Without convincing, sociologist Vincent Tiberj refutes the country’s shift to the right in his latest book. The opinion of the average French citizen is probably closer to that of Michel Barnier than to that of Lucie Castets, notes the journalist from Figaro Eugénie Bastié. Our Macron years, with their ” at the same time “ ineffective, have paradoxically contributed to the polarization of the debate and accentuated the stiffening of both the left and the right in their positions, observes our columnist.
I borrow this title from Eugénie Bastié who wrote a fascinating and critical article on a book by the sociologist Vincent Tiberj, The French Rightward Shift – Myth and Reality in Le Figaro of September 12. The latter proposes the paradox, worse, the incongruity, of maintaining that in reality “the French would be secretly left-wing but influenced by political and media discourses imposing certain themes in the debate”. We can clearly see those he is targeting and incriminating. But his outrageousness, his excess even, forces us to a reflection that we never willingly approach because many would hate to find in them traces of antagonistic political positions, which they reject in their depths. Because they would feel less clear, less whole, too complex, gangrened by a deplorable ambiguity. This repugnance also concerns the left and even the extreme left while recent opinion polls show that a significant part of their electorate has become very sensitive, for example, to the demands of security and justice in their conservative sense. This observation undoubtedly further hinders the leadership of the parties of the New Popular Front, it forces it to lock itself in place to avoid intellectual and political corruption by the adversary! It seems to me, however, that this is even more true on the right once we have gone beyond the deliberately provocative nature of an analysis that is more ideological than sociological.
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Perhaps I am wrong to infer from my own example a generality that could be perceived as abusive. However, there are many of us who do not feel divided, radical, who are divided, intermittent, “flexible” according to an expression of Ségolène Royal. Not always “really right-wing”, not always “right-wing”, driven by diverse and sometimes contrasting impulses.
Why we are increasingly giving in to the radicalization of the debate
Why do we have so much trouble admitting it as if there were a risk of a capital betrayal? Because first of all, accepting such plenitude would amount for some to falling into the caricature of a centrism that has been too rampant and that, through opportunism, would pick on the right as well as the left. However, it is easy to denounce this drift while maintaining the rectitude of a political position that does not lock itself into militant sectarianism.
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Then, because we are today, because of the excesses and sometimes the delusions of the so-called progressive camp, led to deprive ourselves of the few evidences of the latter because of its excesses. We would be ashamed even to display a vague familiarity with a left that is distorted, degraded by certain deputies who do not seek to give the best possible impression of it. We are diverted from the temptation to let ourselves be influenced in the slightest way because we prefer to remain in a right closed in on itself rather than open to another antagonistic landscape.
Another perverse effect of “at the same time”
Finally, the Macronist “at the same time” has been the gravedigger, through the catastrophes it has engendered, of a peaceful desire to hold both ends of a chain. Indeed, for political action and reactivity, the “at the same time” has created failure since where they imposed urgency, sacrifice, choices, obligatory exclusions, this apparent simultaneity has favored slowness, indecision and disappointment. Whereas, on the intellectual and civic level, the fullness of the “at the same time”, a shining sign of an intelligence capable of embracing all the facets of a reality, of attaching itself to the essential without repudiating the richness of another vision, of asserting itself on the right without repudiating reasonable left-wing ideas, would constitute an undeniable wealth. Why should equality, which is the central notion of the left, necessarily be at odds, in every way, with freedom, which is the beating heart of the right?
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We must not omit a crucial point if I dare to infer from my personal example a generality that is doubtless debatable. For my part, if I feel deeply inspired by a conception of humanity, responsibility, society and culture that is part of the conservative right, by values and principles that have structured me since I have been a citizen and have determined my existence, this does not mean in any way that the political situation, partisan hazards, day-to-day management, the thousand difficulties linked to the confrontation with a reality that sometimes refuses to resemble what the right would expect of it, can never give rise to left-wing temptations in the man of the right. And vice versa, I hope. When both are freed from what constitutes them as exclusive solutions, such as ideologies, instead of being complements for what has been privileged as a priority. A right does not betray itself when an honorable left comes to at least partially tempt it. A left should not refuse to be irrigated by the best of the right: change and reform only when it is appropriate, conserve if necessary. Deep down, I aspire to a whole France.
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