Gong Ke (Doctor of Laws, Media Person in France)
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has been going on for two years, has not only not gradually subsided at the turn of 2021-2022, but has instead oscillated violently. The Omiljung mutant strain has caused many parts of the world to re-enter the epidemic "tsunami". Despite the optimistic view, the highly contagious, lowly pathogenic Olmikeron strain may in fact advance herd immunity at a relatively small cost. However, this foresight has not yet been universally confirmed. The natural trend of the epidemic and how the epidemic prevention measures of different countries interact are still worth paying close attention to in the next step.
The protracted public health crisis has also led to the intensification of social crises on a global scale, and structural contradictions in different fields have either been detonated or further deepened. In particular, the more the crisis continues, the more it resonates with the regular cycle of electoral politics. In Eastern Europe and South America, there have been instances of government changes caused by ballot boxes during the pandemic.
The upcoming French presidential election in April 2022 will also be difficult to break away from this trend. Although compared with topics such as purchasing power, security, immigration, employment, and ecology, the topic of the epidemic has not occupied an absolute dominant position in this election campaign. But in a sense, it can still be said that the election that will take place in 80 days is itself on the ruins after the storm of the epidemic, which will be the setting for all election issues.
Against this backdrop, a strong criticism of those who resisted vaccination in early January was also naturally examined within the framework of the campaign. However, this "outspoken" is not so much an election campaign as it is to expose the chronic diseases of social mentality since the epidemic and even since the entire presidency. Are the resistance to epidemic prevention measures and vaccinations returning to the true meaning of "freedom" and preserving the core of "freedom", or is a group of "spoiled children" indulging in wanton indulgence? The Italian political theorist Machiavelli, five hundred years ago, may have been able to shed some light on these questions.
On November 22, 2021, amiens, France, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is inspecting the northern part of France, responded to anti-vaccine protests and violent riots in the overseas province of Guadeloupe for several days
Macron's "outspoken"
Since the start of vaccination work at the end of 2020, after a brief period of confusion and run-in, the vaccine coverage rate in France has gradually increased, and now the two-dose vaccination rate has reached 91%. In recent months, however, vaccination growth has waned. According to statistics, by the beginning of 2022, there are still about 5 million people over the age of 12 who have not yet been vaccinated, of which about 500,000 are immunocompromised groups (cancer treatment, organ transplantation, etc.) and people who are not suitable for vaccination, and the rest are those who are resistant to vaccination. In other words, the vaccination situation in France today is that most of the people who want to get (and can get) the vaccine have already been vaccinated, and the rest are those who cannot be vaccinated for various objective reasons, or who resist vaccination for subjective reasons.
In this context, the French government will upgrade the original "new crown pass" to a "vaccine pass", that is, most public places will only recognize vaccination certificates and infection recovery certificates, and the temporary negative screening certificate of the previously unvaccinated people "shooting a shot for a place" will not be recognized. The government is trying to "squeeze" this group and force them to be vaccinated. And this escalation measure also unexpectedly provoked a strong resistance from the relevant groups.
On January 4, in a conversation with readers of Le Parisien, Macron launched a fierce criticism of those who resisted vaccination: "We put pressure on the unvaccinated and restrict as much as possible their activities in social life ... It is a small percentage of people who resist. How can we reduce the number of these people? We use the emmerder way to further annoy them. For my part, I don't want to upset the French. I spent all day blaming the French for the administrative formalities that made it difficult for the French to move forward. But for those who don't get vaccinated, I'd love to upset them... I'm not going to put them in jail, I'm not going to force them to vaccinate. Therefore, it must be said to them: from January 15 (in fact, the relevant bill is passed later than the original date), you cannot go to restaurants, you cannot go to drinks, you cannot go to coffee, you cannot go to the theater, you cannot go to the cinema..."
Macron's use of the word emerder, which is quite common in everyday French, is not a dirty word, but it is also difficult to be elegant. How to translate has become a difficult problem for the media in various countries. Its noun root merde means feces, verbs are used to describe people as if they are annoyed and annoyed by shit, and because of this, it is difficult to find a corresponding expression with the same indecent meaning in foreign languages, Chinese reports there are various translations such as "annoyance", "uncomfortable", "irritation", "unhappiness", etc., but they are difficult to put in place, the New York Times and other Parts of the English media translate as piss off, although not strictly corresponding, but quite a bit of "the next three ways" of the gods.
Three days after the remarks, Macron, in a press conference co-chaired with European Commission President von der Leyen, once again made a strong statement that he was "fully" responsible for the previous controversial statement, that he as president had a "responsibility to sound the alarm" in the face of the ferocious epidemic, and pointed out that the imposition of restrictions on the unvaccinated is a "movement" that spreads across Europe, implying that this is not his will as president of France, but a general trend throughout Europe.
