Macron's Grand Gamble

"Je Prends Mon Risque"

“I want to affirm it as being very true, according to what can be seen in all the histories, that men can side with Fortune but not oppose her; they can weave her warp but they cannot tear it apart.”
- Machiavelli [Discourses, II.29]

French President Emmanuel Macron announcing snap elections. Somehow the projector screen is a good representation of his distant leadership style.

The European Parliamentary Elections on June 2nd unleashed a political earthquake across the continent. Though the “center held,” as far as the European Union is concerned, the ruling parties of some of Europe’s most important countries were humiliated. The biggest news of the night was when Emmanuel Macron, France’s distant and mercurial centrist leader who is often called “Jupiterian,” shocked the country- and the world- by announcing early Parliamentary elections. Though France has a reputation as a far-left country the reality is that despite its heavily regulated economy it is not that far to the left of the United States, they just do government somewhat differently. France usually has what is considered center-right or center-left governance, but after the unpopular Socialist President François Holland, the young true centrist Macron took power: a former banker with a new party that was a sort of blank slate. Macron’s election seems to have only delayed the inevitable. The center can’t hold. The French political class has long contained the “far-right” through something known as Le Cordon Sanitaire, the French term for everyone coming together to defeat “extremist” candidates, particularly right wing, if they should happen to make it to the second round after sneaking through in a split primary. The high water mark of this strategy was when National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the Presidential race in 2002 only to lose to Gaullist President Jacques Chirac 18-82. This cordon also includes refusing to work with anyone associated with the far-right, something which has grown increasingly untenable as they have gained local power. Several things have undermined Le Cordon Sanitaire, but none so much as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s talented and charismatic daughter, Marine, taking over and embarking on a “de-demonization” campaign to mainstream and professionalize the party. There has been much speculation about why Macron chose to call early elections when it appears not only will the cordon not hold but that Macron’s “Renaissance” party is unlikely to make it to the second round in the great majority of races. Fortune seems to be against Macron but he has hoped it will favor the bold, staking everything on the caution of the electorate while showing none himself. To many, this looks like one of the most ill-advised political gambles of the modern era. However, if not confident, Macron at least recognizes his peril and has accepted the danger, falling back on an expression he favors which is quite similar to what Julius Caesar once said when leaving Gaul, “Je prends mon risque” or “I have placed my bet.”

Ever a restive country, the Fifth French Republic finds itself in perhaps its time of greatest uncertainty in its nearly 70 year history, which puts it within five years of being the longest any form of government in France has survived since the ancien regime. The period following Macron’s shock announcement has been described by many as the most exciting time in French politics in the modern era. The EU elections are not supposed to impact French domestic politics- though they generally serve as an important gauge of sentiment- and Macron himself had said they wouldn’t. However, with a tight circle of advisors which did not include his Prime Minister, Macron decided within an hour of results coming in that it was time to call early elections.

The French themselves were left confused at the head-spinning pace of political developments once Macron said an election would be held in just three weeks. People outside of the country were even more confused, but of course knowing nothing about French politics didn’t stop Americans from commenting:

Unlike most Americans, I do actually follow French politics, which is why I wanted to make sure to find time to write about this. I must acknowledge that though I usually try to not take a side, I am a long-time supporter of Marine Le Pen. I have concerns about how she has mainstreamed National Rally, but it is the classic problem that your ideology is not good for anything unless you can take power: she has clearly decided she wants RN to rule France, not to remain a social club for outcasts as it was under her father. I don’t agree with her on every issue, and strongly disagree on some, but still think she represents a vast improvement over the EU technocracy. That said, I am not a partisan and have no reason to not remain objective. Here are the two articles I wrote about the Presidential election in 2022, for those who are inclined to read more about my views on this matter:

To understand what has happened in France and why it is important first one has to understand France itself, though of course it cannot be adequately described in a short space. There is much more to France than wine, cheese, and permissive sexual mores [which is not to deny that these three things are indeed major parts of French culture.] Americans may be surprised or even offended to hear this, but in many or most ways France is the most similar to the United States of any country in Europe, including the United Kingdom. Like the United States, the highest political values of Republican France are liberty and equality under the law, though of course these are often fulfilled about as poorly as they are in the United States. Having legally recognized nobility has become as foreign to French political culture as it would be to us. However, it is perhaps most important that France is the only major country in Europe, outside of Russia, to have a directly elected executive President, and the position holds a great deal of power. Most of Europe either has a monarch or a ceremonial President, who would most often be an elderly politician well-liked by the political class, such as Joe Biden when he was selected as Obama’s Vice President back in 2008 [though even with the position lacking power they would not make current Joe Biden President.] In France the Prime Minister is appointed by the President but cannot be removed by the President, only by the National Assembly. In effect this means that someone whom the National Assembly does not approve of can be instantly removed, and thus the Prime Minister will generally be from the majority party. Though Presidents can call early elections, it is uncommon. Further, the system is not as such that the President should resign or be removed if he loses a Parliamentary majority, and indeed, he would still have broad power over international relations and other aspects of government while “cohabitating,” as they call it in France, with a hostile Parliament.

France continues to be profoundly important due to its central location within Western Europe, its large economy, and the fact that it is Western Europe’s only remaining independent military power. I would argue that France and Turkiye are the only NATO members that constitute US “allies” in the conventional since instead of being vassals, because they are willing to act independently and have powerful enough militaries that it matters when they choose to do so [it must be acknowledged that in this formulation the United Kingdom acts as a Duke, which though subservient also plays a managerial role for the United States within the alliance.] France has been the world’s second most active interventionist power, behind the United States, in the post-World War 2 era. Americans give the French a hard time for their need of assistance during both World Wars, but they were key a part of the winning alliance in both instances.¹ However, like the United States, and for the same general reasons, France’s military has persistently struggled in its engagements across the world up to our current time.

Though the French political system is different than the United States it faces many of the same issues. My state, Washington, actually has a similar voting system to France in that there is a sort of open primary and then a runoff, though my state’s elections are technically non-partisan whereas in France the parties put one person forward after an internal primary process. In many areas France does not pursue substantially different domestic policies than the United States, it is just more centralized, has a strictly secular political culture, and has a highly regulated labor market. A fair amount of political differences between the United States and France are more the result of relatively small differences in the political process than inherent differences in public sentiment, especially when you remember that people get used to government policies and either accept them or grow increasingly opposed, and thus policy can drive sentiment. That said, France holding up “brotherhood” as a top political value is a major difference from the fiercely individualistic United States. It should also be noted that, somewhat ironically, due to France’s particular culture, the French right is often more secularist and protective of lax views on sexually morality, whereas the center and sometimes even the left can be more accepting of the growing influence of Islam within French society on the grounds of respecting diversity.

Like the United States, the issue that has been gnawing at the Fifth French Republic is immigration, and by extension identity and what it means to be French. Before imperialism collapsed, which was one of the issues leading to the establishment of the Fifth Republic by De Gaulle in 1958, France had pursued a colonial policy of assimilation. The ultimate intention was to make France’s colonies in Africa integral parts of the French State, as has been the case with several of France’s remaining possessions such as French Guyana and a handful of islands in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. In pursuit of this they worked hard to spread their culture and gave their colonies representation in the National Assembly [though at a much lower rate per capita than Metropolitan France, as they were greatly outnumbered by colonial subjects.] Some of the contradictions are showcased in this flyer from the anti-American extremist group “The Red Hand” in Tunisia in the 1950s, who advocated annexing the protectorate into France:

From John Gunther’s Inside Africa [1955.] This is ostensibly some sort of right wing group and it is notable that they view Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité as the defining features of Frenchness, not race or religion.

While French influence in Africa has suffered greatly in recent years, there are many ways in which this did work, and especially among the elites many of France’s subjects developed a deep connection to French culture. As part of this policy it was made easy for French colonial subjects to move to the motherland, and they did so in great numbers. Of course, this looked different at a time when there were more Frenchmen living across the empire occupying high-level positions while colonials moved to France to work low-paying jobs. On top of this, France has a proud history of giving sanctuary to refugees, either individual political dissidents or en masse, such as France’s large Armenian community. The point is that unlike many countries in Europe which have allowed mass immigration but have no meaningful cultural or historical reason to have done so [besides low birth rates and perhaps other, more nefarious, causes] there are actually clear historical reasons why immigrants, especially Arabs and Africans, have been let into French society.

