On the 9th of May, days before yesterday's inauguration of the
new French president, the term ‘Macronisme’ returned 30,700 Google results, and
‘Macroniste’ 43,800. A week later the tally is 43,900 and 70,500 respectively. Even
if almost eleven million voters cast their ballot for his nationalist populist opponent, the improbable
new man in the Elysées Palais will be watched closely, not only by the French
but also by citizens of the twenty-seven nations remaining in the European
Union.
Should we anticipate a twenty-first
century French revolution, a sixième
république, a post-Gaullist construct suited not only to an overdue reform
of the nation’s governance, but also a matrix for the belated modernisation of
the EU? Can we expect from Emmanuel Macron a bold historic realo-futurist
agenda? He will assuredly not hoodwink us with the promises which amount to
little more than a ‘better yesterday’. But does he have the courage to scare
the shit out of us with a comprehensive and reasoned picture of the difficult
and radically different ‘tomorrows’ that await us during the five years of his
presidency and beyond.
The Guardian’s writer asks…
"What is in Macron’s in-tray as president? France’s youngest
president takes over a country exhausted by years of unemployment and facing a
constant terrorist threat. So what will his first moves be? First, Macron, who
comes from no established political party, needs to appoint a prime
minister and a cabinet, and ;win a parliamentary majority in next month’s
election. Next, he will need to swiftly fulfil some of his manifesto promises,
including streamlining ;France’s strict labour laws in favour of
businesses, overhauling the ethics rules for politicians, and strengthening
ties with Germany’s Angela Merkel and the rest of the EU."
Above all, however, President Macron must be
uncompromisingly blunt. His compatriots are already tragically aware that the ‘new
normal’ takes into account the murderous exploits of radicalized extremists or of
mental defectives misusing a muddled understanding of jihadism as an excuse for their actions. Currently not only the
French but the world population is reeling from the upheaval occasioned by the spectral
perpetrators of cyberwar. Macron cannot pretend to guarantee security in either
of these contexts.
He can and must make it abundantly clear that the ‘world
of work’ will never again be as it was before. The robots are here to stay and
their proliferation is unstoppable. Artificial Intelligence lurks everywhere in
our ‘Internet Of Things’. Not only France must face the ominous reality of the
digital hegemony exercised by ‘Gafa’, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon,
American cultural imperialism at its most virulent. Add the vicissitudes of a
post-truth world in which rational discourse loses out to incoherent Tweets and
‘alternative facts’ and the overall picture becomes even more bleak.
Nevertheless the hope must be that a Macron who
refuses to disguise the realities of today and tomorrow by ‘telling it like it
is’ will strip away the outdated illusions which have impeded societal and economic
progress for far too long. When Oscar Wilde first saw Niagara Falls, he said,
“It would be more impressive if it flowed the other way.”
Maybe that sums up what could soon happen in France
and in Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment