Feb 16, 2022
Charles de Gaulle famously asserted that the French presidential election was an “encounter between a man and the people.” This inherently Bonapartist spirit of the Fifth Republic lives on to this day, as illustrated recently by Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic offensive on behalf of the European Union (EU) over Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s border. In the span of just a few days, the swashbuckling French president met with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, hoping to simultaneously deescalate the perilous chicken game unfolding on the Ukrainian plains whilst also casting himself as a capable diplomatic entrepreneur ahead of the upcoming presidential race in May. Macron, who is yet to announce his run for a second term, faces a markedly different political landscape than in 2017, with no less than 3 major candidates to his right and an electorate that has shifted rightwards in significantly major ways. The proverbial Overton Window, in other words, has expanded so widely that concepts previously considered too right-wing such as Renaud Camus’ Great Replacement theory have even crept into the rhetoric of the center-right candidate Valérie Pécresse. Can a Bonapartist Macron be reelected in a Zemmourist France? Midway through the episode, François refers to an essay he wrote on this very topic for Palladium magazine, which you can read here.
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