That means presidents and even legislatures are free to talk tough and act weak. It ensures that rhetoric becomes not just the primary political activity, but practically the only one. The content of laws and policies is defined by those who have an interest in a particular sector of the economy (lobbyists), not by the people’s representatives, who simply vote on the proposals. At the same time, the executive assumes the job of enforcing the laws thus defined and defending the interests of those same interests who finance their campaigns.

At least that’s how it works in normal times. In a crisis, the people have different, more immediate expectations. They know the rhetoric will be there. They can simply hope that the action evoked in the rhetoric will come to be. And depending on the severity of the crisis, they may at some point try to hold the rhetoricians responsible. That’s what happened after 1929. It nearly happened after 2008, but the rhetoricians managed to hold off the assault (Tea Party, Occupy). This time may be different. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What It Means to be a Wartime President appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The emphasis on European solidarity came naturally to Macron. It’s the one area in which the bitterly contested president has shown some leadership skill as he has consistently sought to reinforce France’s position in Europe, both in relation to Brexit and the decline of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dominant role on the continent.

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Yet Macron surprised even his most acerbic critics. Not only did he describe the measures of his comprehensive plan to safeguard the integrity of the nation and the well-being of its people from the existential threat of an undeniably growing coronavirus pandemic, but he also insisted that the collective needs of the people and the government’s solidarity with them have absolute priority over the desires of the elite.

Macron went much further, invoking a “rupture” with the “failed” values of the free market and proclaiming that “it is now the time for a sacred union in which all together we follow the same path.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Sacred union:

An idea focused on recognizing a common purpose that brings an entire population together in the face of a threat from outside forces, a welcome and useful tool for contested political leaders who are pleased to invoke the principle as a means of neutralizing opposition to their own politics

Contextual note

Early commentators don’t seem to have noticed the extent to which everything Macron proposed in his address contrasts radically with the positions and rhetoric of US President Donald Trump. More broadly, by specifically lauding the welfare state, President Macron challenges the approach of American politicians to the pandemic, with the notable exception of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. 

Whereas Trump minimizes the threat of the coronavirus pandemic and congratulates himself on doing just enough to keep things under control — while insisting, against all evidence, that things already are under control — Macron and Sanders both invoke the gravity of a situation they deem comparable to a state of war. Sanders, who is running in the Democratic presidential primaries,: “The crisis we face from the coronavirus is on a scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly.”

Macron, in words that would not sound foreign coming from Sanders, unequivocally proclaimed that “free health care, without any restricting condition of income, path to treatment or profession and our welfare state [é�ٲ���-����DZ������Գ���] are not costs or charges but precious goods, indispensable assets when crises occur.” He added: What this pandemic reveals is that there are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market. To delegate our food, our protection, our standard of living to others is madness.”

Although he has the reputation in France of a neoliberal ideologue, Macron not only echoed Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, but he clearly felt the duty to respond to Trump’s 30-day travel ban that had been announced the same day concerning flights from Europe. Macron appeared intent on profiting directly from the weakened position of Trump, whose reaction to the pandemic reveals him to be an ignorant and irresolute executive utterly lacking in empathy for real people. In his speech, Macron promised to call Trump the following day with the idea of forcing the US president to coordinate a response at the G7 level, something that Trump, clinging to his “America First” policy, would be unlikely to do.

Macron may also have noticed that Trump has used the crisis not to unify his nation, but as a means of contrasting the Democratic and Republican interpretations of the global pandemic. Trump has encouraged the idea that the Democrats have fabricated another “hoax” to follow Russiagate and the failed attempt at destitution through impeachment. President Macron drew a sharp contrast between their two approaches to the pandemic: “It isn’t division that will allow us to respond to a global crisis,” he said.

In his most spectacular divergence from President Trump, whose first instinct was to consult Wall Street barons to ensure the liquidity that could prevent a recession, Macron directly eschews the idea of trusting the markets. He announced that he doesn’t “know what the financial markets will do in the coming days,” almost as if to say that he doesn’t care. Only the people count, not the markets. Instead, Macron promised that Europe will undertake whatever is necessary to protect its economy and that France will spare no cost in meeting the needs of its population.

