CHRONIC. “Rearmament”, political inflection or marketing concept?

Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday January 14, “rearmament”. A concept used by the President of the Republic during his vows, and which we have since heard many times, notably from the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

“Rearmament” is THE concept of this political comeback. We find it, in fact, in the very first words published by Gabriel Attal as Prime Minister, on X: “A course: keep control of our destiny, unleash French potential and rearm our country”. A few hours later, still on X, the same term, from the pen, this time, of the President of the Republic:

But it was obviously during the greetings to the French that this word was first used by the Head of State. And even overused: no less than eight occurrences in a speech of barely 13 minutes.

From a rhetorical point of view, if we want to be technical we can talk about a structural epanalepsis. A very complicated word to designate something quite simple, in reality: it simply consists of repeating the same word or the same formula in each sentence or in each paragraph. This ultimately gives the intervention an impression of overall coherence. The pivotal word becomes a common thread to which everything leads back. This is how, after listening to Emmanuel Macron, we have the feeling that each part of his policy is directed in one and the same direction: the rearmament of the Nation.

Real coherence or simple discourse process?

It all depends on knowing whether there has truly been political and ideological reflection behind it, which would start from an overall objective, and would then seek to deploy it ministry by ministry. Or if, on the contrary, we are content to look for a word sufficiently vague so that it gives the impression of encompassing all decisions, whatever they may be. In this case, it still looks a bit like the latter option.

“Rearmament” is obviously a metaphor: public services and the economy cannot “rearm” themselves, simply be strengthened. But it’s a metaphor we can only agree with. I don’t know anyone who would like to disarm the health system or the industry! Reset, yes. But how to rearm, according to what priorities, and at what price? These are the questions that divide, and which, for the moment, the president is careful to leave in the shadows. In rhetoric, this is what we call a mobilizing concept: a vague word, which speaks to everyone, but has a different meaning for everyone. This is the kind of concept you use when you want to appear to be saying big things, while being sure not to offend anyone.

However, this metaphor may be vague, but it is not trivial. Its primary interest is already to be well adapted to the context in which we find ourselves. After a year marked by two major international wars, in Ukraine and Gaza, the image of rearmament allows us to play on both the anxieties of vulnerability and the demands for protection of citizens. For the President of the Republic, it is also a way of summoning the unity of the Nation behind his action. Finally, and above all, this martial vocabulary also allows us to evoke the values ​​of order and authority. In this, the word “rearmament” is not insignificant: it tells us something of the image that the President of the Republic wishes to construct. An image which may not please everyone.

What is the political content behind this term?

I would like to quote here a beautiful book published in 2021 by the linguist Damon Mayaffre: Macron or the mystery of the verb. He used artificial intelligence to identify the words that statistically best characterize the language of the head of state. The machine not only identified words, but also a prefix: “re”. Emmanuel Macron saturates his speeches with words such as: review, rebuild, refound, recreate and therefore, from now on, rearm. However, the specificity of this prefix is ​​that it does not designate the invention of what could be, but rather the return to what was before.

Behind these words, what we hear is basically the exaltation of a France of yesteryear, which would have represented a golden age, and which it would be a question of rediscovering. It’s interesting because, when we listen to Emmanuel Macron, he never stops pleading for “the new world”, “surpassing”, “innovation”… But when we observe his language, we find on the contrary nostalgia, a look towards the past, in short, a form of conservatism. The word “rearmament” is totally part of this movement. And, in this, we can wonder if it is not representative of what could be, today, the true ideological foundations of Macronism: authority and conservatism.