The Fifth French Republic dealt with the rapidly approaching end of imperialism by embracing one of France’s most important revolutionary values, égalité. The Fifth Republic categorizes people as being French or foreign nationals, but doesn’t officially recognize minorities within the French population and is in fact loath to collect such data². This is an admirable sentiment and has saved them from things like racial quotas and affirmative action. At they same time, they don’t track racial inequality and it is difficult to address generational poverty among what we would call minority communities [some privately collected statistics do exist, but in the absence of the census asking for race they are hard to collect and unreliable.] Further, this means that Critical Theory, which was largely developed in France, exported to America, and then re-imported in a more virulent form which the French call le Wokisme, is a fundamental threat to the core values of their Republic, even moreso than it is in the United States. The upshot of all of this that it is profoundly important that immigrants be assimilated into French culture, something which becomes nearly impossible under the massive wave of immigration which Europe is currently suffering. Further, aspects of the French economy are rigid by design and there are high barriers for the entry of new immigrants into France’s legal economy, creating another challenge to assimilation.

The point of this rather lengthy digression about France’s modern history is to show where the French state finds itself. Political trends travel throughout the world quite rapidly these days, but still generally stay within a type of political bloc, in this instance the “International Community” of the G7 countries and their allies. Thus, like the United States, France has been at a crossroads, where an inept neoliberal ruling class has lost sight of the values held by the public and grown increasingly detached. There is not only the widespread concern about immigration which “mainstream” parties have proven unable to stop [and many believe mass immigration has been an intentional policy, in fact, “The Great Replacement” theory originated with the French academic Renaud Camus,] but also concern within France that their “active” foreign policy is not centered on national interests and only bears bitter fruit. Further, there is a widespread perception that improvements to living standards have stagnated for decades; it needs to be pointed out that access to material goods has constantly improved but expectations have perhaps risen even faster, and people are not finding satisfaction from materialism. In France the last problem is by nature worse than in the US because the French are a more culturally developed people and capitalism and free markets are not a core value of the French people. Great nations have some defining feature and for France it is culture: they don’t just prefer their culture, the French along with many others consider it to be the world’s culturally superior country. Of course, immigration at a persistently faster rate than that at which assimilation is possible threatens the supremacy of French culture within France itself.

In 2015 and early 2016, as the more sane among the American public looked on in horror at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump Presidential election, I advocated the value of getting a “placeholder” President [John Kasich was my choice out of the options at the time] and coming back to the issue in 4 years. Instead, we got Donald Trump. When the 2020 election proved inconclusive I thought it would be a good opportunity for Americans to relax and reconvene in 18 months and then choose our path forward, but the Democrats decided to try to reshape the country on a razor-thin margin and persecute their opponents. Americans are not ones to wait for things to take shape, and our system enforces partisanship. Alternately, when France went to the polls in the brief but glorious post-Great Recession pre-Covid era for the 2017 Presidential election the highly unpopular Socialist President François Hollande did not run for re-election. The popularity of the Republicans, the center-right party, had also suffered. Macron came in as a sort of “man from nowhere” and got 24% in the first round with a newly created political party, at the time called “En Marche!,” which means “Forward!” in English. It seems every four years some group of establishment losers get together and try to do this in America, such as this year with Joe Lieberman’s “No Labels” movement, except in France it worked.

Macron was everything that a fraying center could want: young, childless³, uninteresting, globalist, and with a background in finance: the perfect shell to keep capital flowing without rocking the boat, and with no reason to care about the future to boot. Macron was described as “post-partisan” or sometimes as even being “post-politics.” He was the End of History’s man in the Élysée. He was also, as they say, “Jupiterian,” like the Roman thunder god, alone in his role, despite that his new party had followed him to victory in the legislative elections, with their coalition gaining an incredible 350 out of 577 seats. By the 2022 Presidential elections, neither the Socialists nor the Republicans got the 5% necessary to have their campaign expenses reimbursed: a mere 10 years earlier they had captured 55% of the first round vote between the two of them. Macron defeated the “traditional” center-right and center-left, getting the majority of their voters behind his banner. In doing so, the ultimate elitist EU politician was able to defer the rise of populist, non-“mainstream” parties on the left and right. France was able to take something of a break and try to get its bearings. Unfortunately for the Mandarins, the bureaucratic and neoliberal EU system isn’t working for the public, and Macron, distant and unknowable, is not the one to sell it to them. It is said by some that the coup in Niger awoke Macron from his post-politics dream, but it seems it was the EU elections which turned it into a nightmare. Macron won’t be solving this problem with international trade: there was no choice but to turn to politics.