Here are some of the key phrases that Macron used to highlight his commitment and his train of thought: “act as one” (faire bloc), “individual and collective discipline,” “unity,” “avoid the retreat to nationalism or individualism,” “unite our forces,” “coordinate our forces,” “cooperate,” “European coordination,” “invent new solidarities,” “national mobilization of solidarity between generations,” “act as a nation” (faire nation), “this period of new solidarities” and “our generous soul that allowed us to confront the toughest trials.”

But his speech took on a more radical tone when he invited the nation to “question the model of development that our world has adopted in recent decades, which has been exposed to the light of day the flaws that this pandemic has revealed.” This could have been spoken by Thomas Piketty, the best-selling French economist specialized in the critique of a neoliberal order that has generated ever-increasing inequality. 

This feels like a signal that Macron — whose electoral strategy over the past year has taken a turn to the right by embracing anti-Muslim xenophobia — sees an opportunity to harness a different populist trend, one that emphasizes solidarity rather than exclusion. It could be an effective electoral strategy for a centrist president who appeared lost in the undefined and undefinable political center that emerged as his pathway to victory in 2017 when the establishment parties, left and right, miraculously imploded.

Many people who saw Macron as an arrogant elitist may now take a different view of a president who affirms that the pandemic has exposed the Western-dominated economy as incapable of addressing any of the increasingly intractable problems that now face humanity, which include the growing reaction against structural inequality, the climate crisis and pandemics.

As Bob Dylan once said, this time with possibly more impact than in the 1960s, “the times they are a-changin’.” At the same moment as Macron’s address, Neil Irwin, senior economics correspondent at The New York Times, about “signs — not definitive, but worrying — that something is breaking down in the workings of the financial system, even if it’s not totally clear what that is just yet.”

With Joe Biden as the frontrunner in the Democratic primaries, it may well be too late for Sanders to have an impact on the US presidency, yet his campaign seems to be producing fruit at the highest levels in France.

Historical note

Emmanuel Macron clearly understood that history could provide him with the means of saving his contested presidency. In the context of his speech seeking to motivate the nation, the idea of the sacred union sounded like a convenient rhetorical device, an appeal to the sense of solidarity of the French people. Most people may be unaware of it, but the “union sacrée” was a real historical movement of political unity launched by French President Raymond Poincaré at the start of the First World War. It permitted the nation to overcome the divisions that had troubled French politics in the leadup to the conflict.

Perhaps echoing Bernie Sanders, Macron cleverly appealed to the sense of threat that people associate with war. On several occasions in his speech, he evoked, without naming them, the memory of past wars, speaking of the “toughest trials” the French had faced in former times. Unlike the recent wars and military operations in which France, along with the neoliberal order, has participated — notably in Afghanistan, Libya and in other regions of Africa — the French remember the two world wars of the 20th century as moments of history in which their culture and national integrity were threatened by evil external forces. That is a sentiment much more powerful than the artificially induced motivation for using superior technology to attack distant countries because they may be breeding individuals capable of an occasional terrorist attack inside France.

The great advantage of the coronavirus pandemic is that there is no evil party to blame, which means it cannot be the object of political controversy. No one is siding with the virus. More significantly, for the first time since the Vietnam War, Western countries feel threatened not by abstract threats that occasionally produce spectacular, very real criminal incidents that the media can make no sense of (they routinely call terrorist acts and mass shootings “senseless”), but by something directly threatening everyone’s livelihood. Our civilization has been waiting to see a sign not just that the system raised some hypersensitive and violent people’s hackles — who in “hate us for our freedoms” — but that it was deeply flawed.

