WWhatever the outcome of the French presidential election, three points seem certain. First of all, it will not have moved the electorate very much: there are the usual discussions and polemics, but young voters in particular are discreetly saying goodbye. Second, the left has failed to agree on a candidate or program and has quarreled to the point of insignificance. Third, the debate is shaped by the right-wing fringe of the political spectrum, especially by Éric Zemmour: he is pushing more moderate candidates like Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains) or – after Operation Chalk Eating – even Marine Le Pen (Rassemblement national).
Candidates well into the middle force Zemmour’s poll successes to deal with theses that were long taboo or considered irrelevant. They come from the reservoir of the “déclinistes”, the thinkers of decay: According to them, France is torn and run down, weak in innovation and bureaucratic, alienated from itself and overrun by migrants – it has slipped from its former greatness to a third-class state. The radical version of this is the thesis of the “grand replacement” put forward by the writer Renaud Camus: the French population is being replaced by a treacherous elite with migrants who are willing to work and have children.
While the loss of power and influence is obvious – a fate that France shares with the West at large – other aspects are less clear. Above all: Is the debate conducted in a meaningful way at all? Their conceptual surface is shaped by concepts of time: they are narrative models that let chronological lines run from one pole to the other, from the past to the present, from glory to misery, from the proud nation to the failed state. Not only individual absurdities that Zemmour writes about the Crusades or the persecution of the Jews under Pétain are to be questioned – a collective of historians has just raised an objection to these (“Zemmour contre l’histoire”, published by Gallimard). What is meant are the patterns that ensure that those topics that concern many French people beyond the noise of the election campaign are left out. These patterns are mental one-way streets that do not do justice to the complexity and changeability of the real.
Rural exodus brings potential for conflict
It’s no big secret what it’s about: money. The economy is booming, currently even louder than in Germany, but France is sitting on a mountain of public debt that has grown significantly with the pandemic, from 98.1 percent of gross domestic product (2019) to 114.8 percent (second trimester 2021). The country’s problems and thus the underlying election campaign issues can be traced back to a large extent to this. Even if there are fewer concerns about this than in Germany, partly because of the better demographic development, the increase is worrying.
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These financial worries are articulated when one scrutinizes the discussions for their facts, but primarily not as problems of the time, but as problems of space – national on the one hand, international on the other. Regarding the national “territoire”: If you take continental France, then 65.6 million inhabitants share an area of 544,000 square kilometers, while 83.2 million Germans find space on less than 360,000 square kilometers. The difference in population density is often underestimated when comparing countries. Holidaymakers from all over the world enjoy the vastness of France, but for politicians they are not only a source of income but also a problem.