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Sophie Pedder Profile picture
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19 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read
I re-read Charles Maurras, Maurice Barrès and other fin-de-siècle reactionary, nationalist French thinkers in order to try to make sense of Eric Zemmour, France's hard-right TV pundit. The parallels are chilling

In @TheEconomist this week
economist.com/books-and-arts…
Two sinister obsessions link today's reactionary discourse to earlier nationalists. One is a belief in an immutable “eternal France”, rooted in ancestral soil. For Maurras, this was “le pays réel”. Zemmour entitles a book chapter “The Land and the Dead” after a speech by Barrès
The other is paranoia about decline, and the failure of elites to protect "French identity". For Maurras, the threat was Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and foreigners. For Barrès, mainly Germany. For Zemmour, it is above all Islam
Émile Zola and other republicans took on Maurras. Today France lacks the powerful counterbalancing intellectual voices of the past. The decline of the public intellectual on the French left removes one more line of defence
Full story here:
economist.com/books-and-arts…
What, and why, you need to know about Eric Zemmour, despite his flatlining polls: a short read:
economist.com/the-economist-…

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More from @PedderSophie

Sophie Pedder Profile picture
25 Jan
Short health warning about French presidential polls 15 months before 2022 election. In Jan 2016, same distance from the 2017 vote, only one poll tested Macron—as a Socialist candidate. The far more obvious PS candidate was Hollande. (In the end it was Hamon, who got 6%) 1/5
The assumption then was that the PS was capable of winning 18-20% of the 1st-round vote. And this, even if Mélenchon got 9-11%. Because there was no credible centrist to rob the left of centre-left voters (Bayou, who in the end withdrew and backed Macron, polled around 12%) 2/5
The overwhelming favourite in Jan 2016 on the right was Juppé. Polls gave him >30% of 1st-round vote. Sarkozy was the second favourite. (In the end the candidate was Fillon, who with 20% failed to get into the run-off) 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
1 Nov 20
Important interview with Macron on Al Jazeera. There's still much misrepresentation (wilful or not) of laïcité. It's not state atheism, nor the persecution of religion, but the protection of the right to believe, or not to believe, + the separation of religion from public affairs
Here Macron is explaining this. “Our country has no problem with any religion. Each is can exercise it freely here. No stigmatisation”
French laïcité was the product of a (sometimes bloody) anti-clerical struggle with the Catholic church. It resulted in the 1905 law to entrench this French version of secularism. The point was to protect the state and public education from the power of any religion, not Islam
Read 9 tweets
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
29 Sep 20
Much confusion over Macron’s Russia policy today, after he meets Tikhanovskaya in Vilnius BUT says “Our vision is that if we want to build a lasting peace on the continent we have to work with Russia.” Has he ditched Putin? Or was this a misreading? @BrunoTertrais @Mij_Europe 1/6
Maybe Macron is just stubborn. No leader likes to admit being wrong. He is masterful at rationalising ex post facto a policy shift as a natural evolution in the face of changing facts. And he is pragmatic, an attribute easy to dismiss as inconsistent (but can be constructive) 2/6
Another way to look at it is that Macron, in domestic matters and foreign, is an adept of “en même temps” cc @pierrehaski. He built En Marche as neither left nor right. The same goes for his dIplomacy. You can call it confused and contradictory. Or opportunistic and adaptable 3/6
Read 7 tweets
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
7 Sep 20
No doubt that the covid-19 situation in France is now more worrying than in the UK. But British complacency seems to me misguided. In early August France also thought it had the virus under control post-lock-down.

(chart via @jburnmurdoch) 1/5
New cases in UK on Sept 6 = 2,988
France was at this level (2,846) on August 14th. Since then numbers in France have surged.
Daily new cases on Fridays:

Aug 21: 4,586
Aug 28: 7,379
Sep 4: 8,975

2/5
Both countries are testing widely now. Both are finding most new cases among the young, so hospitalisations remain low. But French admissions are rising. French health minister @olivierveran expects rise in “serious cases” within 14 days 3/5
Read 6 tweets
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
3 Jul 20
French PM Edouard Philippe has resigned. A new PM will be announced in the next few hours, according to the Elysée Image
And it won’t be Edouard Philippe again
Under the French Fifth Republic, it is rare that a president keeps the same PM for his entire mandate. Sarkozy was an exception:
De Gaulle: 3
Pompidou: 2
Giscard: 2
Mitterrand: 3 + 4
Chirac: 2 + 2
Sarkozy: 1
Hollande: 3
Read 12 tweets
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
28 Jun 20
First results of 🇫🇷 2nd-round mayoral elections:
- resounding victory for PM Philippe in Le Havre with estimated 59%. This gives him a landing point should Macron decide to reshuffle top job
- RN (ex-FN) captures Perpignan, a sizeable gain for L Aliot (ex-partner of M Le Pen)
Greens set for gains tonight, in Besançon, Poitiers, possibly even Lille, which would be quite a result. The Socialists have held the town for better part of a century. Martine Aubry has been PS mayor since 2001
Demise of PS, rise of Greens, symbolic force of far-right RN (ex-FN), strength of E Philippe, lack of local roots of Macron’s LREM which still revolves primarily around him: all of these forces will help shape French politics over next 2 years ahead of 2022 presidential election
Read 8 tweets

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