Just as Sanders still appears to be the only prominent American politician with a message about how structurally flawed the system itself is — something he has been preaching for the past 30 years — Macron appears to be the first leader of a Western nation to make that simple observation.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron Rallies Around Bernie to Save France appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In an highlighting the unique focus of serious media in the US on the unrest in Hong Kong at a time when significant protest movements have emerged across the globe, media analyst Alan MacLeod reminds us that “2019 may be remembered as the year of the protest, as demonstrations are engulfing the world.” He cites some examples: “From the Yellow Vests in France to demonstrations in Lebanon, Gaza, Chile, Ecuador and Haiti, sustained movements all over the planet have taken to the street demanding change.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Sustained:

Maintained for the period of time that takes a phenomenon beyond the status of ephemeral and indicates that it will be taken seriously by those interested in analyzing current events, with the exception of mainstream news media who see little value in what isn’t ephemeral

Contextual Note

Good news reporting involves describing with objectivity significant events taking place in the world. The events reported in the news can always be broken down into two categories: dramatic events and significant events. Some events — such as accidents or even many crimes — are dramatic but not significant. Others are significant without being dramatic, such as the House of Representatives hearings on the Trump impeachment, which Fox News complained lacked sex and drama. The best events to report are both dramatic and significant. Political protests tend to fall into that category.

To the extent that the criterion of significance conditions editorial selection, not only the facts of the events but also their meaning should be highlighted in responsible news stories. The lazy tack taken by many mainstream media today — at least concerning events that include some form of conflict — consists of reporting the facts and then, instead of delving into their meaning, simply reporting the opinions of people on both sides of the conflict. This means that even great societal problems are treated in the same way as a case of sexual assault, on the “he said/she said” basis. It also means that the problems reported on are treated as isolated events that stem from the disagreement of the “he’s” and the “she’s” involved in the events.

Disagreement is drama. One of the things that FAIR has noticed is that the news media prefer highlighting the drama to exploring the significance, especially if doing so would involve critiquing its readers’ assumptions. This is especially true if the owners of the media and/or their advertisers prefer to protect those assumptions.

FAIR takes the example of what many consider to be the most reliable and legitimate corporate media in the US: The New York Times and CNN. MacLeod highlights the fact that those media have made a point of selecting what they report and neglected to report on events that could contribute to the understanding of the events they chose to feature.

That neglect has enabled them to avoid reflecting on the very real historical significance of any of the events. Like climate change, the world is undergoing a disruptive and potentially massive destructive change in its understanding and practice of politics, especially politics executed in the name of democracy. Like climate change, this has produced a deep malaise in many nations.

FAIR remarks that, despite the global dimension of the malaise, US news media have focused only on the protests in Hong Kong. What the combination of protests demonstrates is that the potential for destabilizing regimes that claim to be democratic and, therefore, representative of the people is gaining steam. What they also appear to demonstrate is that the perception by the masses of the effects of a growing inequality of resources (money) and power has become the force driving these protests.

This perception has provided the factor that ensures their sustainability. Whereas protests in the past focused on single issues and could be solved by changes in policy, these will continue until they see a visible shift in the nature of the power structures that rule people’s lives. Minimal reforms or even more important ones that avoid calling into question the mechanics of inequality will only postpone the reckoning.

The yellow vest movement in France illustrates this aspect of the struggle. French President Emmanuel Macron counted on some carefully staged legal reforms and the effect of time (especially the traditional and sacred doldrums of the summer holidays) to take the wind out of the movement’s sails. It appeared to work. The media began announcing the end of the yellow vest movement.

Just this week, The Guardian offered this complacent (and mistaken), using the French term for yellow vests: “[Macron] has, more or less, fought off the gilets jaunes movement without doing a great deal for the struggling small towns and outer suburbs where it began.”

Many commentators in France assumed that the lack of serious organization and hierarchy among the yellow vests could only lead to failure. But the cause of their discontent lay deeper than the original pretext for the protests: rising gas prices. The movement quickly focused on the elitist culture symbolized by the president, an “é�Բ�����ܱ�” (a graduate of the hyper-exclusive School of Administration) and former Rothschild bank.

The embers of the resentment against privilege have remained alive to spark a new conflagration. What glowed yellow a year ago is now glowing red as the nation has embarked on a strike over today’s pretext: Macron’s retirement plan. The yellow vests and the unions, accompanied by retirees and even the police, have, increasingly intent on opposing the privileged caste that has ruled politics and the economy for decades.

