Our columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté is currently staying in France, from where he observes French news from a Quebec perspective.
At the end of February, the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia violently hit the French presidential campaign by making it almost disappear from the news for several weeks.
This event, as brutal as it was unforeseen, highlighted Emmanuel Macron by transforming him into an interlocutor of Vladimir Putin, whom he stood up to while seeking, without too much success, to moderate him.
Some candidates were mowed down by this event, notably Éric Zemmour, who had already made remarks favorable to Putin. He served as a lightning rod, insofar as the entire French political class had sought, for several years, to establish a special relationship with Putin.
These candidates wanted to be faithful to the Gaullist tradition, seeking in Russia a force of balance to contain American influence. The least we can say is that this geopolitical vision seems for a while to be weighed down.
A few weeks have passed.
The war in Ukraine has settled into the news but no longer dominates it. And it finds its place in the debates of the second round.
Marine Le Pen is now the central target.
Many accuse it of being complacent towards Russia because it wants to limit the sanctions against it, without abolishing them. Some even accuse it of being financially and politically subservient to it.
Marine Le Pen denies this, explaining that these sanctions first hurt the French working classes who are faced with a dramatic rise in prices which limits their purchasing power and sooner or later condemns them to impoverishment.
It is the question of Russian gas that haunts the countries of Western Europe: if they give it up, they could well throw themselves headlong into an economic and energy crisis. But if they continue to buy it, they legitimize, at least indirectly, the Putin regime.
Only light-minded people believe that all this is simple.
But there is more. In pleading this week for a new alliance with Russia, once the war is over in Ukraine, she seemed completely out of step with current events.
One day we will have to find an arrangement with Russia, of course, but to plead for it in the present circumstances is thought-provoking, to put it mildly.
Macron
Let’s leave the Russian question and look at things more broadly.
The world is watching the French presidential election with great interest, because through it not only two candidates are opposed, but two visions of the world.
For Emmanuel Macron, the presidential election stages an opposition between democracy and an authoritarian temptation of Putin’s style.
The pen
For Marine Le Pen, the presidential election rather opposes the camp of the patriots, of which she wants to be the candidate, and that of the globalists who no longer believe in peoples and nations.
This conflict, from one day to the next, is becoming more radical. The two camps are not content to oppose each other. They consider each other illegitimate.
Macron accuses Le Pen of betraying democracy, which accuses him of betraying France.
It is the global warming of political passions.
The violence of the far left
I don’t like the use of the term “extreme”. We abuse it. However, it applies to violent groups. And it was such groups that showed up at the Sorbonne, deciding to occupy it and ransack it. Why? Because they are unhappy that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the radical left, is not in the second round of the presidential election. They lose their elections so they judge that the electoral system is unfair and rigged! Little Trumpians!
A Republican front?
What to do with the presence of Marine Le Pen in the second round? Should we see it as an adversary like any other, some commentators wonder, insofar as democracy necessarily involves politicians who do not see the world in the same way? Or should a republican front be raised against it to contain the thrust of the “extreme right”? Proponents of this strategy have only this word in their mouths. Whether it will work remains to be seen.
Is the referendum undemocratic?
To reform political institutions that she considers paralyzing and blocked, Marine Le Pen intends to use the referendum. But is the referendum democratic, ask his opponents, who accuse him of wanting to circumvent the Constitution, parliamentarians and perhaps even trample on the rights of “minorities”? Doesn’t the appeal to the people serve to disguise an authoritarian temptation and to legitimize the tyranny of the majority? This is at least what he has been accused of in recent days.