Since 2022’s legislative elections, Macron had already been governing with a minority alliance. His party, renamed Renaissance, expanded its coalition to include more parties, taking the name “Ensemble.” However, even so it was only able to get 251 seats. The one thing he has going for him is that the opposition is even more split, with RN being the largest party with 89 seats. This is uncommon in France, in fact, the first time since the ‘90s that a President has not had a legislative majority. For France’s history of frequent revolt, the Fifth Republic has been remarkably politically stable. Perhaps more importantly, though the President can dissolve the Parliament, this is almost never done: the last legislative term under 5 years was also in the ‘90s. In almost 70 years the Fifth Republic has only had 5 “snap” elections, the last one in 1997. Since the Presidential term was shortened in 2002, from 7 years to 5 years to match the length of Parliamentary terms, there have been Parliamentary elections consistently following the Presidential election: one could be forgiven for having forgotten the French President even still had the ability to dissolve Parliament, and few expected one to do so.

But dissolve Parliament Macron did, and the French state was thrown into chaos, the very thing Macron was meant to prevent. A thread from the French expatriate Arnaud Bertrand explained just how wild the first days were. In short, Macron took his own people by surprise, perhaps moreso than any of his opponents. His allies and supporters, such as they are, may be the most unhappy about this. In destroying the traditional center-left and center-right parties for his true centrism, Macron did not actually build a viable political movement which has more to it than following Macron. It could turn out that the Macronists barely even contest the election at all and are not a major opposition force in the next legislature. The Financial Times featured astounding projections for the election:

The far-right bloc (RN and the smaller Reconquête) are in the lead in 362 seats. The left, which crucially has formed a “popular front” spanning anti-capitalist radicals and social democrats, is ahead in 211. Macron’s centrist bloc is ahead in only three (all of them seats for French people abroad) and the centre-right in one, the wealthy 16th arrondissement in Paris.

The second round would come down to a fight between two camps: left and far-right would battle it out in in 536 seats; Macron’s alliance would make the run-off in only 41, and LR in three.

You read that correctly: Macron’s party is only in the lead among some people who don’t actually have to live in the territory he controls, and even so, he is only leading in 3 out of 11 of those seats [France has geographical constituencies for citizens who live outside of the country, the only country I know of which does this.] It is possible that Macron’s coalition only makes it to the second round in 41 races, and of those they could perhaps win less than half: it is plausible that Macron could control under 5% of a new National Assembly. It does need to be noted that there is a rarely relevant clause in France’s electoral laws where any candidate who gets over 12.5% of total registered voters in the first round of a legislative election moves to the second round along with the first and second place candidates. This hasn’t come up in the last two elections, in 2017 because Macron’s party performed so strongly and in 2022 because of overall low turnout, but if this snap election generates a lot of interest and is also indecisive, Renaissance could end up in many second round elections. Suffice to say, if Renaissance greatly outperforms due to sneaking through with around 40% across the country, it is likely to enter some sort of political purgatory which could ultimately antagonize the public out of proportion to the amount of power it gets from that scenario.

For some reason it was Macron’s Élysée which released this dismal black and white photo of his people trying to decide how to proceed after their humiliation in the European elections.

While Macron struggles for relevance, France’s fractious far-left rapidly unified for the first time since 1936. They formed a group called “The New Popular Front” led by the elderly Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, who has been a major force in recent Presidential elections, getting around 20% in the first round in 2017 and 2022. There is concern about if Mélenchon, whom the mainstream media describe with terms like “raucous” and “divisive” would be capable of holding the coalition together and serving as Prime Minister if they were to perform that well in election. It seems unlikely that the New Popular Front can get a majority even if they overperform, but they are doing well enough that it is driving big business to RN, who have historically been seen as insufficiently friendly to international capital and more importantly as politically toxic. In fact, until just now, there was something of an embargo against RN by the global financial interests, but of course they are much faster to adapt to changing realities than Europe’s political class.

