What is missing from this, which tends to be common in otherwise excelllent essays, is the recognition of powers who do generally follow consistent patterns and exert ever more control over us. The international , global corporations. They like weak national governments and atomised societies. They work to keep it like that so they can maximise their power to attain more control and generate more wealth for their owners. The most insidious of course are the banking and financial institutions.
Can localised forces disturb this situation? Doubt it, surely only revolution would affect them.
The problem is that these institutions have no power in themselves. Nobody is going to die for a bank or an insurance company and the only influence they have is through others, especially governments. But as governments become weaker, manipulating them becomes less easy and less productive.
It is not that there is no ideology. Look at Corbyn and how they got him. It is that Society leadership is infiltrated and controlled by the global deep state, an excellent concept and all too real. I know you don't like this, but that is my observation. And that ties in with what is happening in Europe. Why, do you think, the Commission has so many nonentity members from the tin pot Baltics.? Check out these individuals. Look at their lives and origins.
More than 25 years ago, I joined the Australian Greens thinking I could make a difference. I didn't. Not only that, I discovered party politics really sucks. We're well beyond political solutions now, the party's over....
Not wishing to all off-piste here but…The debacle of the Greens in Germany: A cautionary tale.
Stage 1: Entryism. Stage 2: Accommodation; leading directly to Stage 3: Utter betrayal of their base. End state: A. Baerbock, winner of the Miss Washington Consensus Pageant 2023, currently safely tucked in as president of UNGA until further notice.
And the results of the recent election say it all; the German Greens are circling the drain because of her.
Simple - present the voters with limited choices - they can vote for corporate imperialist muppet Tweedledee or they can vote for corporate imperialist muppet Tweedledum. You can have Obamacare or you can have Romneycare.
If the voters are still not voting as as instructed, lawfare will be used to remove candidates that offend the ruling consensus.
If necessary, inconvenient election results will be simply cancelled.
The greens were ok in the 90s. They had a bottom up structure. I know. I was the England and Wales shadow minister. They were infiltrated, people were excised or murdered,the control was centralised by dodgy voting operations and now we have the results of all that. Petra Kelly.
I was genuinely surprised you didn’t mention the “Unite the Kingdom” protest in London last Saturday, an event of historic scale. Once again, the mainstream media trotted out the usual smears of “far right” and “racist,” labels that simply don’t hold up.
Crowd estimates were telling: while the media claimed 110,000–150,000 participants, police sources acknowledged numbers closer to 3 million. Whatever the exact figure, it was unmistakably far larger than the press reported.
This was no fringe gathering. It was a massive demonstration against the islamification of the UK, against uncontrolled and illegal immigration from France (actively facilitated by the French government even while it pockets millions from Britain), against two-tier policing and a politicised judiciary, and against the sense of being treated as second-class citizens under Starmer’s government. Protesters also noted how police in full riot gear appeared intent on provocation. Yet despite the scale of the march, arrests were minimal.
Contrast this with the Nottingham Carnival the week before: over 400 arrests, hundreds of police injured, stabbings, and sexual assaults, yet the media described it as “mostly peaceful.” In contrast, Saturday’s protesters were vilified with language worse than that used for violent criminals.
This was a protest of a scale rarely seen in the UK, and its omission from your piece is striking. It has shaken the political establishment, exposed the bias of the media, and shown that a great many people are no longer willing to be ignored.
I should perhaps have mentioned it, but I've been out of the UK long enough and consistently enough that I no longer feel as qualified to discuss current events there as I once did.
Note that illegal immigration from France is "actively facilitated" by the French government the same way that illegal immigration to France is actively facilitated by the Italian or Spanish government. When people don't want to stay in a country, the easiest way is to let them leave.
So if they don't want them, it's up to the British to find a way to dissuade them from coming...
Sure. But the problem with “Unite the Kingdom” and all similar protests, is that no-one involved has the insight to go beyond the obvious.
Those involved can see clearly that they don't like 'uncontrolled and illegal immigration', 'two-tier policing', 'a politicised judiciary', and 'being treated as second-class citizens', but no-one involved can see that these are just symptoms of a much deeper problem.
This lack of insight can only be remedied by education and the teaching of analytical thinking, but that sort of thing is unpopular among most of the persons involved, and is not now catered for by the education system. Basically such movements are driven by emotion derived from obvious problems. This leads nowhere, and will continue to do so without some sort of inclusive theory which could lead to further analysis, unity and action.
Excellent essay though too long for even me. As a french expat of over 62 years and born from communist parents, I'm more than vaguely interested in this....
As I see it, the problem is collapse. Nobody understands what's happening...
In my opinion, the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic was designed more than 60 years ago for a country populated by a single people, about half of whom leaned to the right and the other half to the left (whatever that may mean in practice), with a small minority likely to change sides depending on circumstances. On that basis, the Constitution guaranteed the emergence of a majority and therefore a fairly stable government.
But since then, things has changed dramatically. There are now two peoples living in the same territory. The former still constitutes a majority of the population but remains ideologically (or maybe rather emotionally ?) divided. The latter is still a minority but represents a political force that has become significant. The result is a political spectrum divided into three, with a constitution that is not designed to produce a majority in such a situation.
From this point on, unless there is a rather unlikely collective awakening, which will probably not be allowed by the so-called “Party” anyway, we can only fear even greater fragmentation...
With all its faults the US allows quite a lot of transparency, including listing of the major donors to members of Congress. All the major institutions are on these lists and almost equally donate across the aisle. It doesn't matter who is in the WH, they are covered, they expect their money to provide a return.
Its a little more 'foggy' in Europe including the UK, but it would be very unexpected if it didn't follow the same pattern.
It doesn't matter who is in power, the same people are pulling the strings.
And they don't want 'independent' action, they want their paid for instructions to be followed.
I suppose the most extreme example of this is AIPAC in the US, and donations in support of their aims.
"But it isn’t quite like that, because almost all the new (and mostly transitory) parties that do appear are based solely on opposition to the current political system."
My guess as explanation is that these parties oppose the existing ones without trying to address voter demands or without having any kind of programme, principle, idea, or anything in particular which might appeal to some of the voters or solve something. Is it "Something is wrong but I frankly have not idea on how to deal with it" the motto?
Now we have in FP that talk with the Russians is verboten, in politics talk with "far right" is verboten, then forbidden in some places pro-Palestinian thinking labelled as "terrorist". Who is isolating or being self-isolated here is not that clear to me but this means that an increasing number of voters are being pulled out of bounds of the political system. Not only the political supply and demand curves do not meet, but getting increasingly apart from each other. One wonders which other ideas will be forbidden next time. There may be many other examples I am not aware of.
Thank you, Aurélien, for these fascinating insights into the driving forces behind politics.
Allow me to add a few points that you did not address and which, in my humble opinion, help to complete our understanding of the literally disastrous situation in which France finds itself.
- the left and the "anti-fascists,"
- the impotence of governments in the face of the European Commission,
- National elected officials and civil servants are one and the same.
Winston Churchill is generally credited, and I believe wrongly, with the prediction: "The fascists of tomorrow will call themselves anti-fascists."
François Mitterrand, then President of the Republic, took up this prediction and succeeded in demonizing Jean-Marie Le Pen's party (FN), which had not understood the trap and therefore went overboard in its excesses. This strategy led to the Le Pen party being deemed unacceptable not only during Mitterrand's terms in office, but also today, despite the RN, the successor to the FN, having a sound ideological line. By making the FN and then the RN unacceptable, Mitterrand fragmented the right, even though the RPR's ideology was in fact close to that of the RN, and prevented any bloc alliance.
By systematically condemning all attempts to address certain social issues that were part of the RN's campaign proposals, the left has thus managed to maintain its dominance over French politics since the 1980s.
Nevertheless, successive and recent elections have shown that this hold on iconoclastic ideas is weakening. The RN's results in the European and then legislative elections are proof of this. Since these cracks became apparent, the left has unleashed its beasts, the Antifa (for anti-fascists, an international label), a small group with no official identity but whose battalions come from LFI (La France Insoumise) and radical environmentalist parties (found in the ZADs). Among them are individuals who would have been worthy of being welcomed by Marat or Ernst Röhm in their day. Their mode of action is that of the brown shirts of 1933, i.e., brutality and terror; their leitmotif is to fight against any person or party that dares to deliberately promote or simply mention ideas included in the RN's proposals. Through violence, Antifa and LFI censor any expression, any conference, any movement of any personality considered harmful.
