May Day Dissent And Demonstrations

The French celebrated May 1 by taking to the streets as Macron insists the silent majority is behind him.

Street art in Dreux, France

If you want to get a sense of the paradox that is French politics, here are a few figures to chew on following another day of harmony and happiness in France.

Somewhere between 782,000 and 2.3 million people marched in the streets of France for the annual Fête du Travail, depending on whose propaganda you believe. That includes between 112,000 and 550,000 in Paris on May 1. Even at the high end, Le Monde puts the turnout below some of the biggest retirement protests earlier this year.

The government reported that 108 police were injured and one suffered severe burns after being targeted by a Molotov cocktail. Also, 291 people were arrested. As always, the demonstrations were largely peaceful, except at the margins where black bloc protestors and tear-gas-happy police made for a combustible mix.

Per The Guardian: “But on the edges of the march as it passed through Paris’s 11th arrondissement, police fired teargas and clashed with groups of young men dressed in black. Projectiles, bins and petrol bombs were thrown at police. Some Paris bus stops and shop fronts were smashed and graffitied with anti-police slogans. As the march reached its endpoint at Place de la Nation, police fired teargas and pushed back crowds as demonstrators threw projectiles.”

These are the vestiges of fury over the retirement reform adopted by the government of Emanuel Macron. But here’s the thing: That very same E-Mac remains the most popular politician in France.

According to the latest Harris Interactive poll, Macron’s favorability rating stands at 39%. It’s one of his lowest ratings since before the pandemic. A gaggle of his ministers is in the mid to low 30s. And yet, he’s still top of the pile.

Just behind Macron is his former prime minister Edouard Philippe at 37%. The center-right Philippe may be the best bet for France to elect someone not named Le Pen (36%) in 2027. Meanwhile, the head of the left-leaning NUPES coalition, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the man who basically hates Macron for a living, is stuck around 24%. The left unified last year to win a big victory in the legislative elections, but it seems they have some work to do to find a national candidate.

Macron can’t run for another term, but he has still decided to go on a belated tour of France to meet the French. He has been dogged by protestors banging pots along the way. Officials have brought portable generators in case protestors cut the power. But he insists that he’s determined to reconnect with his subjects, even if no one is going to mistake him for a man of the people.

In the town of Dole, he even wandered an open-air market among the masses. He told reporters it was important to take such unscripted detours and that staged events were “useless.”

These attempts to win hearts and minds will ramp up this week in advance of the one-year anniversary of his re-election victory on May 7, 2002. Macron’s party is planning to place posters and other publicity around the country to highlight his accomplishments. Along the way, he’s trying to argue that there is a silent majority of French who support these reforms and are ready to put the whole fight behind them so the government can move on to address the nation’s other problems.

This leads to another paradox, highlighted by Alexander Hurst, a Paris-based American journalist and university lecturer. Writing in The Guardian, Hurst notes that across a range of statistics (unemployment, inequality), things are arguably better in France than they have been in decades. Certainly not as apocalyptic as many of the woe-is-us extreme critics would have us believe:

“But there is an incredible disconnect between what tourists see, what foreigners living in France see, what French people living abroad see, what this recently naturalised français sees, and the hyperbolic, catastrophist nature of France’s own domestic discourse about itself (that is, the French people convinced their country has gone to hell).”

Still, Macron is right to worry about how this all looks to the rest of the world. Last week, the rating agency Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating saying the nation’s economy and ongoing protests threatened to

"Public finances, and in particular the high level of government debt, are a rating weakness," Fitch said in explaining its move. "Political deadlock and (sometimes violent) social movements pose a risk to (President Emmanuel) Macron's reform agenda and could create pressures for a more expansionary fiscal policy or a reversal of previous reforms."

Macron and ministers pushed back, saying Fitch underestimated how much the reform would improve the budget situation. And they also insisted that the picture of France as a nation that was blocked was simply wrong. In the coming months, they are determined to show otherwise.

The Butts Of Controversy

Of course, the other way to distract people from their anger over the retirement reform is with a parade of other juicy scandals.

Deputy Minister Marlène Schiappa, she of recent Playboy cover fame, continues to face accusations that a fund she set up to fight extremism in the wake of a teacher’s murder funneled money to groups to which she had connections. Schiappa has denied this, but political opponents have filed formal complaints, including a request that the French senate launch a formal inquiry.

Or, and hear me out, you could get a minister to write a book celebrating the joys of anal sex.

If that was the strategy behind the latest book by Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, “Fugue Américaine” (American Fugue), well it’s off to a good start. The novel tells the story of two brothers who travel to Cuba to a concert by Vladimir Horowitz. Notably, it includes a racy scene involving one of the brothers and a young woman who has recently had a visit from Aunt Flow and thus decides to order Greek.

Excerpts have been floating around the internet, of course.

Naturally, this has triggered a backlash from political opponents who are outraged that…Le Maire had time to write a book. (What, you thought the French would be shocked by the sex thing?)

Left-wing MP Francois Ruffin said the dude in charge of the economy should not have “a minute, an hour, a week of his time to devote to writing a book.”

Perhaps, but Le Maire is a literary juggernaut. He’s written 13 books, including 5 in the last 4 years while he was Minister of the Economy.

“Everyone has their lines of flight, for me, it's writing. I claim this freedom because it gives me inner balance,” he said on Twitter. “Many of you have asked me how I found the time to write. Some people go to museums, cinemas, concerts, the football. Others do the gardening or go hiking. As for me, I write.”

Good for him. But as far as reading it, I’ll probably just wait for the Netflix adaptation.

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq