The re-election of Emmanuel Macron with a comfortable margin, facing an adversary he hates (and who pays him back), almost made us forget a certain reciprocal dependence on their respective camps. Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen hate each other, but they have created a kind of political symbiosis that says a lot about the delicate situation that France and Europe, among others, are going through today.
This is not the first time that the potential victory of a Le Pen allows an outgoing president to be reappointed to the Élysée. Before Macron, Jacques Chirac had obtained 82% of the vote in 2002 against Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Tearing down an unjust system
In 2002, the fear aroused by Jean-Marie Le Pen led to the triumph of Chirac. But in 2022, it was more a story of reciprocity: Marine Le Pen helped Macron win a clear majority of voters, but Macron also boosted Le Pen. The result speaks for itself, since a far-right candidate won 42% of the vote. Over the past five years, Macron and Le Pen’s codependency has deepened, not despite the mutual antipathy between the two opponents, but rather because of it.
Chirac’s re-election in 2002 hinged on a coalition of right, center and left against the xenophobic far right. In 2017, faced with this same threat, Macron broke the codes by asserting himself “neither left nor right”. It worked and even a little too much, because this formula contaminated the thinking of its most fervent opponents.
The youth, the precariat and, increasingly, the most vulnerable segments of the proletariat refuse to assess presidential candidates according to left and right criteria. For them, France is ruled by a world of finance which is foreign to them and which not only left them on the floor, but is actively working to trap them there. In their eyes, Macron personifies this world. And according to their reasoning, there are now the respectable political figures who promise to keep this world going, and the slingers who pledge to keep it going.