Crying Wolf about the Return of Fascism: Thirty Years of Theater

Christophe Guilluy is a geographer and observer of French society. Christopher Caldwell comments on his work here. This interview appeared in Le Figaro on November 21, 2021 and is translated with permission by Russell A. Berman, whose comments are here.

Q: Several months before the presidential election, how do you see the political situation in France?

Christophe Guilluy: Fundamentally nothing much has changed since 2017. I did an interview about the duel between Macron and Le Pen, which I described as a chemically pure cleavage: the popular classes against the professional upper classes, the metropolis against the periphery. None of that has changed at all. The core of Macron’s electoral support is still made up of the bourgeoisies of the right and the left, the boomers, the retirees, people fully integrated into society. And for a good reason: he is the only candidate who defends the economic and cultural model of the past twenty years. Therefore, the electorate willing to follow him is the one that is integrated into this model, that benefits from it or is protected by it, such as the retirees for example. Starting from that, he can count on a hypersolid foundation of those 25%. This has not changed since his election.

On the other hand, there are the disaffected, those no longer integrated economically, those we used to call the middle class.

Q: And according to you, they are rebelling against the existing model. Why?

Guilluy: The international division of labor is the starting point for a crisis that is simultaneously cultural, social, economic, and geographic. Employment has moved to China, to India, and across the globe. But this question of delocalization is not only economic. What the proponents of economism have never understood is that the lower and middle classes were not only the foundation of the economic model (they supported the social and economic model, for example, by paying for the welfare state with their labor), but they simultaneously upheld a majoritarian form of life that served as the cultural point of reference for the political class, the cultural world, and for new arrivals.

The question of integration and assimilation is not an abstract question to which it suffices to answer with a “reaffirmation of republican values.” If that were the case, one would not find the same question posed in Sweden, Great Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands. These countries have models and values completely different from each other, but they face the exact same outcome: a cultural identity crisis that is shaking the whole West. This crisis is evidently linked to an economic and cultural crisis that is the end of the Western middle class.

Q: Is this middle class in the process of disappearing?

Guilluy: The people are not disappearing—they are still there but they no longer represent an attractive model (not only for the intelligentsia but also for new arrivals). One can argue about the sex of angels forever with regard to questions of integration, but as long as the majority has not been integrated and reintegrated economically, it is pointless to address the topic.

Arriving in a new country, regardless of its culture, one takes a look around at one’s neighbors and is willing to assimilate to them, only if their way of life looks attractive. If the local resident has a job and is treated with cultural respect—two conditions that collapsed during the 1980s—it would be natural for the new arrival to conform to that local way of life. Unfortunately however the middle and lower classes are no longer integrated economically or geographically, nor are they treated with respect by the political or the cultural worlds. The key opinion makers treat these groups as losers or “deplorables.” If you arrive from the other end of the world and are told that your neighbor is a racist semi-idiot, lost in consumerism with a goal in life only to gorge himself and watch television, you are not going to embrace those values.

The key for the next thirty years is to figure out how to reintegrate the majority of the population. They no longer have a place in the economic model that really counts symbolically in the model of the metropoles and economic globalization. If the political, economic, and cultural project of tomorrow is not the integration of these populations that still make up a majority, then it is pointless to talk about integration, assimilation, or whatever. It is an argument lost in advance if there is no interest in this intrinsic core of society.

Q: Is there a political will to reintegrate these categories?

Guilluy: The current political impasse is due to the fact that the political and media worlds do not want to give up on the model of the metropoles and economic globalization. Of course, since COVID, they explain to us that it is possible that they may have gone too far with free trade. And with a hand on the heart, they confess shame about how they have been destroying the planet. My answer to all this is that the first ecological step would be to stop the cargo bringing in goods from China. But then it turns out that the environmentalists don’t really oppose free trade.

The findings are clear, and the diagnoses have been made, but we are in a religious moment in which it is impossible to renounce the dogma of free trade. We end up instead with piecemeal agenda, that is, equivocations and fragmented policies. This fragmented representation of society stands in the way of any reflections on what could happen to the majority of the population.

Q: But isn’t France in fact increasingly fragmented?

Guilluy: For the proponents of the current model, one of the most important goals is the deconstruction of the very idea of a majority because that allows them to escape democratic conditions. There is no reason to be in a democracy if only minorities exist. The elites therefore pursue a management of representations. I call this “netflixization.” Netflix creates series by way of panels. At stake is creating a narrative that can satisfy a specific category. The whole political class is part of this, supported by Netflix and Hollywood. Today we are in a struggle between a fictional world and an existential reality. That’s why, when you describe France as a country of anomie, fragmentation, and lost values, I have to disagree. All it takes is to talk with people to find that they know very precisely what they want. A majority of them is attached to the territory, and hyper-attached to the fact that the welfare state should be linked to work. They just want to preserve their way of life. People have not moved on this one iota.

When people are surprised by the electoral potential of the populists, I am first of all surprised by the fact that they are surprised. There is a permanence, a rationality, and a solidity that indicate the exact opposite of a France that some describe as anomic and atomized, etc. These people may not yet have found a political outlet, but they are well aware of the fragility of their existence. They experience first hand the three insecurities: physical, social, and cultural. There is a certain mechanism that I describe as the soft power of the lower classes. The question of immigration, for example, why is it resurfacing? These topics are present at the deepest level of the popular classes, no matter what their origins. The question of regulating the flow of immigrants operates as much among the French of Maghrebian or African background as it does for those who are condescendingly labeled “the little whites.”