The second point that is important to consider is the loss of sovereignty of the French state through its membership in the European Union. This loss of sovereignty was prophesied by Philippe Seguin in his masterful speech on May 5, 1992, to the National Assembly during the ratification of the Maastricht agreements: "Sovereignty cannot be divided or shared, and of course, it cannot be limited. " France has become a country under the political tutelage of a foreign structure whose leadership, the European Commission, has no democratic legitimacy. Virtually nothing can be done without the approval of Brussels or one of the European courts of justice. And, to top it all off, the prolific French administration justifies its existence by raising the standards it receives from Brussels.
Finally, we must mention civil servants, a world unto themselves in France, with more than 5.6 million public employees whose salaries represent more than 12% of GDP. In France, the state takes care of everything. The consequence was remarkably summed up by Georges Clemenceau: "France is an extremely fertile country: you plant civil servants and taxes grow." Around 40% of members of parliament come from the public sector, 41% of whom are teachers, while the civil service accounts for around 20% of French jobs. Furthermore, these members of parliament rarely have any professional experience in the private sector.
Among these civil servants, there is a caste apart: graduates of the ENA (École nationale d'administration). The major reform of this institution carried out by Macron in 2022 (he had pledged to reform this caste) was simply to rename the ENA the INSP (Institut national du service public). The sign above the door was changed and now it is business as usual.
This institution produces a caste that permeates every corner of power in France: ministries, of course, but also banks, insurance companies, large corporations, not to mention all the high institutions and courts, thus ensuring control over Parliament's decisions.
All these deputies, whether they are Énarques or simple civil servants, are guaranteed, in the event that their mandate is not renewed, to find a position within the administration.
Can we really expect them to vote for any law aimed at drastically reducing the public sector?
Between a European Union that decides on major policy directions, normally a matter of national sovereignty, and civil servants whose only interest is that nothing changes because their jobs are so good, the French, deprived of the recourse to referendums, no longer have any control over their destiny.
"Right-wing fantasies of mowing down demonstrators with machine-guns are just that: fantasies"
I think we've been seeing just that in the Middle East, not just Israel-Palestine, for many years now and I don't know just how much of a fantasy it remains. The consolidation of illegitimate executive power in the US gives me great pause. I used to think that a potential RN gov't in France would be nothing to really fret over, since it would only show their incompetence, but now I've changed my mind.
The Lenin quote in this essay seems to apply to much of the West today: "Power was lying around in the street and we [Bolsheviks] seized it."
Certainly, this applied in the U.S. with the election of Trump in 2016. "Project 2025" came along later to give MAGA an ideology, and it worked in 2024 to give MAGA a veneer of coherence.
The Democrats have no ideology, nothing like their own "Project 2025" or "Contract with America". Democrats have relied, not on ideology, but organizing around interest groups. Now, they are being pressed to have a "vision." This will not be easy because the longstanding neo-liberal "New Democrat" vision of the Clinton era (warmed over Republicanism) is in the wastebasket, but the Democratic donor class still believes in it (which is why it was adopted in the first place).
My guess is that the Democrats will form a new vision by re-discovering the New Deal for the New Century. Perhaps this will be a vision around coherent Industrial Policy (rather than corporate welfare), taxation policies that promote domestic investment, vastly extended voluntary national service for youth, and expanded safety nets. Also, retrenchment of our military so a "Peace Dividend" can pay for these policies.
I hope you are correct about the Dems, but this would require them to repudiate their donors and defenestrate their current neoliberal infested misleadership.
I think that it is a mistaken premise that “liberal democracy” is somehow the natural order of things and an agent of social change. Women only got the right to vote in French elections in 1944.
In the U.S. this past August 5 we celebrated only the 60th anniversary of universal suffrage with the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Already by 1971 the “Powell Memorandum” set forth the neoliberal elite blueprint for retaining power recently reiterated by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025.”
Industrial production provided the syndical basis for organized opposition to elites, but organized labor has been comprehensively crushed by the relentless offshoring of production under the false flags of “greening” and “cheap” consumer goods. As is discussed above, a General Strike is impossible without unions organized from the bottom up on the factory floor or in the mines.
Weak governments are often repressive governments, as we see rising throughout the West. At least Xi Jinping has the wisdom to focus on concrete material benefits for the masses in exchange for rule by an elite. Trump, Macron, Starmer, and Merz promise the masses nothing but austerity and wars.