While the “far-right” and “far-left” are in a close race and a recent poll showed RN only leading by one point, the real interest to myself and seemingly to everyone else is how Rassemblement National will do in the election. They seem to be the only ones who weren’t surprised by this outcome, though after decades in the wilderness they must have been even if they did not show it. At the very least, they were the ones preparing for elections when Macron surprised his own party. National Rally does not suffer from the lack of depth of Renaissance, nor is it a fractious alliance of desperation like the New Popular Front. Further, Marine Le Pen is neither distant like Macron nor “raucous” like Mélenchon. By all accounts she is talented, intelligent, and personable. There have been countless profiles over the years about her success in leading National Rally to the mainstream, and while the media of course wants you to believe that her victory would be unacceptable, they rarely deny that she is a capable leader. Further, Jordan Bardella is young and good looking, though described as being vacuous, which is probably just what the canny Le Pen wants in that role. Bardella has been made the party leader and would be RN’s Prime Minister, but there is no doubt about who is running things.

The lines that the media will use against RN seem likely to fall flat with the voters, if they have not already. On top of Le Pen’s charm and her friendly cat lady persona, the RN has become an increasingly serious and experienced political party under her leadership. As is common, when they first got power some of their candidates had no idea how to govern even small municipalities and it was disastrous. The second time around under Marine things went much better, and the party sends instructions to new mayors- several decent-sized cities have had RN mayors for years and things have gone fine. A good thing about being a “law and order” party is that it is relatively straightforward. Further, she has instructed RN candidates to dress properly: men in ties and women in jackets. This is, of course, a superficial thing but image is a major part of politics and they are not meant to be grungy outsiders but perhaps the next ruling party of France. RN has also done fine as France’s largest opposition party, and has a solid group of members who are used to holding political office.

Le Pen and Bardella with RN volunteers after their victory in the European elections of June 2nd. I find it somewhat amusing that besides Le Pen there are no women in this picture, yet the two guys behind her appear to be Arabs.

National Rally’s trajectory is promising, though only time will tell what may happen. One thing they have going for them is that, like in the US, socialism has fallen out of favor with poor workers and become more the realm of the affluent and useless. Socialist mayors have been plagued with corruption scandals while union membership has dropped and workers who feel left behind increasingly align with non-mainstream politics. Perhaps most of all what has benefited RN is that as Le Pen has “de-demonized” the party, accusations of fascism, Nazism, anti-semitism, and the like have become ever more common and meaningless, and all of this happening as World War 2 continues to leave living memory.

The BBC sent someone to Macron’s hometown of Amiens to discover how the local hero lost his charm- that is how bad things are for him- and only one out of around 20 people they spoke to said they would vote for Macron’s party, and that “supporter” was extremely tepid. However, I was struck the most by the quote they got from a 37 year old cleaning lady named Aurelie, who said,

“The RN is constantly being called fascist, racist, homophobe etcetera. Maybe it was once. How would I know? I wasn’t around then. All I can say is that today it is a party like any other.

“It is a party that is close to us, the people. That’s what I like – they are for the French – and I mean the French of all colours. I have two friends originally from Chad who are going to vote RN too. They say they are so happy to be in France that they want to save it.”

[It needs to be noted, since she mentions race and racism, that Aurelie is white.]

Indeed, and of course my readers are all too tired of these accusations against anyone that opposes the failing political center. It’s true that National Rally had these problems in the past, but does anyone in America actually take it seriously when Republicans talk about how the Democrats once supported slavery and segregation? Certainly National Rally’s problems are much more recent, but the current American President shared the Democrat Party with segregationists and has spoken fondly of them as individuals, so it isn’t all that different.

Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal has been making a flurry of media appearances advocating that her supporters vote for RN. I felt it necessary to include a picture lest anyone not believe me that she is gorgeous.

