Gong Ke (Doctor of Laws, Media Person in France)
What is it like to slap the president in the face? The French gave the answer. On June 8, Macron was slapped by a young man while interacting with people during a visit to the small southeastern city of Tain-l'Hermitage. The incident sparked a public uproar and was quickly portrayed as a "far-right attack on the President of the Republic", with the government and opposition circles from left to right unanimously condemning the violence, and the court also showed rare efficiency in sentencing the perpetrators to 18 months in prison (including 4 months of actual sentence) in an emergency procedure two days after the incident. Justice seems to be done in the most serious and swift way.
However, what is the significance of this "not very hurtful and extremely insulting" case? Where does the resentment of "small-town youth" come from? Why did the far right camp quickly draw a line with him after the incident? How should this highly eye-catching event be viewed in the context of the wave of violence spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic?
On June 8, 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron was suddenly slapped by a man during a visit to southeastern France.
In fact, for the current wave of violence in France, this slap is only the tip of the iceberg, which lacks sufficient representation and obscures the real problem to a greater extent. In almost the slightest and most symbolic way, it presents the following political violence, and because of the curiosity of the spectators, it receives attention that is not commensurate with its substance, but is more noteworthy than social violence and mixed political-social violence that has not been paid attention to or is ignored.
From the beginning of 2020 to today, the COVID-19 pandemic (and the measures it triggers) has unleashed unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and anger around the world, combined with the national conditions of each country, to create a wave of violence in different forms: whether it is (means) punching and kicking, slashing, shooting, driving, or (targeting) family members, public officials, or even innocent people, this wave of violence needs to be viewed under a more comprehensive framework. And realize that the epidemic is an indirect but far-reaching driving force, which has stimulated the innate dark side of people's hearts and highlighted the shortcomings of each country's own governance.
Raging Fury: "Medieval geek fans" became outcasts
After the slap on Macron, the French media quickly found the social media account of the perpetrator, Damien Tarel, and tried to analyze his political leanings and positions from it. The initial information suggests that damian's experience has some far-right overtones, and if that were the case, everything could be easily explained in the most familiar pattern. But as information from all sides is gradually revealed, the whole picture is much more complicated than the "far right fans" that people usually understand.
According to live video, Tarel shouted a slogan when he started to move - "Monjois!" Saint-Denis! “（Montjoie ! Saint Denis ! It is a battle cry of the 12th century AD, and the popular saying is that "Montjuis" refers to the oriflamme that appeared in French history in 1124, also known as the Flag of Saint-Denis, because it is preserved in the Abbey of Saint-Denis on the outskirts of Paris. The Golden Flame Flag was a symbol of the medieval Kingdom of France, but was usually only used in major military operations. But where the use of "Monjuis" as a sign of the Golden Flame Banner itself comes from is a matter of divergent views, with one theory being the site of the important victories of Clovis I, known for his bravery in the sixth century, and that Clovis was a key figure in the Christianization of the Frankish kingdom.
Wherever it comes from, "Monjois! Saint-Denis! This slogan undoubtedly has a distinct royalist slogan. The 1993 French comedy Les Visiteurs, which depicts the fantasy story of a medieval warrior crossing into the modern world, was once featured in the play. Tarel, who is passionate about traditional European martial arts, knows the slogan, and it should be reasonable — he started an association to teach traditional European martial arts in his medieval hometown of Saint-Vallier, and took photos in a "military uniform", which Le Figaro called "geek fans of the Middle Ages" as soon as the incident occurred.
However, this slogan is not logically obvious as a symbol of the modern far right – otherwise the French media would not have had to explain the meaning of the slogan to readers. Indeed, the slogan has appeared in sporadic incidents in recent years, such as Éric Coquerel, a lawmaker for the far-left party LFI, who claimed that he had been attacked in 2018 by members of the royalist group Action française, a slogan that the perpetrator had also shouted at the time (but this claim was only found in his tweets and could not be verified). And Cochrel's statement seems to provide circumstantial evidence for understanding Tarel's move, and the latter's attention on social media does include many far-right figures and institutions, such as the right-wing student organization la Cocarde étudiante, the former National Front leader Julien Rochedy, the far-right cartoonist Mr Kitsuné, the far-right video blogger Papacito, etc., including the "French Action" organization in the Lyon region.
But even to label Tarel and his companions as "far right," it is necessary to see that beneath this label is a mixture of different elements: among them are the far right in the modern sense (e.g., the individuals and organizations of the extreme right he focused on, and the police searched for Hitler's "Mein Kampf") in the home of his companion Arthur); there was the idea of "anarchism" proclaimed by his companion in an interview before the incident, there is the royalist "national elite" that is now very rare; there is the "yellow vest" that cannot be summed up simply left and right. He is a supporter of the movement (he claims to have had the idea of doing it because he saw the members of the "yellow vest" at the scene being chased by the police); there are frustrated otaku qualities (unemployed, living on social grants, and love Japanese manga and video games); and even a less ordinary, pitifully weak side (some media said that he had academic difficulties due to dyslexia, passed the high school graduation exam twice, and did not get a higher education diploma).
In a sense, Tarel may be seen as a "small-town youth" or "red neck" image in the hinterland of France, which is in stark contrast to the political elite represented by Macron (this spontaneous hostility can also be largely corroborated with the hostility of the American "red neck" to Hillary Clinton). Intriguingly, before the slap, Tarel and his companions were interviewed by the television media (he himself did not speak directly), saying that "we have something to say to him" and outraging Macron that "France is uncultured", seeing the president as a symbol of "France's decline". In the end, in the cry of "Down with the Macron system (A bas la macronie)", this geek fan, who was "shy" in the eyes of his peers and refused to speak in front of the camera, vented his anger with a slap in the face.
This hidden trace of history is also reminiscent of the attack on former French Prime Minister Valls, which is somewhat similar: In January 2017, When Valls shook hands with people outside the town hall of the small Brittany town of Lamballe, he was slapped by a young local man who shouted, "This is Brittany." Afterwards, the media found that the unemployed young man had strong local nationalist overtones, was keen to support various campaigns to defend the "sovereignty of the Breton people" on social media, and shared a similar voice with the local far right.
Whether it's Brittanian nationalism, or "Montjuis! Saint-Denis! The style of royalism, which has long faded from the vision of modern politics and become the relics of historical antiques, still inadvertently and tenaciously shows its existence and becomes a footnote to "tradition".
Ironically, however, after the slap, the far-right camp that Tarel recognized was quickly drawn away from him at the first moment. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the "National League" (RN), immediately claimed that "attacks on political leaders, let alone the President of the Republic", in response to the media's perception that Tarel is far-right, the "National Union" emphasized that he was not a member of the party, and Le Pen later ridiculed the 28-year-old's mind as an "ideological paste", implying that he did not represent the image of a far-right supporter at all.
Although the outside world often thinks that a resentful "small town youth" like Tarrell, who has no way out of life, is the ideal voter that the far right wants to harvest, the tactical cuts made by Le Pen are not difficult to understand: on the one hand, the outrageous act of slapping the president, although it can indeed make Macron ugly, it is really impossible to defend in public, if forced to defend it, it is tantamount to risking the world, resulting in the National Front becoming the target of public criticism (perhaps one day it will be similarly attacked); on the other hand, Le Pen's ambition to compete for the Elysée Palace is well known, so in her speech, she took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen herself as "Macron's number one opponent" and resolutely defend the dignity of the position of "President of the Republic", which was beneficial to her and harmless.
As a result, Tarel, a simple-minded and impulsive "small-town youth", became an outcast of this camp.
Wrath of the Other: Resentment against the public power system
After the slap, Macron tried to downplay the impact of the incident, saying it was just an "isolated incident." However, in recent years, especially since the outbreak of the epidemic, French politicians and members of the gendarmerie, who are symbols of the system, have been attacked one after another. Although slapping the president is indeed an isolated incident with a very small probability, the risk probability faced by the grassroots representatives of this system is much greater than before.
According to media statistics, in 2020, 1,276 attacks, insults and threats against public opinion representatives (elected members of parliaments at all levels and mayors of municipalities) were reported in France, three times that of 2019. More than 500 mayors or their deputies, more than 60 members of Parliament were reportedly physically attacked throughout the year, and the homes of 68 public opinion representatives and 63 private cars were targeted.
An important factor in this wave of violence is that the 2020 municipal elections led to an increase in related conflicts, but the municipal elections alone are far from enough to explain this spurt of growth, after all, there has been no similar situation in previous municipal elections. In fact, even if the municipal elections alone are entangled with the epidemic, the conflict has become fierce: on the one hand, there has been a fierce debate between the French government and the public on whether and how to organize the municipal elections, which has strengthened the confrontation between different camps; on the other hand, when the epidemic prevention measures promulgated at the national level are implemented at the local level (especially in the early stages), they are once again strongly resisted, which further aggravates the contradictions between the government and the people.
As an illustration, the plight of Henri Delatour, the mayor of the town of Lasalle in central France, can be used as a microcosm. It was originally a quiet, mountainous town in Severn, but when De la Tour saw anti-mask people in the local market and came forward to warn him, several young people who refused to wear masks scolded him and punched him in the mouth. De La Tour, 71, said sadly, "Honestly, it's scary. Since I was a child (until this happened), I had never heard of a town mayor being beaten. ”
In addition to the tensions induced by the epidemic, there are more macroscopic reasons for this violence against mayors. One of them is the French's negative attitude towards politics. Although representatives are one of the cornerstones of the French political system, the resulting representatives of public opinion at all levels are suffering from a growing crisis of trust. According to a Cevipof survey in February, when French people talk about politics, the top three sentiments are "distrust" (39%), "disgust" (23%) and "boredom" (12%). Daniel Boy, a professor at Sciences Po, said that politics is one of the most hated professions in france, and this hatred inevitably leads them to resort to action, especially in difficult times: unemployment, the epidemic crisis, increased depression, low morale, the inevitable tension, people are more inclined to find a culprit for this, and the mayor is the most frequent target.
In the face of complaints from municipal officials, one of the prescriptions offered by the French government was to send them to the gendarmerie department to train them in the way of conflict resolution. Ironically, however, since the outbreak of the pandemic, powerful sectors such as the gendarmerie and the police have also been the spearhead of this social resentment. Since the beginning of 2021, this violence against the gendarmerie has surpassed that of municipal officials and has become a new social emotional tipping point.
With the 2015 terrorist attack as the landmark event, the internal and external pressure of the French military, police and constitutional departments has increased sharply. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the French police force was already demoralized and committed suicides frequently. In October 2019, more than 20,000 police officers took to the streets of Paris to protest the deterioration of working conditions and excessive stress. This is the first large-scale street demonstration by the French police in nearly two decades since 2001. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the security pressure against extremism has not been significantly alleviated (for example, in October 2020, the murder of Patti, a secondary school teacher who shocked the whole law), coupled with the depression and mental collapse caused by the epidemic and repeated lockdowns, and the police have complained about burn-out( burn-out), and the "faciès" identity inspection method commonly used against minorities in daily duty has been criticized by the left camp and even President Macron. As a result, the dissatisfaction of the Force has further intensified.
A female police officer was assassinated in a terrorist attack at the Police Station in Rambouillet, a southwestern suburb of Paris, on April 23, and on May 5, a police officer in the southern French city of Avignon was shot dead by a drug dealer while on an anti-drug mission. Two consecutive police deaths in half a month, coupled with small-scale attacks on police in various places since the beginning of this year, have led to a strong backlash from the gendarmerie department. On 19 May, tens of thousands of police and gendarmes demonstrated in front of the National Assembly to demand stronger political, financial, and judicial support for policing, the second large-scale constitutional warning in a year and a half.
On April 23, 2021, a French policewoman was assassinated at a police station outside Paris on the same day, and the suspect who killed the female police officer was killed. An anti-terrorism investigation is now under way.
It is worth noting that this gendarmerie protest not only received strong support from the right and the far right, but also the left parties did not dare to take the lead, and the leading figures of the Socialist Party and the Green Party were present to express their support, and only Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the "indomitable France" party, attacked the constitution and warned that the pressure on the National Assembly was "rebellious". The demonstration also exposed the divisions within the government as never before, with the Minister of the Interior in charge of policing present in solidarity with the police, while the Minister of Justice became the target of the gendarmerie protests.
However, the demonstrations by the gendarmerie forces may put pressure on the government, but they will not deter violence. On 28 May, another attack on police in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, in western France, led to a knife-wielding assault on a police station, killing several gendarmes after a confrontation and injuring several gendarmes.
Both gendarmes and health scientists have invariably blamed the outbreak for the surge in violence. The head of the National Gendarmerie Special Service (GIGN), Rendy, believes that the new crown epidemic is an "aggravating factor", while Sophie Baron-Laforêt, a psychiatrist and former president of the French Criminological Association, believes that the lockdown caused by the epidemic and its socio-economic consequences have led to many psychologically vulnerable people becoming radical and extreme.
However, whatever the cause of the violence, the deterioration of the security situation is reflected in political intentions, but it is the far-right forces that reap the benefits. According to a May 11 Ipsos poll, less than a year before the presidential election, Marlene Le Pen's approval rating in the gendarmerie force (44 percent) far outpaced that of center-right candidate Xavier Bertrand (24 percent) and centrist Macron (20 percent); and if Marlene Le Pen made it to the second round, it would sweep 60 percent of the gendarmerie vote. Of course, the gendarmerie, which emphasizes "law and order," has traditionally been the far-right's votehouse, and the polls at this time are more protesting than the final vote, but even so, the tense situation induced by the epidemic in the past year and a half so far is consolidating the traditional votes of the far right and inducing swing voters to move closer, which is far more structural and far-reaching good news than "far-rightists slapping the president of the republic".
