Emmanuel Macron dissolved France’s National Assembly, tensions have been running high. Politicians have been attacked, their offices vandalised and activists beaten up. Threats proliferate online; political leaders trade insults. In the media, journalists and commentators fret that a surge in political violence could engulf the entire Western world, starting with the United States, where Donald Trump recently survived an assassin’s bullet – following similar attempts on the lives of Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
In this climate, a cross-party solution seems to be emerging: ‘calm’, the idea being that it’s up to political leaders to lower the temperature of the debate, reduce divisions and temper passions. Because how can a peaceful society be possible when those in power indulge in excesses? President Macron has therefore called on parliamentarians to re-establish ‘a sense of harmony and calm’ in order to ‘build compromises with serenity and respect for all’. Socialist Boris Vallaud advocates ‘calm rather than radicalism.’ Even the Rassemblement National has declared itself ‘the party of calm’.
Those who step out of line are quickly reprimanded. When La France Insoumise’s Sophia Chikirou compared ‘Hollandism’ to bedbugs, her Green colleague Marine Tondelier put her straight: ‘We need to set an example. Because there’s rising violence in society, and we must be there to protect, repair and calm.’ And when the Greens refused to shake hands with a far-right MP, it was the right which took them to task: ‘In a democracy, you need to respect your opponent. The country needs calm,’ insisted Philippe Juvin of Les Républicains. The boundaries of propriety, of course, depend on who sets them…
A bit of historical perspective makes the idea of a well-behaved parliament, politely settling its differences to serve as an example to the rest of the country, seem quite illusory. Insults have always been traded in the Palais Bourbon, from all sides and in all eras: illiterate, servile, idiot, bastard, lapdog, bandit, liar, Judas, traitor, murderer, scoundrel, deceiver, coward, knave, sellout, dotard… The contemporary period is notable mainly for its lack of inventiveness.
As historian Thomas Bouchet has shown (1), times of crisis encourage verbal clashes and commotion in the Chamber – ‘wreaking parliamentary chaos’ as it is called today – with deputies banging their desks, shouting in disagreement and sometimes even singing at the top of their voices. Tensions and divisions that affect the whole country spill over into democratic life, not vice versa. Think of the Boulangist crisis of 1889, the Dreyfus affair, the aftermath of the first world war, the rise of the Popular Front, the strikes of 1947, the abortion law… ‘Calm’ can never be a starting point; it’s the possible result of policies that address these fractures. ‘A river that sweeps everything along is called violent,’ Bertolt Brecht wrote. ‘But no one calls the banks that constrain it violent.’
Lately, there’s been plenty of cause for discontent. The social situation keeps getting worse, and there’s no end to unpopular reforms. Protests are ignored, when not actively repressed. And elections, which for many boil down to picking the least bad option, no longer seem to be capable of bringing change; a discredited presidential camp, despite being defeated at the polls, is still clinging on to power through politicking and institutional manipulation. Is it any wonder, then, that antagonisms are growing and the atmosphere of conflict intensifying?
Translated by George Miller.
Notes.
(1) Thomas Bouchet, Noms d’oiseaux: L’insulte en politique de la Restauration à nos jours (Name-calling: Political insults from the Restoration to the present), Stock, Paris, 2010.
This first appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique.