Once the 2017 mythology of the man of culture at the Élysée Palace, a philosopher, friend of Paul Ricœur, etc., had been exhausted, Macron now reveals himself for what he is: a politician who navigates by practising low-level Machiavellianism, shaping a discourse that changes according to his convenience. Hence his new posture as Bonaparte embodying law and order and his new xenophobic rhetoric: two messages that are addressed, beyond the traditional right, to the voters of the National Rally. As a result, he is no longer the man who wants to overcome the right-left divide, but rather the man who wants to renew the right.
The implementation of a highly anti-popular social policy and the brutal repression of social movements – notably the Gilets Jaunes and the movement against pension reform – have alienated the support of the left electorate. Today, the context has radically changed.
During the election campaign, in response to the xenophobic rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, he even seemed to embody a new politics that could rally to an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ liberalism, multiculturalist rather than national-republican, a large part of the ‘progressive’ middle classes and even a sector of the youth of postcolonial origin. In 2017, he emerged as the man of providence capable of renewing a country paralysed by old, obsolete cleavages – that was his modernising discourse – and thus bringing together forces from both left and right. His Islamophobic turn is not the result of any ideological evolution, simply a choice made from political expediency. How do you explain this?ĮT: Macron is a pure product of our time, the age of ‘post-ideological’ neoliberalism. Finally, he discusses characterizations of the European far-right and jihadist terrorism, questioning the appropriateness of the concept of fascism.Ĭ: How do you analyse the various reactions observed in the French political class since the despicable assassination of Samuel Paty? Macron had seemed relatively moderate on the issue of secularism during the 2017 presidential campaign, but his government now seems trapped in a delirious Islamophobic headlong rush, as concretely expressed in the dissolution of Baraka City, the CCIF and other voluntary organisations. In this interview, Enzo Traverso, a historian specializing in totalitarianism and fascism, discusses the intensification of the Islamophobic offensive and questions the notion of ‘Islamo-leftism’, used to delegitimize in advance any solidarity of the left with Muslims, such as manifested by the demonstration of 10 November 2019. Islamophobia, ‘Islamo-leftism’, (post)fascism
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