Historical Note

While some of the protests are a response to very specific contexts of governmental or even personal abuse, many of them share common features that tell us something important about this special moment in history. Today, readers of the news can be entertained by such attention-grabbing events as Brexit and the Boris Johnson show, Democrats in the US charging the windmills of a Donald Trump impeachment, France’s yellow vests turning fashion into a means of political expression or Steve Bannon attempting to train populist gladiators.

None of these dramatic stories featuring larger-than-life personalities requires additional meaning to attract eyeballs and maintain suspense. The news services are thriving thanks to the superficial fireworks of events. And yet, even these stories are closely linked to something deeper belonging to the moment of history we are living in. In these columns, we have frequently referred to the “crisis of democracy,” a general trend that many have noticed even though it plays out differently according to the context.

A crisis of this type could be compared to a financial crash, such as that of 2008. The pillars of an existing system begin showing serious cracks and a number of edifices or institutions end up collapsing in front of the reporters’ very eyes.

Whatever solution our democratic or autocratic authorities end up proposing to quell the drama, and however effective such measures may be in the short or medium term, these events do more than cause immediate damage and suffering. They inevitably provoke or at least accelerate a paradigm shift by changing the entire population’s perception of how their institutions are structured and how they are meant to work. They deepen the gap between a perception that is becoming clearer and the official ideal (or ideology) of how things are meant to work.

As Al Jazeera, some of the high-profile activists in the protests have begun calling for “intersectional solidarity.” They see it as the key that would tie movements in distant places together, from “London to Beirut to Santiago and New Delhi.” To most serious observers, the creation of the equivalent of the Communist International seems highly unlikely.

Moreover, the idea that intersectionality could provide the key to making it happen — while pleasing to American and British activists focused on identity politics — appears to be delusional. Intersections allow people in vehicles to cross, not to meet, even less to discuss and plan. In any case, even if it were possible, we can count on the media to continue doing everything to prevent it not just from happening, but from being seen by anyone other than its official promoters.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The News Media’s Piano Lacks a Sustain Pedal appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This time, Trump claims to be retaliating against France’s effort to resist the unfettered domination of the giant American tech monopolies that have spread across global markets, leaving little margin of maneuver to potential competitors who can’t match their size and reach.

Encouraged by the US political establishment — despite the occasional misgiving about their nefarious effects on democracy and open markets — the quartet of leaders composed of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple has become a prime source of concentrated profit for a tiny percentage of the American population. In recent years, they have consistently pushed the stock market ever upward toward the stratosphere, a fact that President Trump takes great pride in.

Trump has announced he will be slapping 100% tariffs on a wide range of France’s famous luxury goods. This means the US market for these goods will soon be restricted to the billionaire and multimillionaire class, depriving LVMH, L’Oréal and Hermes of future sales to that very lucrative market segment that consists of the less affluent part of the population. These people are sensitive enough to react negatively to the doubling of the price of goods that they don’t really need but covet for their prestige factor. As for Trump, who prefers McDonald’s to foie gras and coke to champagne, he will experience no inconvenience.

France 24 the thought process behind the tariffs: “The US Trade Representative’s office said its ‘Section 301’ investigation found that the French tax was ‘inconsistent with prevailing principles of international tax policy, and is unusually burdensome for affected U.S. companies,’ including Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Burdensome:

Perceived as an undue and unnecessary annoyance by powerful persons or organizations who have become accustomed to being referred to and granted favors out of respect for their capacity to do harm to those who counter their wishes

Contextual Note

The terms of Trump’s threat are clear. The president believes the US has the exclusive right to define the tax laws of other countries that access services provided by US companies in what have become captive markets. The Europeans had no choice but to capitulate to the power of the US tech giants whose experts discovered how to profit from the diversity of Europe by seeking the most favorable tax arrangements. In contrast, the US, as a unified nation, can simply deploy its influence and Trump’s facility for imposing sanctions to punish each individual country in Europe that fails to comply with the global strategies of American companies.