"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of parties generally.
"This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
"It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
"There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume”. George Washington, Farewell to the Nation.
(From 1816-1827, party divisions did not in United States. It was called The Era of Good Feelings.
I have great respect for your writings on China, Godfree, but here you are wrong - George Washington is a red herring - he was not interested in the good of the population - he was interested in the good of a small minority of rich landowners, and what he wrote reflects this.
Very lucid analysis. These rallies around the flag in England (I don’t know if they happened anywhere else in the UK) can be looked at in this context. I see them as an effort by the people to find some common ground.
The flag is acting here as a rallying centre. The main motivation seems to be the anti illegal immigration sentiment, so the movement is being painted as a “white supremacy” effort. But the picture the people involved paint is not quite like that.
Because there is no ideological savvy, people are reduced to using a symbol, which is pretty meaningless other than when associated to vague ideas about the past, to call to its shadow all the grievances that are floating around. Its lack of political meaning is part of its relevance. It’s more about forming some kind of functional political community.
We still haven’t got a functional ideology but at least people are trying to lower the common denominator in order to achieve numbers. No other symbol in our culture has a similar potential for uniting the working classes.
It’s all very hit and miss and it will all probably go the same way as Occupy, Yellow Vests, Podemos and all that. Would Marxist communism make a come back I wonder, or has it been proven inadequate beyond any doubt?
I always wonder if the Anglo-European world's peoples and rulers ever take into account that the mass migration they either fear or want to control has a cause. The West destabilized and wrecked African and West Asia with wars, sanctions, and regime changes with climate change tipping the bucket. These people don't want to come to Europe, Britain, or the US, they just don't want to die.
"The result is that people think in a disorganized way, are intellectually alienated from each other, and act randomly based on feelings and instincts (as could be the case with the man who was shot in the United States last week)."
Charlie Kirk had a long tradition of public debate, was an activist who encouraged public participation, and his political orientation was conservatism and Christian nationalism. He supported Trumpism.
What is missing from this, which tends to be common in otherwise excelllent essays, is the recognition of powers who do generally follow consistent patterns and exert ever more control over us. The international , global corporations. They like weak national governments and atomised societies. They work to keep it like that so they can maximise their power to attain more control and generate more wealth for their owners. The most insidious of course are the banking and financial institutions.
Can localised forces disturb this situation? Doubt it, surely only revolution would affect them.
I
The problem is that these institutions have no power in themselves. Nobody is going to die for a bank or an insurance company and the only influence they have is through others, especially governments. But as governments become weaker, manipulating them becomes less easy and less productive.
It is not that there is no ideology. Look at Corbyn and how they got him. It is that Society leadership is infiltrated and controlled by the global deep state, an excellent concept and all too real. I know you don't like this, but that is my observation. And that ties in with what is happening in Europe. Why, do you think, the Commission has so many nonentity members from the tin pot Baltics.? Check out these individuals. Look at their lives and origins.
More than 25 years ago, I joined the Australian Greens thinking I could make a difference. I didn't. Not only that, I discovered party politics really sucks. We're well beyond political solutions now, the party's over....
Not wishing to all off-piste here but…The debacle of the Greens in Germany: A cautionary tale.
Stage 1: Entryism. Stage 2: Accommodation; leading directly to Stage 3: Utter betrayal of their base. End state: A. Baerbock, winner of the Miss Washington Consensus Pageant 2023, currently safely tucked in as president of UNGA until further notice.
And the results of the recent election say it all; the German Greens are circling the drain because of her.
Simple - present the voters with limited choices - they can vote for corporate imperialist muppet Tweedledee or they can vote for corporate imperialist muppet Tweedledum. You can have Obamacare or you can have Romneycare.
If the voters are still not voting as as instructed, lawfare will be used to remove candidates that offend the ruling consensus.
If necessary, inconvenient election results will be simply cancelled.
The greens were ok in the 90s. They had a bottom up structure. I know. I was the England and Wales shadow minister. They were infiltrated, people were excised or murdered,the control was centralised by dodgy voting operations and now we have the results of all that. Petra Kelly.
I was genuinely surprised you didn’t mention the “Unite the Kingdom” protest in London last Saturday, an event of historic scale. Once again, the mainstream media trotted out the usual smears of “far right” and “racist,” labels that simply don’t hold up.
