The tendency for key moments in a nation’s past to be invoked or revisited in times of crisis or when great change is in the air was famously explored by Karl Marx in his tract “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, published in 1852. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the coup d’état staged by Louis Bonaparte, nephew of the more famous Napoleon, in December 1851, Marx was struck by the parallels—and dissonances—between this event and Napoleon’s own seizure of power half a century earlier.
In both instances, an upstart with imperial ambitions had been able to stamp down on emergent new forces, to annihilate the promise of revolutionary change, to turn back the clock of history. But whereas the earlier putsch, staged in 1799 on the 18th day of Brumaire, the second month of the republican calendar introduced under the French Revolution, had all the hallmarks of a seismic rupture and betrayal—a political tragedy of the first order— the same could not be said of its subsequent replay. Marx found a particularly mordant way of expressing what struck him as a grotesque contrast between events past and present. “Hegel remarks somewhere,” he wrote, “that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
Now French President Emmanuel Macron has come up with his own iteration of the Napoleonic putsch. On September 5, he ended the two-month political interregnum created by his refusal to honour the results of this summer’s legislative elections by installing Michel Barnier, a superannuated right-wing politician, as the nation’s new Prime Minister. By this act, Macron in effect declared null and void the results of elections he himself had called; he gave the nation—and the democratic process—the finger.
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It is hard to get one’s head round the implications of Macron’s “coup de force”, the favoured term on the left for his executive fiat. By any reckoning, this is terra nova for France, shaky ground without precedent in recent history. Until now, French presidents have complied with the informal understanding that the party or bloc that emerges victorious from Parliamentary elections should be invited to form a government, headed by a prime minister of their own choosing.
Several times in the past, this has resulted in uneasy “cohabitations” between presidents and governments of different political stripes. Between 1997 and 2002, to cite the most recent instance, Jacques Chirac, a right-wing President, was obliged to bed down with a government of the left headed by Lionel Jospin, the then leader of the Socialist Party. In that instance, Chirac’s options were limited by the fact that a united left had emerged from legislative election with an absolute majority. Even so, a tacit protocol seemed to be in place: one that attached importance to acknowledging election outcomes and observing the rules of the game.
A demonstrator holds placard reading “Macron out” take part in a demonstration against the appointment of Prime Minister Michel Barnier by Macron in Marseille, France. September 7, 2024. | Photo Credit: CHRISTOPHE SIMON
Over the course of the past three months, Macron has been studiously shredding the rule book, adhering instead to a script of his own imagining and epic self-belief. The result has been a summer of political vaudeville, a theatre of the grotesque, a drôle de guerre (phony war) shadowed by the menace of dark times ahead. From tragedy to farce; from farce to burlesque.
The curtain-raiser
The premier force on France’s neo-fascist far right, the Rassemblement National (RN), led by Marine Le Pen, emerges the victor of the French election to the European Parliament, held in early June. RN wins 31.4 per cent of the vote, lobbing Macron’s own “centrist” formation, Réveiller Europe, into humiliating third place, with a vote share of just 13.8 per cent. In an apparent fit of pique (although RN’s victory has been amply predicted by the polls) Macron dissolves the National Assembly (the lower house of Parliament) and calls snap elections. He wagers that, as in the past, the French electorate will rally around his leadership of a “republican front” against fascism, enabling him to push back against Le Pen, shore up his authoritarian neoliberal agenda and safely live out the remnants of his second presidential term.
Act 1: The gamble unravels
Macron’s wager pivots on the assumption that the notoriously fractious French left will be unable to get its act together. Instead, the country’s four leading left-wing forces swiftly form a New Popular Front to attack the fascist threat from the left. To the dismay of Macron and the wider French establishment, the new alliance surmounts every anticipated obstacle, from agreement on a common programme to seat distribution. In the first round of voting, on June 30, the New Popular Front takes second place, with 28 per cent of the vote (against the RN’s 33 per cent). Macron finds himself relegated to the status of an also-ran.
Act 2: Doomsday—and Denial
The knell tolls for Macron’s Big Gamble just after 10 pm on July 7: the day of second-round voting. As the first exit polls are announced, Macron’s humiliation is complete: against all poll and media predictions, the New Popular Front, emerging with the biggest block of national Assembly seats, is the force that has beaten back the neo-fascist threat. The French President now enters a state of denialism: the term psychologists apply to those who refuse to accept an empirically verifiable fact or reality. No one has won the election, he declares. Everything must continue as before. With me in charge, naturally. This is the situation when, on July 23, the New Popular Front names Lucie Castets, a left-leaning former civil servant, as its candidate for the premiership. Young, personable, competent and progressive, Castets seems suited in every way to the challenges of the moment. How will Macron respond?
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The Intermission: Time for games, Olympic and otherwise
Providentially, up pops a pretext for further prevarication: the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, about to open in Paris. Declaring an “Olympic truce” for the duration of the spectacle, Macron invokes “stability”. “It’s clear”, he says, “that until mid-August we’re not in a position to change things because we’d create disorder.” Installing a caretaker government, he now contrives to transform the Olympics into a showcase not simply for France’s captivating capital city but also for its head of state. No photo opportunity is lost; no chance to simper with French athletes, make rousing speeches, or insinuate his presence into the heart of it all is squandered. All the while, behind the scenes, other games are being played: secretive conclaves and tête-à-têtes in discreet upmarket restaurants; an overture here, a sounding there. Grown-up politics.
Act 3: Countdown to the coup
With the Olympics finally over, the horse-trading becomes more overt. A stream of political luminaries makes its way to the Elysée Palace; figures of every political hue are called in for consultation as Macron strives to stitch together his own preferred election outcome. He has in mind a coalition from which both “extremes” are excluded: not simply the neo-fascist RN but also the radical left La France Insoumise: the New Popular Front’s chief architect and most steadfast force. The trouble is that nobody of any stature or credibility seems ready to come to the aid of an unpopular lame-duck President bent on completing his second term.
Nobody, that is, until Michel Barnier is summoned from political obsolescence.
The individual whom Macron has just imposed on the nation comes from Les Républicains, a discredited and much diminished party of the centre-right, which finished a distant fourth in this summer’s legislative elections. Verily a case of “the first coming last and the last coming first”, as Dominique de Villepin, a political veteran of noted stature and principle, quipped recently, referencing a celebrated biblical formulation.
But beyond its brazenness and chutzpah, Macron’s putsch embodies something more sinister. The fact is that Barnier’s impromptu resurrection is closely tied to his role, two years ago, in spearheading his party’s rightward shift on immigration. By virtue of that, he is the preferred choice of the Rassemblement National, on whose support, or at least acquiescence, he and his administration now depend.
Marine Le Pen must be revelling in her new role as arbiter of the nation’s destiny.
Susan Ram has spent much of her life viewing the world from different geographical locations. Born in London, she studied politics and international relations before setting off for South Asia: first to Nepal, and then to India, where fieldwork in Tamil Nadu developed into 20 years of residence.