The “yellow vests” are often called “little whites.” It has been forgotten too quickly that the “yellow vests” mobilized in France’s overseas territories too. One misunderstands the basis of the movement if one treats it only as an ethnic phenomenon. It was a very powerful movement made up of people of diverse origins and who joined it without any identitarian label. I do not say this in order to engage in the hypocritical praise of diversity in the manner of the publicists who govern us. I say this because as soon as the popular classes are in movement, respectable, powerful, and strong, they again become attractive, including for people of all backgrounds. When you are respected culturally, you create the conditions for the assimilation of others.

Q: In political terms however, what you call the “ordinary majority” appears to be divided. Does not the rise of Éric Zemmour contradict the idea of a clash between France of the periphery and France of the metropoles?

Guilluy: All these armchair debates and hypotheticals hardly touch real society. The mechanism of ordinary people—whom I have been calling ordinary people for a long time—is more important. It has a long-term impact with social and political effects. Who broke the cleavage between left and right? Some say it was Macron, thanks to his exceptional intelligence. That is wrong; it has been at least twenty years since the middle and lower classes gave up orienting themselves around the difference between left and right, with the lower classes in particular moving from the left to the extreme right or toward abstentionism. It is this majoritarian movement that is killing the left, as abstention increases and populist parties grow stronger. If one considers the matter clearly and returns to Marine Le Pen’s result in 2018, it is important to note that she surpassed her father’s vote, moving from 18% to 35% That number is the principle bedrock of the populist bloc. Understanding the political cogs perfectly, Zemmour has succeeded in capturing a large part of this electorate, but the pool remains identical, representing in full 35% of the voters. I believe in the permanence of this electoral geography that generally structures the dichotomy between large metropoles and the French periphery. People outside of the neoliberal economic model are drawn toward the populist appeal, and Zemmour, with a discourse that is more to the right and more intellectual captures the fraction of this electorate that is relatively better integrated, as well as a marginal part of the bourgeoisie, what he calls “the patriotic bourgeoisie.”

In the final analysis, the material question remains decisive. While a part of the bourgeoisie, on the right or on the left, can recognize the limits of globalization and the multicultural model, the essential difference between them and the 70% of the French who earn less than 2,000 euros per month remains their ability to protect themselves from the negative effects of this model. With 5,000 euros per month, the bourgeoisie will always have the ability to make the residential and educational choices to protect itself. In addition, we should not forget that the higher professional categories have been benefitting for several decades from the current economic model through increased asset values. The value of their apartment in Paris has increased by a factor of ten, and their second home by three. In the end, Macron is their life insurance. For the middle and lower classes, in contrast, people need a state that regulates and protects, because they do not have the means to protect themselves. But currently, the political offerings are not responding to this expectation. The ordinary majority needs a champion who goes beyond the extreme right. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump were not lone individuals—they relied on parties.

Q: Has the pandemic upset the cleavage you describe? Will “the world after” be characterized by an exodus from the cities?

Guilluy: The real estate market in middle-size cities near the great metropoles is in fact a bit frothy. But that does not mean people are breaking with the metropoles. This involves mobile individuals who are largely in a higher income group, already investing in desirable properties. If you see real estate markets heat up, it is a matter of areas that are already gentrified, especially the Atlantic coast and attractive villages.

What fascinates me with regard to the question of the urban exodus is the bias that it reveals. No one cares about what happens to the people already living in the French periphery (that is, between 60% and 70% of the French). The elites think that the future of these regions depends on the arrival of the bohemian bourgeois from Paris, Bordeaux, or Lyon. In reality however, the arrival of the upper-income groups, for example, in the coasts or the attractive villages has the effect that the lower-class youth cannot afford to live in the region where they were born. They are forced to relocate as far as possible from the coast into what is called the “retro-coast,” or even further away.

Owning property on the ocean—that is over for the lower classes. A view of the sea will soon be reserved only for high earners who will have purchased the whole coast. This invisible violence, this appropriation, is reminiscent of what took place yesterday in the big cities, and there will be no turning back.

Society is being reorganized along the lines of an extremely inegalitarian economic model that only benefits the top 20%. We let market logic run its course, so it makes sense that people buy their second home in an attractive location, and no care is given to the fate of the lower-class youth born in the region but forced to move. Great speeches will be given, there will be regional meetings, and local elected officials will declare the matter scandalous, but because there is no interest in getting to the core, an enormous resentment in the lower classes will grow. This resentment fuels the existential and social movement of the lower and middle classes. And because the elites do not want or are not able to respond, they will rule the population by fear.

Management by fear means threatening an apocalypse, whether it is understood in terms of democracy, ecology, or public health. The democratic apocalypse involves, for example, making us believe for thirty years that fascism is about to arrive. This is just theater; it serves always to frighten the undecided voters and to push the large block of retirees toward the proponents of the globalist model. The citizenry is afraid of fascism, just as it fears an apocalyptic healthcare crisis or the environmental apocalypse. All these fears let ineffective governments herd the citizens who longer vote out of loyalty but out of fear of the threatened catastrophe. There is no loyalty toward Macronism. Only a vote out of fear. If he is reelected, he will drop in the polls.