Crowd estimates were telling: while the media claimed 110,000–150,000 participants, police sources acknowledged numbers closer to 3 million. Whatever the exact figure, it was unmistakably far larger than the press reported.
This was no fringe gathering. It was a massive demonstration against the islamification of the UK, against uncontrolled and illegal immigration from France (actively facilitated by the French government even while it pockets millions from Britain), against two-tier policing and a politicised judiciary, and against the sense of being treated as second-class citizens under Starmer’s government. Protesters also noted how police in full riot gear appeared intent on provocation. Yet despite the scale of the march, arrests were minimal.
Contrast this with the Nottingham Carnival the week before: over 400 arrests, hundreds of police injured, stabbings, and sexual assaults, yet the media described it as “mostly peaceful.” In contrast, Saturday’s protesters were vilified with language worse than that used for violent criminals.
This was a protest of a scale rarely seen in the UK, and its omission from your piece is striking. It has shaken the political establishment, exposed the bias of the media, and shown that a great many people are no longer willing to be ignored.
Biggest Gathering of the Year Caught on Camera!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFQVtXcqc0Q&list=PLQKOHdhDzfKyfMwLOkPDYEn5TcTxhKLGq&index=69
I should perhaps have mentioned it, but I've been out of the UK long enough and consistently enough that I no longer feel as qualified to discuss current events there as I once did.
Note that illegal immigration from France is "actively facilitated" by the French government the same way that illegal immigration to France is actively facilitated by the Italian or Spanish government. When people don't want to stay in a country, the easiest way is to let them leave.
So if they don't want them, it's up to the British to find a way to dissuade them from coming...
Sure. But the problem with “Unite the Kingdom” and all similar protests, is that no-one involved has the insight to go beyond the obvious.
Those involved can see clearly that they don't like 'uncontrolled and illegal immigration', 'two-tier policing', 'a politicised judiciary', and 'being treated as second-class citizens', but no-one involved can see that these are just symptoms of a much deeper problem.
This lack of insight can only be remedied by education and the teaching of analytical thinking, but that sort of thing is unpopular among most of the persons involved, and is not now catered for by the education system. Basically such movements are driven by emotion derived from obvious problems. This leads nowhere, and will continue to do so without some sort of inclusive theory which could lead to further analysis, unity and action.
Excellent essay though too long for even me. As a french expat of over 62 years and born from communist parents, I'm more than vaguely interested in this....
As I see it, the problem is collapse. Nobody understands what's happening...
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/total-misunderstanding/
In my opinion, the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic was designed more than 60 years ago for a country populated by a single people, about half of whom leaned to the right and the other half to the left (whatever that may mean in practice), with a small minority likely to change sides depending on circumstances. On that basis, the Constitution guaranteed the emergence of a majority and therefore a fairly stable government.
But since then, things has changed dramatically. There are now two peoples living in the same territory. The former still constitutes a majority of the population but remains ideologically (or maybe rather emotionally ?) divided. The latter is still a minority but represents a political force that has become significant. The result is a political spectrum divided into three, with a constitution that is not designed to produce a majority in such a situation.
From this point on, unless there is a rather unlikely collective awakening, which will probably not be allowed by the so-called “Party” anyway, we can only fear even greater fragmentation...
With all its faults the US allows quite a lot of transparency, including listing of the major donors to members of Congress. All the major institutions are on these lists and almost equally donate across the aisle. It doesn't matter who is in the WH, they are covered, they expect their money to provide a return.
Its a little more 'foggy' in Europe including the UK, but it would be very unexpected if it didn't follow the same pattern.
It doesn't matter who is in power, the same people are pulling the strings.
And they don't want 'independent' action, they want their paid for instructions to be followed.
I suppose the most extreme example of this is AIPAC in the US, and donations in support of their aims.
I would appreciate further explanation on this:
"But it isn’t quite like that, because almost all the new (and mostly transitory) parties that do appear are based solely on opposition to the current political system."
My guess as explanation is that these parties oppose the existing ones without trying to address voter demands or without having any kind of programme, principle, idea, or anything in particular which might appeal to some of the voters or solve something. Is it "Something is wrong but I frankly have not idea on how to deal with it" the motto?
