Macron’s Unexpected Move to the Right and Political Weaponization of Islamo-Leftism, Separatism, and Rejection of American Woke Culture

Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the Elysée

With his political party, “La Republique En Marche!” French President Emmanuel Macron has always prided himself on having created a political platform that united the left, the right, and the center and won him the 2017 French presidential election. Lately, however, Macron has been progressively moving to the right while governing, perhaps because his true ideology is more center-right or perhaps for political expediency ahead of the upcoming 2022 presidential election. Macron has increasingly articulated a need to reaffirm French values and French republicanism, which discourages the recognition of social, ethnic, racial, religious, or gender differences. French universalism is the principle underlying the famous republican ideals of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” or “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” The application of this principle, characteristic of French “color-blindness,” does not allow for a recognition of individual traits: everyone is simply French. The French government is not allowed to inquire about its citizens’ backgrounds, even on the census. 

This objective of reaffirming French republican principles and cultural values is embodied by controversial new legislation passed last month to promote French “laïcité” or secularism, traditionally viewed as the enforced separation between the French state and religion, but increasingly seen as a shield used by the French government to hide its prejudices. This law encompasses a series of prohibitions intended to resist “Islamist separatism,” including measures restricting or prohibiting homeschooling, Islamic organizations, polygamy and forced marriage. The new legislative text is based on the notion that “Islamist separatism” and recent terrorist attacks, such as the beheading of a middle school teacher and the murder of worshipers at a cathedral in Nice, are symptoms of national division and a lack of integration between different demographics within the population. Macron defines this French “separatism” as the process of radical groups calling on French youth to disregard the laws and values of the French republic. The new legislation was enacted to reduce separatism by promoting the respect of certain core and long-standing legal principles, such as secularism and the neutrality of the state. Some see advocacy of this law as an electoral tool that could risk stigmatizing a significant part of the population, even coining the term “radical secularism” to highlight the extremity of Macron’s recent political moves. 

These new policies are surprising, as they constitute a total departure from Macron’s position during his first presidential campaign. In a July 12,th 2016, speech, he stated, “I do not believe, for my part, that it is necessary to invent new texts, new laws, norms, to go hunting the headscarf at university, to go hunting down those who may have religious signs in school outings.” His present stance against Islamist separatism is in direct contrast to his earlier words concerning secularism and how to best counter domestic terrorist threats, declaring in the same speech, “This fight is not a fight of secularism against a religion, Islam, it would make no sense, it would be a fundamental mistake. We have an enemy, a threat, the jihadists, Daesh, but it is not Islam.”

Debates around identity have gone beyond Islam with French politicians and intellectuals arguing that progressive American social science theories on race, gender, and post-colonialism pose a threat to French society. Popular support of BLM after the murder of George Floyd spread to Europe last summer, along with other movements concerning cultural issues, particularly around identity. Attention to these issues has become controversial in France. Those on the right argue that these are ideas imported from “woke American campuses,” and are not transposable to the French integration model based on “laïcité.” Macron embraced this argument in a speech in October 2020, stating, “we have left the intellectual debate to others, to those outside of the Republic by ideologizing it, sometimes yielding to other academic traditions. I am thinking of Anglo-Saxon traditions based on a different history, which is not ours.” He also highlighted an urgent need to “combat Islamo-leftism,” a theory linking far-left politics with Islamists. This effort by Macron to counter separatism and “combat Islamo-leftism” has extended to French academic research, French education, and the university milieu. Frederique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, recently expressed a need to detect and negate the impact of Islamo-leftism on French academia, ordering an investigation into the matter in February. Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of National Education, voiced similar concerns as early as October 2020. These statements have been denounced as attacks on intellectual freedom. This investigation into the supposed presence of Islamo-leftism in academic circles could be used as a means to eradicate thought and discussion considered contrary to French republicanism and French cultural values. 

This turn to the ideological right by a previously centrist Macron may have more complex motivations than wanting to defend the French Republic. Macron’s recent actions could be a political move to garner more popular support, particularly on the center-right, by weaponizing this rejection of woke culture and turning it into a wedge issue in the looming 2022 election. Macron’s mention of enemies threatening French unity, culture, and values in his October 2020 speech rings eerily familiar to certain American Republican ideas, and his words and arguments are reminiscent of some of former President Trump’s tactics to gather political support: “This new awakening is about all citizens and a France united in support of its values. The more our enemies try to pit us against one another, the more we’ll be drawn together. The more they try to destroy us, the more we’ll stand together.” 

