Macron Le Canard

“There is no such thing as French culture”

There were some curious parallels between this weekend’s French election and last November’s U.S. election. A so-called centrist versus a so-called populist. A batch of private emails tossed into the fray at a critical moment. Charges of racism, fascism, and Russophilia. Media panic and efforts to suppress the alternative press. First and foremost, though, are the differences, which are more important because they predict the future behavior of the one percent.

The so-called centrist won in France, but was defeated in the States. Emmanuel Macron was largely unknown to the public, while Hillary Clinton was a tiresome retread distasteful to nearly everyone over thirty. Macron also found himself in a more fortuitous position than Clinton: the two major parties in France were trundled out of the competition in the first round of voting. The Socialists of Francois Hollande were bitterly resented for their transparently neoliberal politics (after campaigning on all the usual tropes of people-centric liberalism). The Republican candidate Francois Fillon was removed to the dustbin by an embezzlement scandal. That left a gaping hole in the center of French politics. It was promptly filled by the ‘globalist’ former Socialist economic minister and National Front’s ‘nationalist’ Marine Le Pen.

The Rebrand

As usual, the globalist was able to disguise his extremism in the raiment of liberal moderation. To be sure, Macron is a banker and a neoliberal socialist, committed to the Western world’s toxic blend of imperialism abroad and austerity at home, all in the interests of the globalization of exploitation by Western finance, energy, and defense concerns. Yet he smartly distanced himself from the reviled Socialist Party and rebranded himself inside a new party construct called “En Marche,” or “Onward.” That name tells you all you need to know. Meet the new neoliberal party, same as the old liberal party. Revving up his identity politics credibility, Macron likened the political discourse in France to a debate about whether the Fifth Republic should be an open or a closed society. Such disingenuous characterizations are the politician’s calling card: create a false choice with one of the choices (a closed society) being something that no sane person would choose. Once the dilemma is established, vigorously stump for the other choice (an open society) as though you were an emissary from the Age of Enlightenment, an envoy of enlightened tolerance. Simply repeat a few happy blandishments about diversity, and one’s blueprint for laissez faire desolation vanishes from the national consciousness. These talking points in his hip pocket, Macron, enveloped in the fresh air of a new party, pleasingly youthful and urbane, easily outdistanced Le Pen in the finale.

"Beyond its borders, the Macron-backed platform yokes neoliberalism at home with imperialism abroad. That typically means aggressively pursuing regime change in any country that does not accept the West’s neoliberal economic model..."

Suppressing Free Speech

To ensure this result, the French media had taken its cue from the U.S. media, and framed the campaign as an “Anyone but Le Pen” doomsday scenario, a Gallic existential crisis that would have had Sartre and Camus tacking to the center. On the other hand, when a huge cache of Macron’s private emails was released the week before the election, the media reacted differently than the U.S. mainstream had after Hillary’s DNC emails and John Podesta’s emails hit the open market.

Initially, the American press attempted to redirect the public’s attention from the damning contents of the emails to the invented ‘fact’ that Moscow had hacked both the DNC and Podesta to get Donald Trump elected. This quickly led to a hyperventilating hysteria about the need to defend the republic from Russian plotters commissioned by the evil genius Vladimir Putin (doubtless bent beneath a black cape and playing a thunderous organ deep in the bowels of the blood-soaked Kremlin). Only a few solitary voices attempted to seed the narrative that the media shouldn’t publish or even review the stolen emails. But the French establishment appeared to lead with this argument. The French electoral commission literally ordered the press not to publish the cache, and threatened criminal prosecution for those that did. Another attack on free speech in the land of protest, following various anti-protest actions, warrantless raids, and a perpetual state-of-emergency in the wake of terrorist attacks, naturally justified under the catch-all rubric of national security.

The Extreme Moderate

The MSM in the States responded to the election in typical fashion. Quartz declared that, “Her (Le Pen) failure to reach the Élysée Palace leaves moderates across the globe breathing easier.” Why are “moderates” across the globe relieved? Because the French elected a graduate of one of the country’s top schools for civil servants who pushed through austerity measures as Francois Hollande’s economic minister? Hardly an outsider as portrayed, and hardly moderate.

Macron’s status quo brand of neoliberal economics promises diminishing prospects for French citizens as jobs are outsourced and the electorate rely more on credit than wages to sustain their standard of living; this will precipitate debt deflation, which will stymie demand and create crises of capital accumulation; the dissolution of state sovereignty through global trade agreements that privilege corporate rights over sovereign rights, which will subject citizenries to anti-environmental industrialization and anti-labor deregulation that Macron especially favors; and, of course, lower social spending as federal debt overhang will force administrations of all stripes into either extreme austerity (Greece) or default (Argentina); and ultimately privatization of a nation’s wealth, such as the sale of everything from utilities to islands to private investors.

Beyond its borders, the Macron-backed platform yokes neoliberalism at home with imperialism abroad. That typically means aggressively pursuing regime change in any country that does not accept the West’s neoliberal economic model, perhaps preferring import-substitution model or wage growth or continental economic blocs versus unregulated globalism. Recalcitrant nations, such as Syria, Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and Libya, among others, are said to be in dire need of ‘modernization,’ largely meaning the implementation of free-market economics, a ‘liberalized’ labor market, and ‘rule of law’, a euphemism for ensuring bankers and lenders recoup failed investments. They are also said to be led by dictators or authoritarians, an easy claim to make since nearly every government in existence can be legitimately accused of some manner of paternalism, over-regulation, plutocracy, corruption, or brutality, not least the United States. All told, this is a program of modern pillage and is certainly extreme. Yet it is successfully pitched as moderate.