Here is how the US Trade Representative (USTR) it: “The USTR is focused on countering the growing protectionism of EU member states, which unfairly targets U.S. companies, whether through digital services taxes or other efforts that target leading U.S. digital services companies.” 

What is the French digital tax in question? Euronews it as a 3% levy “on big technology companies with revenue of more than €750m ($830 million) of which at least €25m generated in France.” It describes how the “tech giants are able to pay little or no corporate tax in countries where they do not have a large physical presence” by declaring most of their profits in countries their headquarters are located.”

The French reject the accusation that the law “unfairly targets U.S. companies” because it aims at a type of company, not a particular nationality. It just so happens that the US has historically permitted and now encourages these de facto monopolies, despite occasional noise from Congress about antitrust investigations of Facebook in particular. 

Historical Note

Euronews provides the key to understanding the historical context of this trade war: “The French government says the tax will end if a similar measure is agreed internationally.”

In other words, the point of France’s initiative is not to contest US supremacy or punish American firms. Nor is it primarily to generate new revenue from the activities of American companies that profit from commercial activities in the French market. Rather, it is a principled effort to establish fiscal norms applying to commercial activity exercised by powerful international companies who have found devious ways designed to exploit a nation’s marketplace while escaping from its tax policies.

The law in question only applies to rich and powerful companies, since those earning less than €750 million globally or less than €25 million in France would be exonerated. The French see this as a step toward creating an even playing field for companies of any nationality that compete with the tech giants. Smaller companies unable to make the kinds of investments and deploy the kind of organization that permit the tech companies to dodge the local law would not be subject to the constraints the new law would impose on firms that use their vast resources to avoid paying taxes. 

The US government sees this as discriminatory and, in purely legal terms, they are right. Europe is looking for a way to discriminate not against US tech companies but against global monopolies, whatever their nationality. The Europeans are seeking to encourage smaller enterprises while at the same time harmonizing as best as they can the principle of tax revenues within their own free trade zone.

One simple comparative statistic tells the story from the European point of view. “The European Commission estimates that on average traditional businesses face a 23% tax rate on their profits within the EU, while internet companies typically pay 8% or 9%,” Euronews reports. The reason the tech giants pay so little is that, while they generate sales across the entire European economy, they are free to decide in which countries they will set up their headquarters with the sole criterion of funneling profit to places where taxes are the most favorable.

This practice violates the notion of competitive equality. Size and wealth provide a wildly disproportionate competitive advantage. And that is before taking into consideration the financial flexibility, the political influence and the comparative psychological clout the big tech companies exercise in the markets where they operate.

Politicians in the US, including Donald Trump, understand that monopoly is synonymous with power. US monopolies have become agents of American power in the world, the pillars of an empire. Many of them use their global flexibility to avoid paying taxes not just abroad but also at home, which penalizes the average American taxpayer and contributes to the growing inequality of income and wealth.

But President Trump knows that modern monopoly promotes the strength of the empire, so his government will defend “American interests” against the wily Europeans seeking to challenge an economic empire that increasingly tells its vassal states how to behave. In so doing, he is defending American corporate interests against the interest of the American people.

Despite Adam Smith and David Ricardo’s theories about the wealth of nations and the advantages of free trade, geopolitics in a capitalist system has never been about seeking the most efficient means of fulfilling human needs. Ever since the creation of the British East India Company in 1600, it has always been about consolidating power and wealth and serving the interests of a class of people who work together to co-manage the political system and the global economy. The more power and wealth become concentrated, the more the most powerful nations will focus on exercising and developing that power.

China, not Europe, represents the real challenge for the US today. Unlike Europe, China has no tax havens inside its own borders and no need to develop debates about what is fair or unfair. In contrast to both, France has decided to move ahead to set a precedent that may pave the way toward global legislation. As Euronews explains, “Brussels’ efforts stalled since an EU-wide levy has to be approved by all members, but Ireland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland raised objections.” France hopes that its example will provide a model for a global initiative.