We have to ask, though, what would happen if National Rally did take power. Many are unhappy about Le Pen’s mainstreaming, but Eric Zemmour was only able to turn that discontent into barely passing the 5% threshold to be represented in the European Parliament. Further, what success Reconquête did have was almost all on the appeal of Marine Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal who led their ticket, and who also happens to be perhaps the most beautiful politician of any significance in the entire world. She has somewhat returned to the fold after previously defecting from RN [while she has not rejoined the party, she is strategically supporting it in this election.] However, those people will vote for RN over the far-left or Macron, so their concerns most likely matter little, in terms of election results. Many on all sides are looking to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, about whom we were treated to panicked stories about the fascist heritage of her party and she turned out to be a relatively conventional center-right politician as immigration only went up. The big difference is that Italy has famously shaky governments and Meloni is its Prime Minister, whereas the French Presidency is a much more stable position, and for that matter so is its PM. Mujtaba Rahman, the director of the Eurasia Group’s Europe division, gave a wide-ranging interview to NYMag about the French political situation and argues that Meloni’s positions out of power were “far less extreme than Le Pen’s,” on top of the fact that she had less ability to implement them. If anything, Meloni is probably less of an example of how RN might govern and more of an example of how accusations of fascism have been diluted so badly as to no longer work. For what it’s worth, the RN leadership has publicly disavowed Meloni’s moderation.

Overall, a Le Pen victory would “promise” [in the sense of politicians promising things] a much more nuanced and reasonable foreign policy, and in the past she has said she wants to leave NATO’s unified command structure [which was De Gaulle’s policy.] Further, Le Pen recognizes a world of nations instead of supranational structures, and wants to “rethink” France’s relationship with the United States, correctly noting, "They are our ally, but we need to redefine the conditions of this cooperation. An ally is not a friend and can, on certain issues, behave like a competitor, or even an adversary." I have concerns regarding Le Pen’s views on Israel, where she is okay but not great and has generally taken the futile position that there should be an independent Palestinian state but that Hamas needs to be destroyed for this to happen. However, though France is broadly friendly to Israel, it is not a major supporter of Israel in the same way as the US so I am not greatly concerned about France’s Israel policy⁴.

What I am concerned about is RN’s policy on the EU, globalism generally, and most specifically Ukraine. The RN’s “Euroskepticism” has been continuously reduced over time, though there is now some chance of reforming the EU and slowing its steady march towards centralization, which calls for a more nuanced attitude than a “Leave/Remain” dichotomy. Most importantly, Le Pen has long supported a sort of strategic alliance with Russia, or at least good relations, but therein lies the problem. In 2014, after being blacklisted by all of the French banks, the party took a loan from a Russian bank, something that her detractors are yet to shut up about. Of course, ‘twas ever thus: they make you a monster and then they call you one. Still, we run into the same intractable political problem as with Donald Trump, “Only Nixon could go to China.” Le Pen being good on Russia then makes it her weakness and we risk her spending all of her time showing she isn’t a Russian pawn, and ultimately becoming as or more aggressive than her predecessor for domestic political reasons. Still, she is a much more principled and serious politician than Donald Trump [a low bar] so there is some hope. One way or another, Bardella has said he supports continuing to arm Ukraine, though not in a way that escalates the situation, which is what they all say, until they continuously escalate the situation. It is a great disappointment.

Bardella at the Eurosatory defense fair, trying to convince defense contractors they will still profit under the RN.

We are left with the final question: why did Macron do this? The man is, as has been said, mercurial and unknowable, but there are a few different thoughts on the “why.” The first is that he believed it would give him an advantage over his opponents and that the EU election only expressed discontent but that the French public would pull back before putting either the “far” right or left in power. Since the EU Parliament is almost completely powerless and EU elections have low turnouts, protest votes are common. However there is no good reason to believe the public will redirect itself, since RN was more prepared and there is plenty of evidence people would vote for them- Le Pen got over 40% of the vote in 2022. At the same time, Macron probably didn’t expect the left to pull together all at once, so that must have been a real surprise.

