OPINION: Emmanuel Macron takes on the American Press
By: Adam Rickards
Tags: The New York Times, France, Terrorism, Multiculturalism, Macron

In attacking the way American newspapers have portrayed recent terrorist attacks in France, Macron is forging his own political identity.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Wikimedia)

On Thursday, November 12th, French President Emmanuel Macron called the New York Times to complain about how the newspaper covered recent terrorist attacks in France. American newspapers, Mr. Macron complained, were “legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic” by publishing articles that questioned France’s assimilation policies. The New York Times columnist who spoke with Mr. Macron was taken aback that a foreign president would be so aggressive in attacking a newspaper’s coverage. He asked Mr. Macron if he didn’t find it “a little bit Trumpian.”

In fact, Mr. Macron’s public indignation is eminently French. French leaders have a long history of using America and American mentalities as a foil for defining their own national identity. And Macron, who is well known in France for being difficult to pin down, has doubled down on the American press in order to assert his own ill-defined political vision.

“Our model is universalist, not multiculturalist,” he told the Times, referring to France’s longstanding tradition of Republican Universalism. According to this tradition, which has its origins in the eighteenth century, equality is prized above any differentiating characteristics such as race or ethnicity. It forms the basis of France’s assimilation policies, which some see as playing a role in making France a target for terrorists. “In our society, I don’t care whether someone is Black, yellow or white, whether they are Catholic or Muslim, a person is first and foremost a citizen,” Mr. Macron told the Times.

But Republican Universalism is a perilously difficult ideology to grasp. From the outside, it seems riddled with inconsistencies. According to Mr. Macron’s statement, how is the US any different? Aren’t Americans first and foremost citizens too? In the religious sphere, it can be even more muddled. How can a country that bans Muslim headscarves in state institutions mourn the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral as a great loss for the French state? And how can a country that collects no official statistics on race confront the challenges that come with an increasingly diverse population?

Trying to clarify an amorphous political vision by opposing it to the American “other” is something French leaders have done for a long time. Charles de Gaulle united his country in large part by appearing to resist the American hegemony that stemmed from the Marshall Plan and NATO. Jacques Chirac became a household figure the world over by refusing to join George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in the Iraq War. In defining his vision of Europe, he famously said he did not want to build “a United States of Europe,” but rather “a United Europe of States and of People.”

Mr. Macron, it seems, finds it easier to define his country’s principles by what they are not than by what they are. In a recent interview with Le Figaro, he lamented that his vision of France was “very hard to understand abroad.” But he went on to try to clarify it by explaining that his goal is not to “enclose universalism within a defense of secular religion,” or to “put the reasonable person and the religious person into opposition.” Rather it is to “define a common temporal project where we ask people to leave their spiritual representations of the world at the door.” As if sensing that this heady language would be difficult to understand, he attempted to clarify: “our Republic is one and many.” (Confused?)

However, Mr. Macron currently faces a pressing need to communicate a coherent vision of France. He had very little political experience when he won election three years ago and is at the head of a political party that is only three years old. Identifying his particular brand of liberalism, or “macronisme,” has become a national pastime in the French media. His speeches have provided little help; he is known for using the French equivalent of the formulation “on the one hand…on the other.” And his motley cabinet, which has included both conservatives and socialists, hasn’t provided much coherence either. His retorts at the Anglo-American press have offered him the rare chance to clarify his political view.

Opposition to American multiculturalism, it turns out, is a particularly potent force, capable of pulling together a broad spectrum of voices. It is also sufficiently open-ended to allow plenty of otherwise contradictory viewpoints to come together for one political fight. And France, which perennially sees itself as a fractured society, is desperate for such unifying opportunities. Currently, Macron is facing a particularly steep second coronavirus wave, a slumping economy, the lingering social divisions highlighted by the Yellow Vest movement, and an election in two years. He needs something that all of France can rally behind.