Now we have in FP that talk with the Russians is verboten, in politics talk with "far right" is verboten, then forbidden in some places pro-Palestinian thinking labelled as "terrorist". Who is isolating or being self-isolated here is not that clear to me but this means that an increasing number of voters are being pulled out of bounds of the political system. Not only the political supply and demand curves do not meet, but getting increasingly apart from each other. One wonders which other ideas will be forbidden next time. There may be many other examples I am not aware of.
Thank you, Aurélien, for these fascinating insights into the driving forces behind politics.
Allow me to add a few points that you did not address and which, in my humble opinion, help to complete our understanding of the literally disastrous situation in which France finds itself.
- the left and the "anti-fascists,"
- the impotence of governments in the face of the European Commission,
- National elected officials and civil servants are one and the same.
Winston Churchill is generally credited, and I believe wrongly, with the prediction: "The fascists of tomorrow will call themselves anti-fascists."
François Mitterrand, then President of the Republic, took up this prediction and succeeded in demonizing Jean-Marie Le Pen's party (FN), which had not understood the trap and therefore went overboard in its excesses. This strategy led to the Le Pen party being deemed unacceptable not only during Mitterrand's terms in office, but also today, despite the RN, the successor to the FN, having a sound ideological line. By making the FN and then the RN unacceptable, Mitterrand fragmented the right, even though the RPR's ideology was in fact close to that of the RN, and prevented any bloc alliance.
By systematically condemning all attempts to address certain social issues that were part of the RN's campaign proposals, the left has thus managed to maintain its dominance over French politics since the 1980s.
Nevertheless, successive and recent elections have shown that this hold on iconoclastic ideas is weakening. The RN's results in the European and then legislative elections are proof of this. Since these cracks became apparent, the left has unleashed its beasts, the Antifa (for anti-fascists, an international label), a small group with no official identity but whose battalions come from LFI (La France Insoumise) and radical environmentalist parties (found in the ZADs). Among them are individuals who would have been worthy of being welcomed by Marat or Ernst Röhm in their day. Their mode of action is that of the brown shirts of 1933, i.e., brutality and terror; their leitmotif is to fight against any person or party that dares to deliberately promote or simply mention ideas included in the RN's proposals. Through violence, Antifa and LFI censor any expression, any conference, any movement of any personality considered harmful.
The second point that is important to consider is the loss of sovereignty of the French state through its membership in the European Union. This loss of sovereignty was prophesied by Philippe Seguin in his masterful speech on May 5, 1992, to the National Assembly during the ratification of the Maastricht agreements: "Sovereignty cannot be divided or shared, and of course, it cannot be limited. " France has become a country under the political tutelage of a foreign structure whose leadership, the European Commission, has no democratic legitimacy. Virtually nothing can be done without the approval of Brussels or one of the European courts of justice. And, to top it all off, the prolific French administration justifies its existence by raising the standards it receives from Brussels.
Finally, we must mention civil servants, a world unto themselves in France, with more than 5.6 million public employees whose salaries represent more than 12% of GDP. In France, the state takes care of everything. The consequence was remarkably summed up by Georges Clemenceau: "France is an extremely fertile country: you plant civil servants and taxes grow." Around 40% of members of parliament come from the public sector, 41% of whom are teachers, while the civil service accounts for around 20% of French jobs. Furthermore, these members of parliament rarely have any professional experience in the private sector.
Among these civil servants, there is a caste apart: graduates of the ENA (École nationale d'administration). The major reform of this institution carried out by Macron in 2022 (he had pledged to reform this caste) was simply to rename the ENA the INSP (Institut national du service public). The sign above the door was changed and now it is business as usual.
This institution produces a caste that permeates every corner of power in France: ministries, of course, but also banks, insurance companies, large corporations, not to mention all the high institutions and courts, thus ensuring control over Parliament's decisions.
All these deputies, whether they are Énarques or simple civil servants, are guaranteed, in the event that their mandate is not renewed, to find a position within the administration.
Can we really expect them to vote for any law aimed at drastically reducing the public sector?
Between a European Union that decides on major policy directions, normally a matter of national sovereignty, and civil servants whose only interest is that nothing changes because their jobs are so good, the French, deprived of the recourse to referendums, no longer have any control over their destiny.
This situation will end badly, very badly.