The Americans may be right when they claim that the French tax will be “unusually burdensome for affected U.S. companies.” Pity the tech giants who may be saddled with a new burden that might compromise their prosperity. But in a world in which nationalism and capitalism combine to institute injustices that, more often than most would like to admit, include systemic racism, shouldn’t this be thought of — to quote Rudyard Kipling — as “the white man’s burden”?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Trump Arrives in Europe With a New Trade War appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One of the classic ploys is to borrow concepts from the US with a view to sounding more revolutionary than the Americans. It goes back to an 18th-century tradition. The American Revolution, launched in 1776, led to the colonists’ independence from the king of England. The French liked the idea and ran with it, pushing it to a higher, more centralized level of organized violence and radicalism in their revolution beginning in 1789 that clearly one-upped the Americans by beheading the king.

France has always had a vibrant intellectual culture. The French generally appreciate complexity and nuance and adore contradictory debate. But its political leaders know that one of the keys to electoral success is to promote ideas that sound original even when they lack substance or contradict reality.

France’s thinkers in the second half of the 20th century offered us precious insight into how all modern governments and social systems work. Back in the 1960s, Guy Debord “la société du spectacle,” which he saw as an inevitable consequence of the marriage of democracy and technology. Around the same time, Jean Baudrillard elaborated on the concept of “” that describes how a society with the means to fabricate an artificial version of reality comes to prefer it to its natural environment and believe in the tangible reality of an invented and industrially finished simulacrum.

In a Bloomberg with the title, “Emmanuel Macron’s Startup Nation Has an Old-School Dilemma,” the author, Lionel Laurent, describes one of President Macron’s “inspiring” themes to stimulate the economy. Laurent explains that, as with so many political themes that French governments expect people to rally around, Macron’s latest attempt has been greeted with criticism and contempt. “Given the slowly-rumbling backlash against ‘le startupisme’ and the rough performance of tech IPOs in the U.S., there’s probably not much time left to prove that French Tech hype is more than just political aspiration.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Startupsisme:

A policy invented by Emmanuel Macron’s French government to make people believe that a certain unfounded and untested approach to economics and technology could be thought of as comparable to a trending French innovative artistic movement, on the model of impressionism, expressionism or fauvism (all of which take an ‘e’ at the end of their title in French).

Contextual Note

Summing up the thesis of a recent book, “Le Fantasme Technologique et Economique de la Startup Nation” (“The Technological and Economic Illusion of the Startup Nation”) by journalist Antoine Gouritin, its publisher the context in which it was written: “Startupism is now taught in business and engineering schools, as well as in incubators, and one of its effects is to replace business creators with ‘fundraisers’, whose action consists entirely in attracting financiers, regardless of the usefulness of the product created and marketed.”

Rather than starting with concrete reality before inventing a categorically abstract label to describe it, the political class in France has always preferred to start from an abstract idea and assume they can mold reality to fit it. Back in the summer of 2017, President Macron bombastically France a “start-up nation” (using the English terms). The idea quickly evolved into an “ism,” meaning a powerful federating idea and a way of thinking about the world, similar to an ideology. Adding “-isme” even to an English word has become something of a tradition in recent decades.

The sociologist Dominique G. Boullier the phenomenon launched by Macron in these terms: “A new generation equipped with slogans borrowed from the world of start-ups seems ready to impose its law and re-educate all our public services.” Pushing his critique further, Boullier cites the real world of truly creative entrepreneurs and calls the initiative a “veritable hold-up of their culture … in the service of an ideological campaign.”

The Bloomberg article calls one of the government’s more audacious initiatives — the creation of an artificially defined category of stocks called the “New 40” — a “boondoggle.” It amounts to the selection and promotion of a new elite and a glorification of the stock market itself. Its aim is to make people believe in an illusory vision of the economy that has little to do with the real economy. It belongs to the world of political hyperreality.

