John Lichfield is a former foreign editor of the Independent and was the newspaper’s Paris correspondent for 20 years.
The politics of COVID-19 are more variable than the virus. In the long run, they could also be more dangerous.
In France, the well-meaning but sometimes muddled responses of President Emmanuel Macron and his government are under populist assault. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are running rampant on social media. In a recent survey, over 70 percent of French people said they think the government had botched its handling of the crisis.
With similar surges in alarm and disapproval in Spain and Italy, it seems that widespread hope the outbreak would spell the end of populism and destroy the reputation of anti-elite, anti-facts politics is premature.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s contradictory, self-satisfied pronouncements haven’t kept his approval ratings from soaring. And in the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservatives have also seen a spike in the polls, suggesting that tribalist politics are immune to the most destructive pandemic in over 100 years.
The longer the lockdown, the more social jealousies will be exposed — and exploited.
If anything, with people confined to their homes, more reliant on the internet and feeling more vulnerable than ever, there’s a real risk growing anger and fear will end up stoking the populist fire.
In France, activist groups on the far right and far left have unleashed a torrent of misinformation on social media. Attacks are largely unrestricted by facts and mutate wildly into conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
Briefly, the allegations include: that the government/the political class/the powerful/the elites are abandoning ordinary people and/or profiting from the outbreak; that COVID-19 is a hoax or was invented in a French laboratory; that the virus is easily treated by cheap, well-tested medicines and has only been “allowed” to spread to generate profits for “Big Pharma.”
Others claim the epidemic is the fault of foreigners/open borders/globalism/the European Union, and that France is suffering because its state health service (one of the best-funded in the world) has been “dismantled” through liberal dogma.
Some of these claims are spread by sites associated with the anti-establishment Yellow Jacket movement, especially the popular site “Ils Savaient” (“They Knew”), or have been picked up and spread by extremist politicians, including National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
The far-right leader clearly smells blood. The slow and inadequate response of the French government is proof of Macron’s incompetence and the “collapse of the French state,” she insists. No matter that she, Trump-like, has said everything and its opposite since the crisis began.
To be sure, some criticism is justified. The French government was culpably passive in February and early March. It moved slowly to acquire supplies of protective equipment and it opted, through lack of resources, not to impose systematic testing, as Germany did.
But the French government has also displayed great ingenuity and energy in trying to catch up. It has rolled out medically equipped high-speed trains to take gravely ill patients to areas with spare intensive care beds. It has started a massive procurement program for masks and ventilators. It has rolled out the world’s most generous and comprehensive state-funded support for the economy.
None of this suggests a “collapse of the French state.” None of it suggests that the “elites” are looking after themselves. Quite the opposite.
In the theology of the populist hard right and far left, the “ultra-liberal elite” put profit before everything. And yet France, like many other countries, has placed large parts of its economy into an artificial coma to save lives. Macron, the alleged enemy of state action, has mobilized unprecedented state resources to keep ordinary people and businesses from penury.
Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher who is usually a scourge of contemporary materialistic values, put it well: “If economic logic trumped all, we would have chosen to do nothing … Only the oldest and most vulnerable — the useless mouths — would have died (we are told) … That was not acceptable, which proves that in our present torment … we remain a civilization.”
That’s precisely why some have argued the epidemic will mark a high-water for the global tide of populism that has been gathering speed since 2015.
Marine Le Pen’s poll ratings remain dire, with one recent poll finding that over 70 percent of people have a negative opinion of her | Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images
“Solidarity, fraternity, rationalism, competence, confidence, civic values and willingness to lend a hand — these are the values which emerged at the start of the coronavirus crisis in Italy and make populism look, all at once, like a dark farce,” Laurence Morel, a political scientist at Sciences Po in Paris, wrote.
It’s a hopeful thought. But it’s also one that is unlikely to stand the test of time. Much will depend on how long the crisis lasts and how devastating the epidemic turns out to be.
The longer the lockdown, the more social jealousies will be exposed — and exploited. Living confined to a large apartment in the “beaux quartiers” is not the same as being confined with a large family in 40 square meters in the banlieues.
Working from home (something that’s possible for about 60 percent of skilled workers in France but only 1 percent of people working low-skilled or manual jobs, according to a recent survey) is not the same as risking your health by going to work without proper safety equipment.
Frustration and anger will grow. Certainly, Le Pen is counting on it. So far, her own poll ratings remain dire, with one recent poll finding that over 70 percent of people have a negative opinion of her. For how long?
Alain Chouraqui, of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), one of France’s leading students of extremist politics, says he fear that the coronavirus crisis could destabilize France for many years to come.
“We are entering in a phase of great national solidarity but also of fear and anxiety, of conspiracy theories and blaming ‘the other,’” he said.
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A senior member of Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party told me the president is also anxious — but hopeful.
“Macron believes that nothing will be quite the same again,” he said. “When it ends, there will be a great opening for populist voices, on both the far right and the left — the anti-foreign, the anti-European, the anti-global. But he also believes there will be a desire for proven leaders, and an aversion to further disruption.”
It is clear that the French president is thinking about the longer-term politics of the coronavirus (read: the presidential election in exactly two years’ time). On Wednesday, during a visit to a mask-making factory in Anjou, he blasted the “irresponsible” voices who criticize the government “while the war has still to be won.”
He also promised that post-crisis France would “rebuild our national and European sovereignty” by repatriating medical and other manufacturing capacity from China and elsewhere. For Macron, the reference to a rebuilt “European sovereignty” is old; the mention of rebuilt “national sovereignty” is entirely new.
The president knows his French history, and in waging “war” against the virus he has drawn much of his crisis rhetoric from the speeches of Georges “Le Tigre” Clémenceau, France’s leader in World War I.
It’s an example he would do well to study closely. By the war’s end, Clémenceau was a great national hero. He was also forced out of office within 18 months.
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