The turning point of the popularity collapse? Not really
Macron used the term at a carefully orchestrated media event and was quickly interpreted by the media as a deliberate "provocative" gesture. In particular, he still deliberately maintains a vague state of whether to officially participate in the presidential election (at the same event, he still did not relax on this, but strongly hinted that he would participate in the election). Because of this, this statement was considered a substantial electoral action, and was immediately strongly criticized by the opposition camp, which accused Macron of "contempt", "insult" to the people, "dividing" society, and Damien Abad, chairman of the National Assembly caucus of the right-wing Republican Party (LR), said that with 3 months to go before the general election, Macron "fell into the populist quagmire like Le Pen and Zemoor", and the speech had a "Trumpization" tendency.
On January 24, 2022, Paris, France, the French vaccine pass measure officially entered into force. As the latest measure to deal with the new crown epidemic, this measure has attracted attention from all walks of life.
For many media, the more noteworthy topic is: What impact will this statement have on the direction of the election? Given the initial surge in public opinion, which led to bold predictions by the media, this may be a turning point in Macron's popularity. However, the trend of public sentiment does not confirm this. A January 6-7 poll by pollsters Ipsos and Soprad Steria showed that rather than weakening Macron's poll, there was a growing momentum: If an immediate general election were held, 26 percent of voters would vote for Macron in the first round, a figure one percentage point higher than in December. The second-ranked far-right Marine Le Pen's poll index (17 percent) is not bullish, on par with republican candidate Valérie Pécresse's 16 percent; if Macron plays Against Le Pen in the second round, he will win easily by 58 percent to 32 percent, even against Pekrés, with a clear 55 percent to 45 percent margin.
More indicatively, the day after Macron's speech, the number of first-time covid-19 vaccination appointments on the medical appointment platform Doctolib reached 27,710, continuing to maintain the growth momentum of the previous two days and reaching a new high in three months. This seems to indicate that vaccination efforts are accelerating in the direction the government would like to see – at least without a clear retrograde decline.
However, it is not true to say that Macron's statement has no negative consequences at all. The anti-epidemic demonstrations, which had been much weaker in the previous weeks, regained momentum on January 8. According to the French Ministry of the Interior, about 100,000 people across France took to the streets that day, four times the number of similar events before the New Year. This is stimulated by the national assembly's passing of the vaccine pass bill, but Macron's provocative gesture is obviously also a strong stimulus. However, on the next mobilization day (15th), the number of people on the street immediately halved, falling back to 54,000, indicating that the rebound sentiment is rapidly cooling.
"Establish certain enemies in order to subdue them"
Generally speaking, no matter how fierce the electoral campaign, the political leaders produced by the democratically elected system have the obligation to bridge differences and represent the whole people after coming to power, an obligation that sometimes borders on "political correctness", and few orthodox political leaders openly express hostility to the electoral community and use this hostility as a means of consolidating their own fundamentals. But in recent years, "non-mainstream" leaders, represented by Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Duterte in the Philippines, have not been afraid to openly regard some voter groups as enemies, and this tactic has become a basic feature of populism. It was in this sense that when Macron said to those who refused vaccinations that he "would love to upset them", the opposition immediately accused the president of being "Trumpized".
The day after Macron made the remarks, Martin Legros, editor-in-chief of the French philosophical magazine, posted a question - "Has Macron forgotten Machiavelli?" Quoting chapter 19 of The Monarch, he said that Machiavelli's admonition was that the most important quality of being a monarch was to avoid being hated or despised, and that "a monarch would be despised if he was considered fickle, frivolous, weak, cowardly, indecisive," and that he should therefore beware of all this and strive to "show greatness, heroism, seriousness, and perseverance in action," while emmerder's phrase can hardly be called "great" or "serious and solemn."
The so-called "forgetting" actually implies a deep meaning. Linking Macron to Machiavelli is nothing new. After all, the president's first-year master's thesis had been titled Machiavelli, exploring "Machiavelli's political facts and historical representations." In a feature of a character in the New York Times in October 2014, the then economy minister "joked" that his research on Machiavelli helped him survive in circles of political power in Paris. Of course, it is difficult to judge whether this statement is a real revelation or a media response technique that demonstrates a sense of humor; after all, it is difficult for the outside world to draw conclusions about a first-year master's work (not a master's thesis) from twenty years ago and determine how it is intrinsically related to today's governance.
On December 27, 2021, in Paris, France, local children were vaccinated against COVID-19.
Even so, judging Macron's governance, with Machiavelli as the key word, began almost as soon as the president took office. At that time, various measures of governance had not yet been carried out, and the media drew on the young president's claim of "Renaissance" (the same as the "Renaissance") and the troubles faced by the Florentine city-state. But then, as governance measures touched on specific interests and some of Macron's remarks sparked controversy, voices began to warn Macron not to be "hated by the people" and urged him to revisit Machiavelli.
At the same time, another approach seeks to explore the intrinsic relevance of the two figures. Historian Patrick Boucheron has written an analysis of the "striking resemblance" between Macron and Machiavelli; in 2018, a pamphlet titled Machiavelli and Macron: The Impossible Correspondence was published, and author Eric de Rancourt points out that despite centuries apart, Machiavelli and Macron share a common trajectory and taste; in the conquest and exercise of power, the role of the state, the importance of the army, Morality is strikingly close to its place in politics and other aspects.
