Whatâs really driving the chaos across France right now? Marc Weitzmann on a perfect storm of political strife and what it means for an uncertain time ahead. â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â Paris Calling Whatâs really driving the chaos across France right now? Marc Weitzmann on a perfect storm of political strife and what it means for an uncertain time ahead. Ivy Gould / The Signal Intense political conflict has consumed France for more than two months now, with President Emanuel Macron pushing an unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Protests and strikes began in January, when he introduced the plan, and escalated after he used an arcane constitutional tactic to pass a bill on it without any vote in the National Assembly. That move led to two rare no-confidence motions in the legislature, the first of which Macronâs government barely survived. Meanwhile, the protests and strikes have continuedâwith more than a million people recently taking to the streets for a day of demonstrationâbut havoc is now increasingly accompanying them: Dozens of government buildings have been vandalized and burned, and the Council of Europe has condemned excessive force in the response by French police. How has a bill changing the retirement age by just two years led to all of this? Marc Weitzmann is a French journalist and the author of Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France (and What It Means for Us). To Weitzmann, the retirement issue and the way Macronâs handled it have brought fundamental tensions to the surface of French political lifeâtensions within the countryâs traditional political culture, and tensions between this culture and Macronâs more contemporary style of governing. The immediate effects have been intense disarrayâin the National Assembly as well as in the streetsâalong with a major power shift that neither Macron nor many analysts of the French scene expected: a return of labor unions as significant players in French politics. But thereâs potentially a bigger shift beyond the chaos of the moment: a strengthening of the far right as champions of order. Soon, Franceâs highest court will rule on the lawâand a possible referendum over itâwhich could settle the issue at Macronâs expense. Or it could go the other way and âcompound the crisis of authority in France.â Eve Valentine: What do you think these protests say about French life right nowâand Macronâs position in it? Marc Weitzmann: They say a great deal. Thereâs a deep crisis of authority and power in this countryâand you can see different aspects of this crisis converging in the protests. At the heart of it, Franceâs power structure isnât working anymore. France has long been a very centralized country with an enduring nostalgia for absolute power. Its current system of government, the Fifth Republicâwhich was founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958âworks almost like a secular monarchy, with tremendous power concentrated in the presidency. In some ways, Macron wants to fit the part of a Fifth Republic secular monarch; but in many ways, he just doesnât fit itâand doesnât want to fit itâabove all, because heâs too much of a technocrat, delegating and deferring to a host of specialist policy experts. Macronâs style of technocracy is increasingly how power is managed across the West; itâs increasingly in tension with the old tradition of centralized power in France; and Macron has been increasingly caught between the old system heâs inherited and the new system he represents. Meanwhile, heâs relied deeplyâand far too much, franklyâon technocratic polls and surveys to try to understand what the French people think and feel and want. And thatâs led to some acute problems. Advertisement One is that the companies managing these polls and surveys also serve as advisors to the government. So theyâre on both sides of the question, if you will: Theyâre interpreting their own polling and surveys, and theyâre also advising the government on what it should doâmeaning thereâs no critical distance between the interpretation of the data and the practical recommendations based on it. A second problem is that the technocratic language of all these polls and surveys is completely alien to how people actually think and feelâand really, thereâs no way you can understand the life of a country based on what they say. When you get these kinds of technocratic dynamics entrenched within a highly centralized power structure, you get a government thatâs dangerously isolated from the hearts and minds of the population as a whole. And the population as a whole is full of confusion about everything their country and world are going through right now. Itâs telling that thereâs a war in Ukraine, three hours by air from Paris; thereâs a world of crises, economic and political; and the thing the people of France are most concerned about right now is their retirement. I would say thereâs a certain inability among the French really to grasp the country we live in. Weâre concerned about inflation, weâre concerned about the energy crisis, much more than weâre concerned about the transformative state of Europe and the world right nowâincluding what it will ultimately mean for France. So you have a government thatâs out of touch with the population, and you have a population thatâs out of touch with Europe and the world. At the same time, you have a traditional attraction to populist outrage in France thatâs paradoxically mixed up with the tradition of highly centralized power. You can see this in the way the protesters are both criticizing Macronâfor what they see as his will to absolute power in the way heâs trying to pass this law on retirementâand asking for a strong authority to oppose him. Remember, the French fundamentally invented modern populism in the Revolution of 1789. Weâre the masters of the art. Our tradition of collective rebellion is built deep into our national identity nowâand tracks with Jacques Lacanâs definition of hysteria: Deep down, we desire a strong power to rebel against. Ivy Gould / The Signal More from Marc Weitzmann at The Signal: âDuring the debate on Macronâs retirement law in the National Assembly, the far left went super-crazy, adopting a very theatrical strategyâyelling, and chanting, and insulting ministers, and so on. Meanwhile, the National Rally essentially did nothing. They sat on the bench, trying to look responsible on TVâsaying that of course they were concerned, saying that they understood the demonstrators. But they showed none of the love for chaos that the left has demonstrated, so now they appear across France to be the most responsible politicians in the country.â âIn France, itâs become part of the countryâs identity that itâs supposed to have the best retirement system in the world, the best social-security system in the world, and so on. And so now we have an identity crisis. But itâs an identity crisis based on a pervasive sense that things were ânormalâ for France back in the 1960s and â70s. Virtually all electoral campaigns on the left and the right, since Nicolas Sarkozy was president more than 10 years agoâincluding electoral campaigns by the National Frontâhave been based on that nostalgia. We want to go back to ânormalâânormal meaning full jobs, full employment, complete social security, a robust retirement system, and so on. Which is really, in historical perspective, anything but normal.â âThis is a government run by people whoâre not inclined to engage with the population as it is; itâs run by people whoâre inclined to engage with the population as they want it to be. And what they want it to be is a population conditioned by technocratic concepts and technocratic communication. The idiom of emergency very easily, and very quickly, becomes an idiom of manipulation. The aspiration among Macronâs people is that it will work. But the reality is that it cuts the people running the government off. So they end up talking to themselves. And the tragedy is, they donât realize it at all.â [Continue reading ...]( [The Signal]( explores urgent questions in current events around the worldâto support it and for full access: [Subscribe now]( The Signal | 1717 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}](
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