{"id":9092,"date":"2017-05-03T05:28:58","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T05:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9092"},"modified":"2017-05-04T05:32:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T05:32:04","slug":"macron-and-lepen-are-battling-for-frances-heart-and-soul-in-election-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/macron-and-lepen-are-battling-for-frances-heart-and-soul-in-election-runoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron and LePen are battling for France\u2019s heart and soul in election runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Fogarty<\/a>, University at Albany, State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On April 24, the day after her second-place finish in the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen thundered against her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, declaring<\/a>, \u201cNothing in Monsieur Macron\u2019s plan, nor anything in his behavior indicates the least evidence of love for France.\u201d \"The<\/p>\n

She went on to invoke<\/a> his supposed advocacy of \u201csavage globalization\u201d and \u201cmassive immigration.\u201d <\/p>\n

All of these charges were tied to a theme she used the previous evening, not even an hour after the first-round results were announced. She proclaimed<\/a>, \u201cIt is time to free the French people from an arrogant elite.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the days since, Le Pen has used the charge of elitism to bind together the various strands of her appeal to French voters. <\/p>\n

In her telling, an aloof and callous French political establishment has sold the nation\u2019s fortunes and soul to global economic forces, the European Union and immigrants. Patriotism and \u201cla patrie\u201d (\u201cthe fatherland\u201d) is in danger. She presents the election as an existential struggle, in which the victory of her opponent would \u201cplace our civilization in danger,\u201d and asks<\/a> the French to \u201cchoose France.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a historian of France, I cannot help but note that these themes remind me of political struggles during the last two centuries, not just over the direction of the country, but over its soul. What\u2019s at stake is what kind of nation France is, and who is really French. <\/p>\n

Outsider looking in<\/h2>\n

Marine Le Pen and her party, the Front National, have long used xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric<\/a> to discuss who does and does not belong to the national community. But of late, Le Pen has taken a different approach, one that identifies the un-French, the foreigners, as the \u201carrogant elite.\u201d Enter Emmanuel Macron. <\/p>\n

Le Pen\u2019s strategy is to paint Macron as an outsider. She claims his experiences and attitudes are alien to the mass of French people.<\/p>\n

This is ironic. It\u2019s true that Macron has presented himself as an outsider, yet this is supposed to be a strength. At 39, he has never held elected office, but is the head of En Marche!<\/a>, the \u201cAssociation for the renewal of political life.\u201d He pointedly refuses to call it a political \u201cparty,\u201d but instead refers to it as a \u201cmovement.\u201d Formed scarcely a year ago, it seeks to provide a focus for widespread discontent with establishment politicians and parties, what Americans would call \u201cpolitics as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macron\u2019s stated policy agenda<\/a> includes sticking with the European Union and the euro currency, reducing the size of government bureaucracy, cutting government spending, lowering corporate taxes, easing strict labor laws and strengthening national security by expanding police forces. Above all, he promises to transform the failed political system. <\/p>\n

He seeks this transformation by governing above and outside party personnel and interests, making use of \u201cnew faces, new talents,\u201d not the usual political insiders. Macron has said he will not ask<\/a> where supporters \u201ccome from, [only] if they are for the renewal of political life, for the security of the French people, for the freedom of labor, for the reform of schools, for the right of everyone, wherever they come from, to advance in society, and for reviving the building of [a united] Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Macron\u2019s positions are tinged with numerous ironies, and Le Pen has pounced on these. If the En Marche! movement\u2019s emphasis on new blood and new ideas in the political system represents an attempt to break up and renew a stagnant society, some of the policies do not appear all that revolutionary. Cutting business taxes and eroding robust protections for workers, maintaining close integration with an aloof and arrogant EU bureaucracy and hiring more police could also be seen as moves to preserve the status quo.<\/p>\n

A home unfit for elites<\/h2>\n

More personally, Macron himself is vulnerable to charges that he is an unlikely vessel for radical change. A wealthy investment banker, until very recently he was a member of the deeply unpopular Socialist Party. He was also economy minister under the even more deeply unpopular current president Fran\u00e7ois Hollande. <\/p>\n

Macron is, in fact, a pedigreed member of the governing elite. He is a graduate of one of the most prestigious lyc\u00e9es (high schools) in France, Henri-IV in Paris, and of the \u00c9cole nationale d\u2019administration. Graduates of this institution are known as \u00e9narques. They serve throughout the French civil service and government, and often also dominate business and corporate life. Few countries have an equivalent of this network of highly trained administrators, and in France \u00e9narque is synonymous with \u00e9lite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Never mind that entrance into the elite schools that Macron has attended is based on merit. Though complicated by class, gender and race<\/a>, social mobility through personal achievement is an important principle in French history. French revolutionaries declared<\/a> in 1789 that social distinctions would no longer be based on birth but on \u201cusefulness\u201d to society and the nation. Napoleon later affirmed<\/a> that France was a place where \u201ccareers open to talent,\u201d not birth, was the rule. The nation has worked ever since to embrace an egalitarian vision where anyone from anywhere can succeed. From some points of view, Macron embodies this ethos. Restoring social mobility is a central plank in his electoral platform<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Yet the vision that Le Pen offers the French electorate is one in which she opposes an out-of-touch representative of the discredited political class currently failing France. Her project is to restore the nation to its rightful owners. And who might these be? Eschewing past Front National slogans<\/a> with anti-Semitic overtones, such as \u201cFrance for the French,\u201d Le Pen has instead opted for, \u201cThis is our home!\u201d and \u201cFrance first!\u201d <\/p>\n

These watchwords articulate a fear of foreigners, in the nation\u2019s midst or poised on its borders. Far right movements have done this since the late 19th century<\/a> in France, but here Le Pen and the Front National make foreigners of France\u2019s own elites.<\/p>\n

Le Pen portrays Macron as alien to the French national body. When she says he is a \u201chysterical, radical Europeanist\u201d who is weak on radical Islamic terrorism, she associates him further with alien threats. And when she says<\/a>, \u201cThere is not one area where he shows one ounce of patriotism,\u201d she questions not just his love of country, but his very Frenchness. When she asks voters to \u201cchoose France,\u201d she makes him and his policies not-France. She places him outside the nation and hostile to it, a foreigner because of his elitism and allegiances. He cannot love France as she does.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the French electorate responds to Marine Le Pen\u2019s professions of love, she has quite consciously made the battle for French hearts and souls the central issue of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Richard Fogarty<\/a>, Professor of History, University at Albany, State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Fogarty, University at Albany, State University of New York On April 24, the day after her second-place finish in the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen thundered against her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, declaring, \u201cNothing in Monsieur Macron\u2019s plan, nor anything in his behavior indicates the least evidence of love for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2287,2285,2229,349,2284,715,1743,2282,2230,2286,2283,1694,537,1851,2108,1673,780,1677],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9094,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions\/9094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}