In 2017, Macron rose as a "centrist" political star, causing a fission in the political landscape of France, and the traditional center-left (Socialist Party) and center-right (People's Movement Alliance/Republican Party) have seen a wave of party elite exodus, which has greatly damaged the morale of both parties and has not yet recovered. Relatively speaking, the left camp has been more badly hurt, facing a scattered situation in the face of the 2022 election, and all the candidates have a sluggish poll, which is not a concern for Macron; on the other hand, the right is in a strange situation: on the one hand, the far-right Eric Zemmour has killed in a dark horse posture, although the odds of winning from the polls are not large, but still greatly boosted the momentum of the far right; on the other hand, Pécres, as a moderate, won the Republican primary, but whether he can integrate what his competitors represent" The deep right" (between the center right and the far right) voters, and resisting the cannibalism of the far right, still needs to be observed.
In this case, Macron's entry into the election campaign is bound to consider the classic question - "Who is our enemy?" Who are our friends? "If the second round of the presidential election is taken as an indicator of the distinction between friend and foe, from the current polls, there is a high probability that macron will be in a pattern of confrontation with the far right (unless Pekrés effectively recruits deep-right voters in the last three months), and at the instigation of far-left and far-right politicians, the shrinking anti-vaccine group will gradually emerge as the "hardcore" part of the resistance to macron's government." It is conceivable that by the day of the election, this group (which may not be directly equal to the far-left-far right voters, but there is a considerable overlap) will be very unlikely to vote for Macron, but on the contrary, there will be a high probability of voting for his competitors, so from the perspective of electoral strategy, the marginal utility of winning this part of the electorate is extremely low, the cost is extremely large (even equivalent to overturning the entire administration of the previous five years), so they become a vote warehouse that is not worth the effort to fight for.
Not only that, but with the tsunami outbreak of the Opichron outbreak and public concerns about health services, especially the intensive care unit beds occupied by the unvaccinated, for Macron, the resistance to vaccination not only lacks positive value, but also becomes a ready-made target for channeling public resentment.
In this sense, Macron's attacks on anti-vaccine activists, far from forgetting Machiavelli's teachings, are in a way practicing them. The latter, while exhorting the monarch to avoid being hated, also said, "A wise monarch should, at the first opportunity, set up certain enemies in a cunning manner in order to subdue them and make himself greater." (On monarchs, chapter 20)
For this tactic, ruling lawmaker Roland Lescure defended that the president simply "spoke out loud to the hearts of many people" that "the freedom of 10 percent of the unvaccinated ends where the freedom of 90 percent of the people begins." But Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, a political prists, argues that "this is an aggressive strategy of taking the position of public opinion, scapegoating a few, with the aim of winning over the majority; it's a populist tactic." The New York Times Paris correspondent Norimitsu Onishi pointed out even more bluntly that the "deep-rooted political gambler" was trying to exploit a "political rich mine" in this way: to provoke anger against the minority who resist vaccination but disproportionately occupy hospital beds among the vaccinated majority.
For the current government, although it is criticized every day for the response to the epidemic, in the past two years, France's 91% adult vaccination rate, the full support of business operations in the economy, and the strong rebound of the economy are still a significant positive asset. And the more assets accumulate, the more people fear losing. As early as mid-December last year, Prime Minister Castell had already said: "It is unacceptable that millions of French people refuse to be vaccinated, which puts the lives of the entire country at risk and affects the daily lives of the vast majority of French people." Machiavelli, on the other hand, has long seen that "when the majority can stand, the minority has no room for activity." (On monarchs, chapter 18)
Therefore, if it can be concluded that Macron's "outspokenness" is indeed an electoral tactic, it undoubtedly has a distinct Machiavellian color: instead of waiting until the second round of the showdown of the general election to abandon the vaccine resistance group, it is better to "establish some enemies so that they can be subdued" when they are small enough to be worth fighting for.
Judging from the current poll results, although Macron has not yet officially run for the election, the public opinion index still significantly surpasses all competitors; and from the perspective of the current perceived epidemic law, the timing of the 2022 presidential election is relatively more favorable to Macron: if Aumerick Rong is really as predicted by some medical experts, it will be the last wave of large-scale epidemics, then Macron can logically announce that he will lead the country out of the epidemic; if there is still a new wave of epidemics after that, But the April vote is likely to be at a trough when The Omicron has faded and a new wave of the pandemic has yet to arrive, when morale remains good for the incumbent president.
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that if the epidemic takes an unimaginable turn and leads to the abandonment of the epidemic prevention work, then Macron may face real danger, that is, the protracted epidemic will lead to a "protest vote" - the people do not know what they really want, nor do they know how to get out of the epidemic in the least costly and most likely way, but they may vent their resentment on the person who seems to be most responsible. The latest poll is already showing signs: Ifop's January 22 survey showed that Macron's public opinion rating fell by 4 percentage points in January, from 41% to 37%, although strictly speaking this is not the same issue as the intention to vote in the general election, but analysts said it has constituted a "serious warning" to Macron. Therefore, taking precautions to guide people's grievances and prevent falling into traps is also the proper meaning of Machiavelli's "Lion and Fox" theory.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Shi Gong