Historical Note

Boullier writes about what he calls the “platform state,” highlighting the fact that the newly idealized economic model is the platform, as embodied by Facebook, Uber, Airbnb and others. Platforms allow entrepreneurs and their investors to make money not from what they produce, but from what other people do on their platform. Free or cheap labor. Boullier calls the concept barbarous (“la philosophie de barbare”). He notes that the fashion has promoted belief in what might be thought of as the “startup mentality,” whose process he describes as a form of “self-generated storytelling.” The story is more real than the events it describes, a classic feature of hyperreality. He points out that the recent history of techno-jargon in the entrepreneurial class can be explained by what has become their unique purpose and goal: “seducing investors.”

He points to a significant change in the culture and behavior of the actors participating in the recent history of startups. In previous generations, the French referred to their entrepreneurs as “enterprise creators.” The new title for them, “startuppeurs,” sounds fashionable and draws attention to their focus on the kind of innovation that promises rich rewards for investors. Boullier notes that this characterization of newly idealized generation of entrepreneurs saddles them from the outset with the obligation not to build a successful business, but “to play in the big leagues and deal with serious people, the so-called venture capitalists [risquers in French], who, it must be admitted, have so much liquidity that they don’t risk much more than getting bored with their activity.”

Boullier describes a model that became dominant in Silicon Valley 20 years ago. It holds a central place in the ideology of high-tech capitalism now observable everywhere in the world. It took two decades for the French to buy into it, but one might say they — or at least Macron’s government — have finally caught on, though they haven’t quite caught up. And just as the French Revolution easily outdid the American Revolution, Macron has quite naturally ended up emulating Robespierre rather than George Washington.

As a result, in a nation that questions everything, no one in business or government now questions the infallible wisdom of the investors. It may be a sign of the rift that exists at the heart of French society and that became evident with the rise of the yellow vest movement a year ago.

Since the birth of the American nation, France has always had an ambiguous love-hate relationship with the US. Since the end of World War II, France has sought, sometimes ostentatiously, to resist the incursion of US culture, even claiming its own version of exceptionalism (to protect its cinema industry).

Of the eight presidents of the Fifth Republic, four have been to various degrees French exceptionalists (Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Francois Mitterand, Jacques Chirac) and three vocal admirers of the US model (Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Nicolas Sarkozy, Emmanuel Macron). In other words, an ongoing cultural battle of traditionalists vs. modernists — Francois Hollande being too much of an “ordinary guy” to be one or the other.

Since Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s, French governments have occasionally suggested that if you feel brutalized by a declining industrial system, create an enterprise, a policy that has provided an opportunity for many people, but not enough to appease the yellow vests and turn France into California. By defining France as a “startup nation,” Macron has taken that final hyperreal step.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The year 2019 has turned out to be rich in pretexts for political predictions. While India managed to hold an election that produced what appears to be a definitive result, even if the result defied the predictions of many pundits, in Western democracies it’s a year with few major elections. The more symbolically than politically meaningful European elections that recently took place constitute an exception. It’s a time for predicting rather than voting. The ongoing drama may lead to an election in the UK before the end of the year, but no one is capable of predicting anything having to do with Brexit.

The European elections have kept political analysts busy, though with very little true political matter to work with. Except possibly in France, where there have been a few surprises. Politico breaks down the of France’s centrist ruling party, President Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (LRM). It attributes a new strategic orientation thanks to which Macron can “suck votes from the center left and center right.” This “has led a number of pundits to already predict his victory in 2022, when France goes back to the polls to elect a new president.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Predict:

Announce the future result of a national election, with a view either to display one’s intelligence and deeper understanding of a complex electoral context or to surreptitiously promote a certain candidate one hopes everyone will accept as being an inevitable choice

Contextual note

Marine Le Pen’s anti-European Rassemblement National (RN) narrowly beat Macron’s list for the European elections. But the French president —who had been struggling with the revolt of the yellow vests movement — managed the difficult task of drawing the most votes from those who believe in Europe. His list drew practically even, on its own, with the RN.