For some time now pro-war neoliberal elites have been characterized by the MSM as ‘centrist’, which denotes a kind of comfortable middle-of-the-spectrum position that threatens neither the elderly and their pensions nor minorities (and the upper-class professionals that want to polish their liberal bona fides by defending them). By stabilizing the extreme right neoliberals at the center, left and right candidates will by default fall closer to the radical fringe and can easily be tarred as such.

To that end, mainstream media repeatedly deploys a curious lexicon of soft-peddle fear-mongering, using words such as ‘worrisome,’ ‘troubling,’ ‘concerned,’ to artfully characterize centrist observers quietly raising alarms over anything but the most incremental reforms of the status quo. (Gender, race, and LGBT positions generally fall into this category as permitting civil unions or clamoring for gender-balanced pay only disturbs a peripheral phalanx of homophobic sexists but never the corporate stock dividend.) When the left or right critique their enemies, be they neoconservatives or neoclassicists, they tend to employ a more fiery rhetoric that suggests, sadly but predictably, a surfeit of spleen and instability.

With a centrist in the middle, challengers like Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen, and others, can be derided as superficial socialist dreamers or right-wing fascists that would either violate liberal values of multiculturalism or wreck the economy, or both. The misinformed will fear the former and the uninformed the latter, and both will vote centrist. The real extremism will be disguised beneath the centrist’s slick coiffure and narcotic platitudes about equality. As Le Pen said, "People talk about my aggressiveness, but the terrible aggressiveness is that of Mr. Macron's plan ... which is a plan for social deconstruction and deregulation…”

Demonizing Dissent

Le Pen’s “Choisir La France” was a clear signal to voters that she would protect French culture, which her supporters see as crumbling beneath the weight of unchecked immigration and economic austerity, delivered by an overly tolerant liberal establishment with a greater commitment to financial globalization than the French economy itself. Le Pen would have likely sought to exit the euro, (foolishly) attempt to renegotiate the terms of its EU membership, deliver social policies that favor labor, close down borders, deport illegal immigrants, try to force Muslim immigrants to conform to French custom, and massively expand the prison industrial complex. She also promised to generate domestic job creation for citizens, step away from NATO leadership, withdraw from the war to overthrow Bashar al Assad, cancel Russian sanctions and work constructively with Moscow. But we should remember this was all campaign rhetoric.

Despite the fact that many of these policies are not extreme (border enforcement, renegotiating terms with the EU, privileging jobs for citizens, reducing foreign interventions, etc.), Le Pen is branded as a dangerous radical whom all clear-headed liberals should fear. This has something to do with actual extreme positions, such as enforcing the use of French by mullahs in mosques; frightening positions, such as a swift exit from Europe; but especially to do with her anti-globalization views and a foreign policy that steps back from advancing hegemonic Western ambitions in the Middle East and beyond. She recognizes the need for national sovereignty if France is ever to be a true democracy (a position shared by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon). That is precisely what the globalists do not want and will not allow. Le Pen’s views are above all an economic threat to profiteering strategy of the one percent. All such challenges have been everywhere crushed. Most recently, Donald Trump’s administration was being surgically dismantled before he reversed his political vision and handed the keys to foreign policy over to the hawkish generalissimos he appointed out of fear. The same might have happened to Le Pen.

Lessons Learned

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]verall, the global establishment successfully enacted the lessons it learned from the American election debacle of 2016. First, find a fresh candidate who can credibly distance him or herself from the fatally discredited liberal political parties. Macron launched his own party in a calculated bid to shed unwanted connections to his old boss, Hollande, for whom he pushed through austerity measures. Rather than focus on this evident service to the status quo, the media positioned Macron as new blood with a new vision and repeated the fact that he had never won elected office. Second, use threats of criminal prosecution and claims of electoral interference to suppress whistleblower leaks or rogue hacks the moment they appear. A good dose of Russian fearmongering can only aid this tactic. Thus anyone spreading information supposedly gleaned by Russian hackers is abetting a foreign agent looking to undermine democracy. Third, categorically demonize the challenger, whether from the left (Jean-Luc Mélenchon) or right (Le Pen) as an unhinged hothead with fascist, racist, homophobic, and misogynist tendencies. Fourth, rhetorically situate the preferred candidate in the center of the political spectrum, cast as a moderate with regular nods to tolerance and inclusion portrayed as principled anti-discrimination ranged against a hysterical mob of xenophobes. Then slyly conflate open societies with open markets. This will effectively attract the majority liberal and minority vote and the majority senior vote. Macron’s campaign theme was the suitably multicultural, “Ensemble, la France.”

Now that it worked in the French presidential election, expect these same tactics to be used wherever else the pro-war, neoliberal capitalist elite feel threatened. Macron must still assemble a governable degree of support in French parliament in June, where his new party is as yet unrepresented. This leaves an opening for Le Pen, but also for the old status quo parties.

It is in Le Pen’s favor that Macron will not adequately address pivotal issues in modern France: sovereignty and identity. His European sycophancy cedes sovereignty to Brussels; his concept of the French identity is that, “There is no such thing as French culture.” Neither position will ultimately quell the brimming discontent, from the banlieues to the rural farms.

The evolving challenge for the one percent and their servant media will be to invoke this strategy as pre-emptively as possible in the future, shuttering avenues of legitimate dissent, pushing candidates that talk from the left and govern from the right, and doing their best to obscure the battle at the heart of this war of ideas: whether people want their world ruled by corporations or nations, whether they want global corporatism or national sovereignty. So long as the average Western voter cares more about signaling his or her liberal credentials to peers, global corporatism will eventually reduce the majority to abject feudalism.