The second main line of reasoning is that Macron felt that RN forming a weak government and being in power in the years leading up to the 2027 election would harm their reputation. Things are not going great in a country’s politics if the leader tries to trick an opponent into taking charge in order to harm them by their association with state power. I struggle to believe that Macron’s plan is this sort of tactical retreat, but it is possible. However, RN is mostly intending to avoid this trap, and will only form a government if they have an absolute majority., at least that is what Bardella currently says. He gave the following quote to Le Parisien: “Who could believe that we would be able to change the daily lives of French people in cohabitation with a relative majority? Nobody. I’m saying to the French people: to try us, we need an absolute majority.” I don’t know why he said “relative majority” instead of “minority government,” but regardless, the meaning is clear. What is not clear if Macron would “Cohabitate” with them at all, but that in and of itself would be a large victory for Marine Le Pen, who has been shunned because of her father since childhood [not to personalize this, it has also been the political policy of the entire French establishment towards RN.] Macron insists he wouldn’t resign in the event of an outright RN victory, but he also said he would not “draw domestic conclusions” from the EU elections and then did that exact thing. For her part, Le Pen says she will not request Macron’s resignation if her party wins a majority, telling Le Figaro, “I’m respectful of institutions; I do not call for institutional chaos. There will simply be cohabitation.” It would be as foreign to the French political system as it would be to the American political system for a President to resign because he lost a legislative election, but he is allowed to do it. Macron is still a young man by political standards, 46, and apparently has consulted the Constitutional Court and determined that if he resigns he is eligible to run again in 2032 because, though it is untested, the President is only technically limited to two consecutive terms.

I don’t know that I believe Macron is attached to either of the above views. Foreign Policy notes Macron’s belief in audacity, quoting the Revolutionary hero Georges Danton who said, “Audacity, more audacity, forever audacity, and the nation will be saved.” Similarly, The Editorial Board at The Guardian notes that Macron may be arrogant and impetuous, but he does not lack political courage. I am also of the opinion that the audacity is the point: Macron has decided to test Fortune, the odds be damned. He will go down fighting, a man like so many made for a time in history who is likely to become its victim once his purpose is served. Macron may think he has better odds than outside observers imagine he does, because as Livy wrote, “Destiny blind’s men’s eyes, when she is determined that her gathering might shall meet no check!” [V.37.] Perhaps, as Anne Elisabeth-Moutet suggested, writing for Unherd, he really is “Emmanuel Macron: Destroyer of Worlds” and France’s Jupiter and will only leave destruction. It is hard to come to a different conclusion than that France’s ultimate centrist has accomplished little but to hollow out the center and delay the inevitable.

Meanwhile, for better or for worse, it seems that the day of destiny is upon Marine Le Pen and Rassembelent National and that Fortune is their friend. Macron stands as the last knight of the End of History in France as History tries to break down the gates: a ferocious unwashed rabble coming for the Eurocrat Mandarins.

Macron may have channeled Julius Caesar to his inner circle in saying Je prends mon risque, but his message to the public comes from King Louis the XV: Après moi, le déluge.

This is likely to be a tempest, and it is already pouring rain.

Thank you for reading! The Wayward Rabbler is written by Brad Pearce. If you enjoyed this content please subscribe and share. My main articles will always be free but paid subscriptions help me a huge amount. I also have a tip jar at Ko-Fi. I am now writing regularly for The Libertarian Institute. My Facebook page is The Wayward Rabbler. You can see my shitposting and serious commentary on Twitter @WaywardRabbler.

1. I hold to the belief that “Free France” constituted the legitimate government of France during the period of German occupation. The first reason is that I am of the view that Paris is so central to France that any government which accepts or collaborates with the foreign occupation of Paris can never be the legitimate government of France. The second, more important factor, is that such things are determined by agreement and law, and the France itself as well as outside powers take this position. The argument that they were an insurgency, not a territorial power, is simply inaccurate being as Free France controlled French Equatorial Africa almost immediately after the German occupation began, which is an area far larger than Metropolitan France.

2. Correction 7/3: It is explicitly illegal for the French government to collect such demographic data. I was aware of this and explained it poorly. I apologize for any confusion.

3. Emmanuel Macron has step-children his age, because his wife is literally a groomer, but the French are characteristically uninterested in the unconventional sex lives of their political candidates.

4. It doesn’t bear going into here, but France’s strong ties to Armenia which have caused a lot of acrimony between France and Israel’s ally Azerbaijan are likely to stop France and Israel from ever becoming too close.