WWhen Emmanuel Macron was first elected in the spring of 2017, we were told that he was the future of liberal pluralism. The BBC said his victory was “a repudiation of the populist and anti-establishment wave” of the time. According to the Time magazine cover, he was “Europe’s next leader.” The Economist went one step further. Its cover asked whether he was Europe’s “savior” and declared that he was waging a revolution in democratic politics “without pikes or pitchforks.”
Seven years on, Macron’s “peaceful” and “democratic” “revolution” is crumbling, and the president is struggling to overcome a self-inflicted political crisis. In June, he canceled unnecessary parliamentary elections and refused to admit defeat. Over the summer, France experienced the second longest period without a government in recent history. The resulting government, led by Michel Barnier, was able to survive for a long time thanks to a deal with the far right, but it collapsed after a vote of no confidence on 4 December. President Macron has named Francois Bayrou as prime minister, but it is unclear how this will solve the fundamental problem that both the president and his policies are widely disliked in the country and widely opposed in parliament. is.
A look at Macronism’s balance sheet explains his losing streak. When he took office, France’s budget deficit was 2.6% of GDP, but by October 2024 it will be 6.2%. Who benefited from such debauchery? They certainly aren’t public school students, and they certainly aren’t stressed-out teachers who have to teach Europe’s largest classes. Nor is it an increase in the number of people living in “medical deserts” with inadequate access to doctors and surgeons. But the ultra-rich are doing very well, with the wealth of the top four in France increasing by 87% since 2020, according to Oxfam. Macronomics is similar to slow-motion trasonomics. It was an unfunded tax cut program for the wealthy that Macronists mistakenly assumed would increase economic activity and thereby increase tax revenues. According to Macron’s own economic expert, “It wasn’t a bad strategy, but it didn’t work.”
If his economic record undermines the narrative that Macron was a candidate of innovation and sound finances, his social and political record suggests that the Macron revolution was neither peaceful nor particularly democratic. This suggests that there is a strong sense of “liberal” and “centrist” labels. ” is very applicable to the French president. Police violence has significantly worsened under Macron’s government, with the number of police shootings and deaths increasing at an increasingly small rate, and the number of rubber bullets fired into crowds skyrocketing. He also helped normalize the far right, taking up the far right’s favorite themes, using their language, and passing immigration legislation that Marine Le Pen hailed as an “ideological victory.”
In addition to this, he has been governing in an increasingly anti-democratic manner, using Article 49(3) of the Constitution to push through the highly unpopular policy of passing laws without a vote in parliament, and by pushing the left wing is trying to exclude the New Popular Front (NPF) coalition from power. Despite winning the most seats in this summer’s parliamentary elections. Activist Hugo Parheta writes about the process of French society becoming fascist, with parts of the media, civil servants, and business elite moving to the right. Mr. Macron deftly facilitated this process, and the far right achieved its best electoral performance in history this summer.
Lately, President Macron has been struggling to keep the Netflix hit Emily in Paris in France. It is truly an absurd quest. Emily in Paris, like the Summer Olympics, is a fantastical image of the France that Macron wants to govern and is trying to create. But the typical subject of Macron’s France is not Emily, a resident of a new country inhabited only by the rich and sexy, but rather Vanessa Langard, a yellow vest protester I recently met. resemble. Langard was a decorator but had to take on side jobs to pay for caring for her grandmother. Langard was shot in the face and blinded by a rubber bullet during a protest in December 2018. When we spoke, she was distraught and sobbing as she expressed her anger at the French government’s refusal to designate her a victim of police violence. Her mother comments that she has become more calm since the assault.
Vanessa’s life shows the influence of Macronism in miniature. She was caught up in the president’s crackdown on dissent and blinded by the increasingly militaristic weapons the state deployed against its people. Now 40, she is unable to work and lives on a meager stipend paid to hundreds of thousands of French disabled people who have been pushed to the brink under Macron’s government. Because she needs care, she is dependent on an increasingly strained health care system that the government wants to make further cuts to. She is one of the 56% of French people who say that low incomes and increased spending have made life more difficult, and she is concerned that the next budget will have a negative impact on their financial situation.85 % of people and 1 of 77 people. % understand this is the result of a political decision.
Macron has more than two years until the next election, but there is no sign of him changing course. Libération revealed that over the summer, a series of secret meetings between Macronists and members of the far-right National Rally, mediated by Macron’s close aide Thierry Soler, contributed to further normalization. Macron’s ally and potential successor Edouard Philippe is said to have told Le Pen that he wants the next election to be a contest of “project versus project” without “moral criticism.”
It does not bode well for liberalism that a pro-EU poster boy has become like King Lear, blinded by narcissism and willfully handing over the kingdom to a destructive force of his own making. Macron offers an objective lesson in the exhaustion of liberalism. The form and appearance of liberalism remain, but when its content and values are evacuated, what remains is empty and fragile. No longer able to improve the lives of people other than the wealthy, unable to respond to inconvenient facts such as disappointing election results, and even articulating moral criticism of the far right as it seeks to usurp it. It becomes impossible to politically stop its rise. Macronism has failed.