But something more dramatic happened. The traditional right, which had recently changed its name to Les ��é��ܲ�������������s, was absolutely humiliated in the European election, with 8.4% of the vote. The head of the party, Laurent Wauquiez, promptly resigned, leaving a major question mark about the future of the party. That could only be good news for President Macron, who jumped on the opportunity to pull away the moderate flank of the ��é��ܲ�������������s and rebuild his base that had been weakened by the yellow vests. It was time to reinstate.

Politico correctly spots a reason why, following the European elections and contrary to the predictions of the pundits, “Macron’s strategists should instead be worried.” Macron has never managed to impose his reformist identity, which was the key to his election in 2017. The bold reforms he proposed took no account of the temperature of the nation, which allowed the yellow vests to brand the former Rothschild banker as “the president of the rich.” It was the déjà vu of “” Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, all over again, but without the political infrastructure to back him up.

With the next presidential election scheduled for 2022, the traditional right, which represents a persistent cultural reality in France, has plenty of time to reorganize. If it does, Macron’s new-found strength will disappear instantaneously since, in the meantime, he will have alienated all of the left and most everyone else, who have waited, with growing impatience, to see his reformist party emerge as an effective political force.

Historical note

Over past decades, the parties that make up the mainstream right in France have occasionally fragmented into competing clans, only to reunite in the form of governing coalitions. They have always managed to do two things: affirm an image of legitimacy by being deemed capable of responsible government in the eyes of the French electorate and maintain a clear binary contrast with the left, also deemed capable of governing — much like the Democrats and Republicans in the US before Donald Trump or the Conservatives and Labour in the UK before Brexit. In all these cases, rival personalities, with different outlooks and loyalties, tended to consider themselves part of a family destined to govern.

In France, all that changed in 2017, more by accident than historical logic. The ��é��ܲ������������� François Fillon won the primary on the right that pitted him against another former prime minister, Alain Juppé, a Gaullist, who was seen as more centrist and reassuring, with the ability to draw votes from the left. Every pundit in every media assumed that Fillon would handily beat the low-profile socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, whom the Socialist establishment deemed impertinent when he challenged the continuity of the Socialist establishment by opposing the incumbent prime minister, Emmanuel Valls. Hamon’s victory in the primary split the party in two.

Over the years, Fillon had managed to cultivate a “Mr. Clean” image. No sooner had he won the primary than a financial scandal emerged, involving a hefty remuneration of nonexistent work for his wife. Unable to deviate attention from the scandal and unwilling to remove his candidacy, the first round of the presidential election was no longer a traditional mainstream right vs mainstream left contest. It wasn’t even a less traditional but somewhat predictable race between an incumbent majority and an insurgent populist extreme right (a Le Pen, ��è���� or fille). Rather, it was a possible five-way contest between an enfeebled right and left, Macron’s amorphous centrist party, a reasonably solid radical left (Melanchon) and the sempiternal Le Pen (Marine).

Few observers have noticed that, in the 21st century, the anti-immigrant, populist Le Pens singlehandedly replaced the role the Communist Party (PC) had played in the French political landscape late in the 20th century as the party that protested the system in the name of ordinary working people and could be counted on to obtain 20% of the vote in any election. The media do their utmost to entertain the fear of the rise of the populist right, but in election after election, in numbers it mimics the PC of the mid to late-20th century.

Paradoxically, Macron, who obtained an unassailable majority in 2017 that is protected until 2022, hasn’t done better than the old PC or Le Pen’s current RN, with a base score of only between 20 and 25%. Jacques Chirac beat Jean-Maire Le Pen in 2002 with 82.21% of the vote. In 2017, Macron beat Marine Le Pen with only 66.1%, which allowed Le Pen to achieve the historic score of 33%. This was largely because Macron represented nothing other than himself, inspiring little enthusiasm except from voters intent on stopping Le Pen.

Whether it’s France, the US or the UK — to take only the most obvious examples — do the traditional parties and their leaders have what’s required for the public to have confidence in their ability to rule? And once elected, can any of them govern in a meaningful and constructive way? Or has the very idea of democracy reached its breaking point?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron’s Risky Strategy to Consolidate the Center appeared first on 51�Թ�.