In the misconduct of an undercover agent, the French people, still royalist yesterday, rediscover regicidal impulses.
But what is worrying in this affair is not so much what it would reveal about a dysfunction of power, but that it reignites the old mechanics of denigration. Elites and populists, progressives and conservatives—all those who count as opponents to Macron’s transformation—have coalesced into a conspiracy of defeatists.
This is the revenge of those who have lost at the ballot box and in the streets. Seizing the opportunity to prosecute the President, his team, and his governance, exhausting his majority, admittedly clumsy and inexperienced.
What is at stake in this summer 2018 storm is not just a political ordeal; it is primarily an intellectual battle with the forces of the ultra-left and the right, which is now also ultra.
For this sad episode not to open a chapter for populisms, political leaders would do well to bring the Benalla affair back to what it truly is, because by always demanding the best, the national temperament ends up harvesting the worst.
It is in this inversion of values that one recognizes the shifts in democracy.
Garibaldino
