‘THE OLD DEMONS ARE RISING AGAIN’
MACRON ATTACKS NATIONALISM IN REMARKS MARKING 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF FIRST WORLD WAR
World leaders with the power to make war but a duty to preserve peace solemnly marked the end of the First World War’s slaughter 100 years ago at commemorations Sunday that drove home the message “never again” but also exposed the globe’s new political fault lines.
As Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Justin Trudeau and dozens of other heads of state and government listened in silence, French President Emmanuel Macron used the occasion, as its host, to sound a powerful and sobering warning about the fragility of peace and the dangers of nationalism and of nations that put themselves first, above the collective good.
“The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death,” Macron said.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” he said. “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: Its moral values.”
Trump, ostensibly the main target of Macron’s message, sat stony-faced. The American president has proudly declared himself a nationalist. But if Trump felt singled out by Macron’s remarks, he didn’t show it. He later described the commemoration as “very beautiful.”
As well as spelling out the horrific costs of conflict to those with arsenals capable of waging a Third World War, the ceremony also served up a joyful reminder of the intense sweetness of peace, when high school students read from letters that soldiers and civilians wrote 100 years ago when guns finally fell silent on the Western Front.
Brought alive again by people too young to have known global war themselves, the ghostly voices seemed collectively to say: Please, do not make our mistakes.
“I only hope the soldiers who died for this cause are looking down upon the world today,” American soldier Capt. Charles S. Normington wrote on Nov. 11, 1918, in one of the letters. “The whole world owes this moment of real joy to the heroes who are not here to help enjoy it.”
The commemorations started late, overshooting the centenary of the exact moment when, 100 years earlier at 11 a.m., an eerie silence replaced the thunder of war on the front lines. Macron recalled that one billion shells fell on France alone from 1914-1918.
As bells marking the armistice hour rang across Paris and in many nations ravaged by the four years of carnage, Macron and other leaders were still on their way to the centennial site at the Arc de Triomphe.
Under a sea of black umbrellas, a line of leaders led by Macron and his wife, Brigitte, marched in silence on the cobbles of the ChampsÉlysées, after dismounting from their buses.
Trump arrived separately, in a motorcade that drove past three topless protesters with anti-war slogans on their chests who somehow got through the rows of security and were quickly bundled away by police.
Last to arrive was the Russian president, Putin, who shook Trump’s hand and flashed him a thumbsup.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was positioned in pride of place between Trump and Macron, an eloquent symbol of victors and vanquished now standing together, shoulder to shoulder. Overhead, fighter jets ripped through the sky, trailing red, white and blue smoke in homage to the French flag.
The geographical spread of the more than 60 heads of state and government who attended, silent and reflective, showed how the “war to end all wars” left few corners of the earth untouched but which, little more than two decades later, was followed so quickly and catastrophically by the even deadlier Second World War.
Trudeau sat beside Putin at a peace summit held later and the pair briefly chatted at the opening session. Trudeau’s office said he acknowledged the Russian people’s sacrifices through the two world wars and reiterated the importance of Russian representation in Paris to talk about peace.
At the summit, Trudeau said attacks on the press are a lever some use to fuel anxiety about automation of jobs, international trade and ultimately “undermine our trust in institutions and increase our cynicism.”
A bulwark against that was a “robust, respected media” that is under stress, Trudeau said to a crowd of about 150 people.
“Attacks on the media are not just about getting your preferred political candidate elected, for example, they are about increasing the level of cynicism that citizens have towards all authorities, towards all of the institutions that are there to protect us as citizens,” he said.
“When people feel their institutions can’t protect them, they look for easy answers in populism, in nationalism, in closing borders, in shutting down trade, in xenophobia.”
Macron, Trudeau and other leaders came to Paris hoping to use the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War to renew calls to quash festering tensions across the globe.
Macron warned how fragile peace can be in an age where the tensions that gave rise to four years of bloody battle, costing millions of lives, appear to be festering again. He told the assembled masses that the “traces of this war never went away.”
He urged the leaders present to promise their peoples that the resurgent “old demons” would not be able to return, sowing “chaos and death.”