At six months of the presidential election, the head of state leaves in the field to try to embody the camp of progressives again.
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It is a darling era of all the “declines”. That of France before. That of “thirty glorious” and full-employment. That of de Gaulle and Pompidou. That of an offensive France on the international scene, with futuristic projects.
Is this fantasized France by part of the contenders of the presidential election of 2022 that Emmanuel Macron intends to resurrect by 2030 by densening, as he announced, the successors of the “Concorde, the TGV and nuclear reactors “?
By unveiling, Tuesday, October 12, an investment plan of just over 30 billion euros for France to become “a great nation of” industrial, medical and agricultural innovations able to identify ” Projects that we do not yet know “, the head of state laid the decor. Hope is allowed, but to “take over the destiny of France and Europe” and “defend the humanism in which we believe (…), we must have any nostalgia,” he has hammered.
French defeatism
The message could betray some presidential feverishness. Emmanuel Macron, whose victory in 2017 also had to sign that of the “joyful passions” he defended “for freedom, Europe, the knowledge, the universal,” he was caught up with French defeatism?
“Some people think that our country is declining, that the worst is coming, that our civilization fades”, he denounced in his programming book Revolution (Xo Editions, 2016), refusing to “resign oneself ” Five years later, the momentum that the head of state thought I was infusing did not take. Or not enough.
According to the “French fractures” survey conducted by Ipsos Sopra-Steria for Le Monde, disclosed in September, 75% of French people think that the country is declining.
The politico-media success of the far-right polemicist, Eric Zemmour, candidate potential by 2022 and shattering decline, is a cruel illustration of this French penchant. “Eric Zemmour does not seduce with his dark speech, but because he makes a finding that part of the population for a long time. Share a diagnosis on the state of the country is the first step to seduce the elector”, observes Jérôme Fourquet, Director of the Pôle Opinions of the IFOP Institute and Coauthor of France Before our eyes (editions of the threshold).
Decommissioning
The idea of a “folk France”, to resume the title of the book of economist Nicolas Fave, published in 2003, is not new. But the pandemic caused by the coronavirus has given new arguments to those who expand the decommissioning of the country.
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