Will an unsettled France embrace the unknown?
It is absurd to suggest that postwar France has never felt this fragile. Today may mark the aftermath of yet another shocking terrorist attack, and come the day before the citizens of the Fifth Republic vote in a destabilizing, disorienting election, desperately unmoored from the certainties of old. But this day is also the anniversary of an attempt, within living memory, to overthrow French democracy by military coup.
On April 22, 1961, Charles de Gaulle was forced to shut the capital’s airfields to prevent a faction of the army, outraged at what they saw as the betrayal of France’s colonial rule in Algeria, flying in to establish a junta.
On Sunday, the first round of the 2017 presidential election will fall 56 years to the day since President De Gaulle squeezed into his old Second World War uniform and made a dramatic televised appeal to his countrymen to help defend the nation against the plotters. “Françaises, Français!,” he said, “Aidez-moi!”
Nor is this the first time that the country finds itself under assault from Islamist terror.
Here too, Algeria haunts modern France. In 1994, seven years before 9/11 saw a similar plan successfully deployed, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) hijacked an Air France jet with the intention of flying it into the Eiffel Tower. Only a dramatic assault by French special forces in Marseille disrupted the scheme. The following year GIA bombs brought death to the Paris metro.
Still, there is no doubt that France today does feel critically unsettled, and that a sense of crisis appears to be overwhelming the fiercely unyielding centralized state, which is so crucial to dictating both national security and the very essence of what it means to be French. As France goes to the polls, both those pillars of government authority appear to be crumbling.
To start with, France’s intelligence agencies seem incapable of guaranteeing the safety of the people. This is no criticism. Clearly they are faced by an immense challenge. But France is now a country where presidential candidates are instructed to wear bullet-proof vests to rallies, where the Champs-Élysées is struck days before a crucial poll, and where security advice to citizens can sometimes simply amount to a vague “Stay off the streets.” Some 239 people have been killed by terrorism in France since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015. If the first duty of the state is to protect its citizens then, when it cannot, voters are of course tempted to reach for alternative remedies at the ballot box, no matter how unpalatable.
The second aspect is yet more fundamental. De Gaulle — him again — may have famously trumpeted dazzling regional variety in France when he asked: “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” But the truth is that the French state, since the Revolution, has tried to impose a coherent, unique French identity across the country, rolling it out from the administrative heart in Paris. On language, culture and religion France has been intolerant of deviation from the secular, intellectual, Academie Française- imposed norm. And proudly so.
That “Our way or the highway” attitude is admirable in many respects. But it does mean that French identity has been far less elastic than elsewhere. Arguably, the upshot is that the state has no idea what to do if large numbers of its citizens — especially second and third- generation North and West African Muslim immigrants — reject the classic model of French identity.
No country has the definitive answer to this. But France’s difficulties, because of its history, geography and inflexible bureaucratic understanding of how to foster national unity, are particularly acute. So the place is clearly in a febrile, almost revolutionary mood, even before we account for other disruptive factors, like the march of technology.
No wonder, then, that three of the four principal contenders in Sunday’s election are radically at odds with the usual products of the party system: Jean- Luc Melenchon, the old communist; Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader; Emmanuel Macron, the independent. Though they disagree violently about what to do about it, these candidates agree that the status quo is unsustainable. They are also united in not having the answer — being either extreme or, in Macron’s case, empty.
They represent the unknown. And until Thursday night’s attack, it seemed certain that French voters were prepared to risk all — to back and positively embrace the unknown. They still might. Macron and Le Pen are favourites with the pollsters. But almost a third of voters remain undecided.
These people are clearly cautious with their ballot. That bodes well for ex-prime minister François Fillon, tainted by scandal certainly, but undeniably assured and reassuring. The irony if he does win?
Far from being steadyas-she- goes, the man many dismiss as an establishment stooge promises to be utterly reformative, both economically and culturally. That radical upheaval, though, is far better than a disastrous leap into the dark.
THIS IS A SHAMEFUL DEVELOPMENT AT AN ELITE UNIVERSITY. BERKELEY SHOULD BE STANDING UP FOR THE VALUES IT HELPED NURTURE. — MEGAN McARDLE