On Sunday, June 9, the National Regroupment (RN) list won the European elections in France by a large margin. This result confirms the crystallization of geographical, social and cultural fractures. But I believe that, more than “fractures”, we must speak of a true schism, a cultural schism between the middle and working classes and “the world above”, that of the integrated or upper classes. As a reaction to this schism, Emmanuel Macron has just decided to dissolve the Assembly. His strategy is simple and aims to take advantage of the extreme polarization of the debate: social democracy or fascism. Now, playing with the extreme right is a risky bet.
Just 40 years ago, a sorcerer’s apprentice named François Mitterrand had the idea of taking the extreme right out of the box it was in to hinder its rivals. On February 12, 1984 (an Orwellian year), Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of a small far-right group that represented no more than 0.74% of the electorate, participated in the most watched political program of the time. It was the first time that he developed his thesis in prime time, before millions of television viewers. Four months later, the National Front made its national emergence, with 10.95% of the votes in the European elections. Mitterrand had just invented the right-wing killing machine.
Several decades later, another sorcerer’s apprentice had an even more radical idea: eliminate the competition on the left and right by facing the extreme right alone. The strategy was successful and, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron comfortably beat Marine Le Pen with 66% of the votes. Five years later, in 2022, he repeated: he outlined his campaign, ignored rivals from the right and left and focused on the RN candidate. As expected, the one that was expected to be the loser was defeated, but the difference was reduced considerably. With 42% of the vote and 13 million voters, the far-right candidate obtained an impressive result. Another 13 million people abstained and two million chose to vote blank. In short, 28 million French people, that is, 58% of the electorate, considered that the extreme right was no longer a danger. This is the majority possibility on which the RN dynamic is currently based. And, while it has obtained a historic result for the party in the European elections, polls also consider a victory for Marine Le Pen in the 2027 presidential elections possible. With the solidity of its popular base assured, RN is now connecting with groups of the population that were not previously within their reach, such as senior officials and, above all, a novelty: none other than retirees. It is in this age group, the base of the Macronist electorate, that the election for the presidency will truly be contested. So, contrary to what Emmanuel Macron, and François Mitterrand before him, thought, the extreme right has stopped repelling as before. The creature has escaped the system. RN is in a position to obtain a majority of votes. How did we get here?
To begin with, it must be noted that this populist push owes absolutely nothing to the “talent” of the RN leaders (nor to the activism of its members, which is almost non-existent). Contemporary populists are not demiurges, but marketing professionals. Its strength does not lie in convincing the masses, much less in guiding them, but, on the contrary, in adapting and letting oneself be carried away by an existential movement. This movement, autonomous and driven by the powerful feeling of social and cultural dispossession of the middle and working classes, is unstoppable. It can take the form of a social protest (Phrygian caps, yellow vests, peasants), but it cannot be programmed or manipulated. It is a movement that has never stopped reactivating and rearming itself, every time there is a reform, a referendum or, in this case, a European election; And now in the legislative elections?
For decades, populists have limited themselves to following the flow, letting themselves be carried by the winds of that social movement and adapting at every moment to the social and cultural demands of the majority. Contributing to its success is the fact that the other parties, each prisoner of their electorate, their ideology and their strategies, have not understood the underlying reasons for this discontent.
In this context, Emmanuel Macron’s strategy of resigning and leaving the issues that give votes to the National Rally to the extreme right has gone too far. By refusing to take seriously various issues that are among those that most concern the French, such as insecurity (physical and cultural), migratory flows, the defense of the welfare state and sovereignty, Macron inexorably pushes many of them into RN arms. This extreme right-wing of reality contributes to locking the powerful in their citadels (the metropolises) and in an electoral base that is no longer made up of anything other than retirees and the upper classes. Geographic and cultural confinement has created a radical anthropological fracture between the inhabitants of large cities and the working and middle classes living in peripheral France. And it is in that France of small and medium-sized cities and rural areas where a “middle class” subject for 30 years to the largest social plan in history is increasingly precarious and where the electoral breeding ground for populists is. .
This division contributes fundamentally to the National Regrouping vote. In France, as throughout Europe, populism feeds on the formation of geographical and cultural bubbles that do not speak to each other and that are weakening democracy in all Western countries because they radicalize the public debate on the question of limits.
The new urban classes, without any interest in the common good and followers of the neoliberal model, are the incarnation of a selfish bourgeoisie that extols individualism and the culture of “no restrictions.” Great beneficiaries of a neoliberal model that has pulverized all notions of control, they believe that anything is possible, that what is good for them is good for humanity and, in that sense, that the idea of common limits is an impediment, a setback for their individual freedom.
The working classes, on the contrary, separated from that cultural and geographical bubble and weakened by the economic and cultural model, demand certain regulation. They want barriers that prevent the space of the market and individualism from expanding. And this increasingly frequent demand for cultural, social and economic limits by the most humble is, throughout Europe, the fuel of populist parties.
Now that a new populist rise is evident, the resignation of a part of the ruling classes in the face of the approaching political turning point and the president’s high-risk strategy is truly surprising. This fatalism is symptomatic of a form of nihilism that is dangerously widespread among the Western upper classes. Today it no longer seems that hope comes “from above”; neither from the political class, nor from the intellectuals, much less from the ideologues. This reality should serve as a warning and, above all, force us to see the demands of ordinary people not as a problem, but as a solution. The existential movement of the working and middle classes, driven by the survival instinct and the desire to preserve the common good, is also a reaction against the nihilism that comes from above.
Just as Prince Myshkin stated, in The idiot of Dostoevsky, that “beauty will save the world”, isn’t it time to say that “common decency” (Orwell again) is what will save Western societies?
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