Intimate Rage: Tragic Domestic Violence
Among the attacks on the gendarmerie, there is a category of incidents that have a dual nature, that is, what was originally a dispute or a criminal incident, escalated and eventually led to serious situations. Among the triggers, domestic violence (not limited to the family in the legal sense, but also includes ex-spouses and ex-partners) occupies the most prominent position.
On December 23, 2020, a domestic violence incident occurred in the small village of saint Just in central France, and when the gendarmes came to the rescue of the victims, they were attacked by the perpetrators with guns, killing and injuring three people on the spot. On May 30, a gendarme shooting of a gendarme in the southern French town of Le Lardin-Saint-Lazare, a former habitual offender of domestic violence, was sentenced to four convictions. On June 1, a family dispute in Gap also led to a gun-to-gun confrontation between the perpetrators and the gendarmes, which resulted in a surprise attack by the gendarmes, seriously injuring the perpetrators and killing them.
This dual-attribute violence reflects the broader problem of domestic violence in the epidemic crisis in an extreme way. Due to the lockdowns, home isolation, unemployment, reduced incomes, and limited mobility caused by the epidemic, family life, which was originally in the most intimate relationship category, is facing a deeper shadow of violence.
According to a survey conducted in April, nearly one in ten French women experienced domestic violence during lockdowns, and one-third of them began during lockdowns. In the first lockdown in France (March 17-11, 2020), the number of calls to the domestic violence helpline 3919 increased by 70% compared with before the lockdown. Françoise Brié, director of the French National Federation of Women's Solidarity (FNSF), lamented: "Home is the outlet of all emotions, and for women, the closest people are also the most violent." ”
In more serious cases, according to the Ministry of the Interior, 90 women died of domestic violence in France in 2020, which is a significant decrease from 146 in 2019; but after entering 2021, there is a clear rebound in both the number of cases and the degree of malignancy: from the beginning of the year to June 8, 51 women have died at the hands of former intimate lovers. One of the most appalling was the may 4 case of a 31-year-old woman who fell victim to domestic violence in the southwestern city of Mérignac: she was shot in broad daylight by her previously separated husband in the street, wounded and burned alive with petrol. On the 23rd of the same month, a domestic violence case occurred in the eastern city of Hayange, in which a 23-year-old Balkan man slashed his girlfriend in the street with a knife, causing the latter to be seriously injured.
It is worth noting that in the public opinion response stimulated by each domestic violence incident, the mainstream voice is not a "gender war", but transformed into the government's legal obligation to protect citizens and the resulting dereliction of duty. For example, in the wake of the Mérignac murder case, the government sent commissioners to investigate and submitted a report to the Prime Minister, which pointed to the failure of functional oversight, lack of coordination, and promised to increase efforts to equip victims of domestic violence with "major danger direct dial telephones" (TGDs) and "anti-approach electronic shackles" (BAR) for perpetrators of domestic violence outside of prison. Women's rights groups accuse the government's criminal justice policies of focusing too much on middle-class sensitive issues such as theft and drug trafficking, and insufficient attention to gender-based and domestic violence, resulting in devices that should have been widely used for a long time and still only cover a very small number of people.
Curbing violence requires confronting humanity and institutions
Neither violence against politicians, nor attacks by extremists on gendarmes, nor violence between family members is new in France. However, this wave of violence is characterized by the fact that due to the secondary disaster effect of the new crown epidemic, different categories that were originally separated from each other have appeared in the past one or two years, and have formed a transmission chain in which the epidemic has led to lockdowns and unemployment, which in turn has led to an increase in domestic violence/extreme behavior, greater risks for the gendarmerie, increased social security anxiety, and an increase in far-right discourse. As a result, extremist political parties such as the "National Alliance", which have the least experience in governing and are the least good at coordinating resources on a large scale for social governance, have instead reaped the benefits, become a major beneficiary of the epidemic (if not the biggest beneficiary), and have more confidence to impact next year's presidential election.
Violence itself is a mirror image, which exposes the pathological side of normal society, and the wave of violence under the epidemic magnifies the previously ignored and obscured side. To stem this wave of violence, we must first confront human nature and the system itself, rather than dismissing the real subjects who should be held accountable, due to the "madness" of the perpetrators or by blaming other external factors.
Slapping the president will certainly cause a national uproar, but for the essence of daily life, the emotional collapse because of the epidemic (and related socio-economic consequences), the slap on the spouse, or the indiscriminate attack on the innocent, is not under the slap of the president, but it will remind us more about how fragile people are, how irrational their behavior may be, and how much recognition and control are needed on the dark side of human nature.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Yan Zhang