"Right-wing fantasies of mowing down demonstrators with machine-guns are just that: fantasies"
I think we've been seeing just that in the Middle East, not just Israel-Palestine, for many years now and I don't know just how much of a fantasy it remains. The consolidation of illegitimate executive power in the US gives me great pause. I used to think that a potential RN gov't in France would be nothing to really fret over, since it would only show their incompetence, but now I've changed my mind.
The Lenin quote in this essay seems to apply to much of the West today: "Power was lying around in the street and we [Bolsheviks] seized it."
Certainly, this applied in the U.S. with the election of Trump in 2016. "Project 2025" came along later to give MAGA an ideology, and it worked in 2024 to give MAGA a veneer of coherence.
The Democrats have no ideology, nothing like their own "Project 2025" or "Contract with America". Democrats have relied, not on ideology, but organizing around interest groups. Now, they are being pressed to have a "vision." This will not be easy because the longstanding neo-liberal "New Democrat" vision of the Clinton era (warmed over Republicanism) is in the wastebasket, but the Democratic donor class still believes in it (which is why it was adopted in the first place).
My guess is that the Democrats will form a new vision by re-discovering the New Deal for the New Century. Perhaps this will be a vision around coherent Industrial Policy (rather than corporate welfare), taxation policies that promote domestic investment, vastly extended voluntary national service for youth, and expanded safety nets. Also, retrenchment of our military so a "Peace Dividend" can pay for these policies.
I hope you are correct about the Dems, but this would require them to repudiate their donors and defenestrate their current neoliberal infested misleadership.
Sadly, I see zero evidence of either.
I think that it is a mistaken premise that “liberal democracy” is somehow the natural order of things and an agent of social change. Women only got the right to vote in French elections in 1944.
In the U.S. this past August 5 we celebrated only the 60th anniversary of universal suffrage with the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Already by 1971 the “Powell Memorandum” set forth the neoliberal elite blueprint for retaining power recently reiterated by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025.”
Industrial production provided the syndical basis for organized opposition to elites, but organized labor has been comprehensively crushed by the relentless offshoring of production under the false flags of “greening” and “cheap” consumer goods. As is discussed above, a General Strike is impossible without unions organized from the bottom up on the factory floor or in the mines.
Weak governments are often repressive governments, as we see rising throughout the West. At least Xi Jinping has the wisdom to focus on concrete material benefits for the masses in exchange for rule by an elite. Trump, Macron, Starmer, and Merz promise the masses nothing but austerity and wars.
Thought-provoking post!
"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of parties generally.
"This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
"It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
"There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume”. George Washington, Farewell to the Nation.
(From 1816-1827, party divisions did not in United States. It was called The Era of Good Feelings.
I have great respect for your writings on China, Godfree, but here you are wrong - George Washington is a red herring - he was not interested in the good of the population - he was interested in the good of a small minority of rich landowners, and what he wrote reflects this.
Very lucid analysis. These rallies around the flag in England (I don’t know if they happened anywhere else in the UK) can be looked at in this context. I see them as an effort by the people to find some common ground.
The flag is acting here as a rallying centre. The main motivation seems to be the anti illegal immigration sentiment, so the movement is being painted as a “white supremacy” effort. But the picture the people involved paint is not quite like that.
Because there is no ideological savvy, people are reduced to using a symbol, which is pretty meaningless other than when associated to vague ideas about the past, to call to its shadow all the grievances that are floating around. Its lack of political meaning is part of its relevance. It’s more about forming some kind of functional political community.
We still haven’t got a functional ideology but at least people are trying to lower the common denominator in order to achieve numbers. No other symbol in our culture has a similar potential for uniting the working classes.
It’s all very hit and miss and it will all probably go the same way as Occupy, Yellow Vests, Podemos and all that. Would Marxist communism make a come back I wonder, or has it been proven inadequate beyond any doubt?
I always wonder if the Anglo-European world's peoples and rulers ever take into account that the mass migration they either fear or want to control has a cause. The West destabilized and wrecked African and West Asia with wars, sanctions, and regime changes with climate change tipping the bucket. These people don't want to come to Europe, Britain, or the US, they just don't want to die.
"The result is that people think in a disorganized way, are intellectually alienated from each other, and act randomly based on feelings and instincts (as could be the case with the man who was shot in the United States last week)."
Charlie Kirk had a long tradition of public debate, was an activist who encouraged public participation, and his political orientation was conservatism and Christian nationalism. He supported Trumpism.