Macron's contradictions leave French society confused

In the interview given to the newspaper L’Humanité, President Macron once again was full of contradictions. While he tried to convince the journalists with the thesis that he doesn’t promote the politics of the far right, his party’s alliances with the RN and Les Republicains, whose drift towards the far right is no longer questionable, paint a different picture.

In an interview with the daily L'Humanité on February 19 - the first by a sitting President of the Republic to the Communist newspaper in its one hundred and twenty-year history - he urged "not to leave the fight against illegal immigration to the extreme right". The nation is about rights and duties. If it's open to all winds if illegal immigrants can have access to rights without contributing to them, what does that produce? Why do you think the working classes are turning to the RN? (...) This is a republican struggle."

Nevertheless, the French President chose a new strategy he sincerely believes in. According to him, the fight against illegal immigration, and alliances with the right-wing and far-right parties are not subject to sympathies towards the far right. It’s not a matter of choosing the far right style of politics, believes Emmanuel Macron.

This strategy might appear quite manipulative to those who don’t know much about Macron as a politician but for a long time, the President of France was known as a master of political construction and reconstruction for that matter. His main strengths were always his knowledge of the manipulation of the political classes as well as his sincere belief in the principle of “the survival of the fittest”.

The French newspaper L'Express acquired some of the exchanges between Macron and his consultants regarding the management of the various crises by Prime Minister Attal. According to it, the President, who harshly criticizes his Prime Minister while pretending not to, says: "When it comes to negotiating with the FNSEA [on the agricultural crisis], with the unions, he gets his feet stuck in the carpet; negotiating with Bayrou, who for forty years has been in the balance of power, he can't manage that either... But he's never done that, I can't blame him."

Nevertheless, in his interview, Macron presents a view that "the feeling of loss of control fuels the RN. Many of its voters see Europe as too open, too complicated. So the magic formula would be a return to nationalism".

Criticized on the left for his "immigration" law of January 26, 2024, passed by the RN, the head of state, on the defensive, believes that "very left-wing policies" were pursued in the 1980s, which "led to the entry, into the Assembly, of the Front National [now the Rassemblement National], resolutely anti-Semitic and negationist, which the RN is no longer openly. All this must lead to humility".

Relativizing his responsibility for the rise of this party in recent years, Emmanuel Macron believes that "it's the society that has normalized and trivialized the extreme right. It has been invited on every television set for over ten years".

Meanwhile, society is not happy either. In the survey that was conceived by the OpinionWay Institute for the Centre of the Political Research of Sciences Po between January 8 and 18, 2024, only 24% of respondents felt that France was a fair society, with only 3% "strongly agreeing" with this idea.

This percentage hardly varies by age (19% for high-school students, 23% for retirees), or even by respondents' profession: 20% of blue-collar workers, but only 30% of executives and members of the upper professions subscribe to this idea.

While Emmanuel Macron's voters believe the society is fair (42% think so), those of La France Insoumise candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon believe it is far from it(20%). Same with those of Marine Le Pen, candidate of the Rassemblement National (RN), and Eric Zemmour, candidate of Reconquête! (18% and 19%).

Such a disparity of views underlines the dissonance between the beliefs of President Macron and those of the citizens of his country. Moreover, Macron’s thinking leads us to believe despite all the controversial laws passed during his presidency and the innumerous amount of usage of presidential power to pass the laws that were not widely supported or accepted by the social classes, it is his efforts to “normalize” right-wing political thinking that might defeat the right wing.

Jamal Mustafayev