Macron has been criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his poll numbers have decreased as a result, creating a newfound political opportunity for Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National and his former 2017 opponent, to again make a play for the presidency. Le Pen is at her highest level of popularity yet, polling 27% on March 16th compared to Macron’s 24%. Focusing on cultural issues could be a tactic to siphon some of Le Pen’s political base while also undermining Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party, France Insoumise. Macron’s desire to capture some of Le Pen’s base with these tactics is evidenced by his adoption of some of her signature policies, such as opposing Islamo-leftism, globalism, and Anglo-Saxon intellectual trends. The notion of an Islamo-leftist threat was first set forth by Le Pen in her 2012 presidential campaign, and she has consistently tried to make voters fearful of outside influences. In 2017, she stated, “The main thing at stake in this election is the rampant globalization that is endangering our civilization.” Macron’s political shift and his borrowing of some of his opponents’ ideological arguments is significant, especially in light of his previous statements concerning his desire to work towards integrating and uniting all portions of the French population, such as his assertion that, “I want to help with Muslim integration. If you follow the line of Marine Le Pen, you create a civil war,” in 2017. In his pre-election July 2016 speech, he denounced other French politicians for strategically shifting political views to gain voter support, a tactic he seems to be confidently employing today.

Macron’s political swing is not inconsistent with the long-standing conviction dating back to Charles De Gaulle, architect of France’s current Constitution and form of republican government, that a rejection of American globalism is necessary to reassert French identity. The French struggle to confront issues of separatism is inevitably associated with recent debates concerning the validity of the French model of integration and its refusal to recognize its own population’s multicultural identity. The emergence and enforcement of these new policies may be linked to fears that these identity-based, Anglo-Saxon theories could shake and transform the core of French republicanism by contesting the state’s refusal to recognize the actual diversity of French society. Woke-leftist ideology is considered to be a menace to the French way, threatening to break apart the French ideal that everyone should be identified only as French. The concept of a multicultural society and other ideas developed in identity-based US social theories are antithetical to current conceptions of French republican and cultural values which refuse to acknowledge any ethnic or cultural differences amongst its citizens.  

The repercussions of Macron’s new policies transcend politics. Whatever the motivations are behind this new emphasis on France’s identity and values, whether the rhetorical and legal condemnation of Islamo-separatism is truly driven by ideological differences or by political expediency, Macron’s new line could have a monumental impact on French society. His words and actions could potentially destabilize new intellectual movements created to recognize and reconcile France’s colonial past, and undermine political opposition in light of the upcoming presidential campaign. These issues will undoubtedly be a central and decisive feature of next year’s presidential election.  

It remains to be seen whether bringing these issues to the forefront of electoral politics will prove an effective political strategy in France. In July 2020, a study determined that 13% identified with the left, 32% with the center, 39% with the right and 16% refused to associate with either. The far-right Le Pen has always been thought to have a ceiling to her support, yet this study also determined that the French population has never so heavily identified with the right and center-right. The election will undeniably pit Macron against his main political rival, Le Pen, with little competition from the traditional reigning parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, who have essentially disintegrated in the past five years. In any case, this race will test Macron’s ability to unite different political viewpoints, and he will need the backing of voters across the spectrum to be successful in the runoff. It is too early to tell whether his weaponization of cultural issues will be more effective than it was for Republicans in the recent American presidential election. This electoral tactic may attract conservative voters who are drawn to Le Pen, yet it also risks backfiring by showing Macron to be the type of opportunistic politician he has long criticized as well, repelling voters on the left. Macron was aided in his 2017 win by a fortuitous conjunction of circumstances: the incumbent declined to run, the favored center-right candidate got caught up in a corruption scandal, and Le Pen was viewed as extreme. With more French voters moving to the right and Le Pen’s appeal increasing and Macron’s decreasing in light of his perceived mishandling of the pandemic, he will certainly require luck once again in order to win. 

Tatiana Gnuva is a rising junior in Columbia College double-majoring in History and Human Rights. She grew up in Nice, France and loves music and chocolate chip Levain cookies.