Dubai, UAE – In a chilling rerun of the riots that swept the US in May 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, France is currently gripped by widespread turmoil in the wake of the killing of a 17-year-old French-Algerian teenager by police. Nahel M was shot at point-blank range after he refused to stop his car at a traffic stop.
However, the triggers of the backlash in the two countries are different: While in the US, the riots were largely led by African-Americans harboring a longstanding grievance against racism in the country, in France the unrest has, in part, been ignited by the President Emmanuele Macron’s policies which are increasingly seen against the will of its people.
And this doesn’t bode well for the future of the country. More so, when the far-right leader Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings.
“I will save France from the New World Order – Macron will be arrested,” Le Pen said recently in her national address, vowing to hold Macron criminally responsible for the anarchy currently playing out across the country.
In recent years, Le Pen’s political stock has witnessed a meteoric rise. She has particularly caught the imagination of youth. And if Macron’s policies continue to alienate his liberal constituency, which it has in a significant measure, she could very well be the leader France elects to power in 2027.
Not the first unrest
The current turmoil in France is not the first time Macron has messed up things.
Fifteen months after winning his first election in 2017, Macron had to contend with the Yellow Vest movement’s unprecedented grass-roots uprising over fuel and diesel taxation in rural and outer-suburban France.
And eleven months after his re-election in April, 2022, he faced the largest union protests in 20 years over pension reforms which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. The reforms were rejected by 70 percent of French adults. This prompted the opposition including Le Pen’s National Rally to approach the Constitutional Council for a referendum on the issue, which the constitutional body rejected. Soon after, Macron signed the reforms into a law on April 15.
However, the bitterness has lingered and threatens to overshadow Macron’s second term. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the left-wing Nupes Alliance has made it clear that the “fight” would continue. Le Pen echoed him saying in a social media post that “the political fate of the pension reform is not sealed”.
It is, therefore, no coincidence that the current convulsion followed soon after. And this time, the migrant minorities from which Nahel hailed have given voice to the simmering resentment against the government. Once again Macron’s conduct hasn’t helped. He has been slammed for partying with Elton John as France burns. He was pictured dancing along at the singer’s farewell tour performance the day after Nehal was killed.
Unsuccessful outreach
True, after the March eruption over pension reforms, Macron tried to woo the middle class by cutting taxes. He proposed tax cuts of up to €2 billion ($2.17 billion) to boost the purchasing power of the French people.
Macron said the cuts were mainly aimed at “French women and men who work hard to try to raise their children but run out of money by the end of the month due to rising costs of living.”
But since the cuts followed the enhancement of the retirement age to 64 and the consequent detrimental fallout on unemployment and retirement benefits, they didn’t buoy up French people beyond a point. More so, when Macron has already withdrawn the surtax on the very rich, which has earned him the epithet: “president of the rich”.
Spectre of the far-right
Where do we go from here? France could very well walk into the embrace of far-right politics, if Macron doesn’t hew his governance closer to what French people had bargained for by electing him. At the same time, Macron can still be the “suited revolutionary” he had promised he would be upon winning his first presidential election. But it won’t be easy amid the weakening economic growth and the soaring food and energy prices following the Ukraine war, which has badly impacted Germany, the Eurozone’s largest economy. France’s is the second largest economy in the zone.
One more problematic area is Macron’s brand of politics. By straddling the political centre, he is believed to have pushed his opponents to the “extremes”: Left has become far-left and right has become far-right. So, the people who don’t support Macron have been forced to embrace extreme versions of their respective political ideologies.
The question that arises is whether the “centre will hold” Last year, Macron was reelected as president of France after beating Le Pen in a runoff. One poll had even put Le Pen within two points of the incumbent president. Earlier in 2017 too, he had pipped Le Pen at the post.
But what no one should lose sight of is that compared to 2017, the gap between the two candidates has narrowed: Macron received 18.8 million votes, two million less than in 2017, while Le Pen polled 13.3 million, almost two million more than five years before.
“Nothing about his second term will be a political honeymoon, as he will face opposition from both the left and the far right,” predicted Célia Belin and Agneska Bloch in their commentary in Brookings soon after Macron’s victory last year.
But it is from the far-right that Macron faces the biggest challenge. More so, at a time when the far-right is fast hurtling to the centre stage across the continent: In Italy, Spain, France or Finland, parties that were once on the margins are finding favour with significant sections of population. And in France, the Le Pen’s party is already in line to take over from Macron in 2027. That is, if the latter fails his promise in his second term also.
A glimpse of what could be in store for France is provided by a collection of $1 million dollars for the French policeman who sparked riots by killing Nahel.
Set up by Jean Messiha, a former adviser to Le Pen, the appeal on GoFundMe had raised 963,000 euros ($1.05m) by Monday.