I really shouldn’t be doing this. I am a much happier and more productive person when I don’t spend my time self-righteously penning angry screeds on the manifold shortcomings of contemporary society, but there are times when not writing something seems the decidedly poorer option, leaving the frustration to fester to the point of distracting me from engaging in a more elevated and worthwhile pursuit (i.e. anything). And, after all, what’s the point of having a blog called “Howling At The Moon” if you don’t indulge in a little pointless bellowing every so often?
So here we go.
It’s the day after the 2024 French legislative elections, and what have we learned? That this country, that consistently regards itself as a vastly more cerebral and sophisticated place than most, has convincingly demonstrated its flagrant inability to exhibit the slightest amount of critical thinking skills, ingloriously placing itself in prime position to win the gold medal of global irrationality.
These are, I appreciate, particularly strong words; and needless to say writing them is a painful thing to be doing for someone who has voluntarily come to these shores inspired by the legacy of Diderot & Co, particularly given the state of the world these days. It is, after all, no mean feat to be in the running for the most intellectually incoherent nation when your competition includes Trump’s America and Brexit Britain, but facts are facts.
And here they are:
- The broad left-wing coalition, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), won the most seats in the Assemblée nationale, but was far short of a majority, leading to a situation where parliament is now represented by three roughly equivalent large blocks, the NFP, Macron’s Ensemble group and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN).
- The reason this happened is because, in the vast majority of instances, the NFP and Ensemble explicitly worked together to prevent the RN from attaining power—withdrawing candidates from the second round in the hopes of transferring crucial votes to the other. Had they not done that, it’s obvious that the RN would have vastly increased their parliamentary tally, and might well have garnered an absolute majority.
Now you can be happy about this (as I am, as it happens), or unhappy about it (as the venally thuggish Marine Le Pen surely is), but you simply can’t deny the reality of those two points.
Or so it would seem. But in today’s France, apparently you can. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the perpetually fulminating leader of La France Insoumise (an integral part of the NFP coalition), loudly announced to his adoring acolytes that the election results demonstrated nothing less than an unequivocal mandate for his party to implement their agenda, while Jean-François Copé sanctimoniously looked into the television camera to declaim that there was not the slightest chance that his party, Les Republicains (LR) would compromise on one jot of their program.
Now, leaving aside the irony that Mélenchon, who’s been increasingly assailed for demagoguery throughout the campaign, has opted to defend his cause by publicly behaving in the most demagogic way imaginable, or that Copé could somehow persist in being smugly condescending only a few weeks after his party’s president formally concluded a pact with the RN that quickly led to two incompatible versions of LR being presented to the electors on election day, the most obvious point to mention—which was inexplicably not touched upon by the criminally vacuous media representatives whose job it is to call our attention to such things—is that the NFP, Ensemble, and LR are already in a coalition.
When you are in a situation where different political parties representing very different political programs say to each other, “Look, I know we disagree strongly on many things, but we really must unite against our common enemy to prevent them from attaining power, so let’s all withdraw our third-place candidates in the hopes that the voters will elect either your guys or ours”, you are obviously, incontrovertibly, transparently, combining forces within a broad-based coalition—indeed doing so in the most politically meaningful way: by potentially sacrificing your own candidates in close races for your perception of the greater good.
That the likes of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jean-François Copé seem incapable of recognizing that doesn’t just make them demagogues and tiresome blowhards (although that, too, of course): it makes them borderline insane.
The only clear result that emerged from yesterday’s legislative election was that the anti-RN coalition won. And anyone who says anything different is either a fool or a liar (or, of course, both).
To be fair, this was actually pointed out by a few people I saw on television last night, such as Raphaël Glucksmann and François Bayrou, both of whom stood out as wonderfully rational beacons in a sea of raging incoherence.
But they are, sadly, all too few. Indeed, it’s hard not to conclude that, in stark contrast to the alarmist rhetoric that we are continually bombarded with these days, France isn’t losing its identity or its competitiveness or its global influence (always vaguely dubious qualities anyway).
It is losing its mind.
Howard Burton, July 8, 2024
Howard is a filmmaker and the author of six non-fiction books on various topics, details can be found HERE. He is the Director of Pandemic Perspectives (2022), Through the Mirror of Chess: A Cultural Exploration (2023), Raphael: A Portrait (2024) and Botticelli’s Primavera (2025) which is the first film in our Renaissance Masterpieces Series.
