@Octave Lebel

Jean Luc Mélenchon has never been a visionary, he is, more precisely, a “lackey” of the system. Read what Philippe Seguin said in 1992. Philippe Séguin’s speech on the Maastricht Treaty (May 5, 1992) is now celebrating its 30th anniversary. However, it is astonishing to note to what extent current events prove right a man who was obviously the last great visionary of French politics. His approach was often outdated, considered as the avatar of an embittered and outdated sovereignism. Commentators have thus for the most part missed this great prophetic speech : “For thirty-five years an entire oligarchy of experts, judges, civil servants, rulers has taken, in the name of the people, without having received a mandate decisions of which a formidable conspiracy of silence conceals the issues and minimizes the consequences […] Let us then fear that, in the end, national feelings, by dint of being stifled, will become exacerbated to the point of turning into nationalism and leading Europe, once again, on the verge of serious difficulties, because nothing is more dangerous than a nation deprived for too long of the sovereignty through which its freedom is expressed, that is to say its inalienable right to choose your destiny...But be careful : it is when national sentiment is flouted that the way opens to nationalist excesses and all forms of extremism !” What did he mean ? The Maastricht Treaty was entirely based on a logic of massive transfer of national political powers to the European Union : currency, security, immigration, social and economic, environmental policies, etc. It thus consisted of a progressive dispossession of national political authorities for the benefit of supranational bodies such as the Commission, the European Parliament, and especially the Court of Justice of the European Union, the supreme jurisdiction which has the prerogative of delimiting the sharing between the national and European field of competence, and which generally arbitrates in favor of the second. Philippe Séguin’s concern focused above all on the democratic danger of this process. Democracy is defined as the power of the people. However, if there is a European civilization rich in its diversity, it is impossible to speak today of a “European people” or a “European nation”. Therefore, the transfer to the European Union of powers which until now fell to national parliaments elected by universal suffrage can only lead to the emergence of a bureaucratic monster depriving the European peoples of their sovereignty. And this feeling of dispossession, favoring national frustrations, could therefore only lead to an outbreak of extremism, that is to say the exacerbation of passions as a result of impotence. However, this multifaceted extremism, announced by Philippe Séguin as one of the inevitable consequences of the weakening of national democracies, imposes itself today as the master of French politics. Extremism can be defined as exacerbated demagoguery, denial of reality and flight into illusions or the manipulation of emotions. It is therefore no coincidence that the government parties of recent decades, notably LR and the Socialist Party, are in the process of being wrecked. They, who have shared power for thirty years, have failed to meet the expectations of the French and have continued to disappoint. But what could they do – for example in the fight against unemployment or control of borders – in the absence of decision-making levers, progressively annihilated by the consequences of the Maastricht Treaty ? Today extremism triumphs, in all its forms.
It is on the left, marked by the rallying of all the so-called “progress” forces within France Insoumise. The so-called government left, which advocated a compromise between “change” and reality (economic, financial), embodied by personalities like Michel Rocard, is in pieces. The “clean slate” policy to which left-wing parties are currently converting is based on a radical discourse : frenzied multiculturalism, excessive wokism and environmentalism. But this fall of the left into extremism has its counterpart on the other shore with the triumph of Lepenism, which has become by far the first “right” force. However, what is lepenism if not an accelerated sinking in lying and demagogic slogans like the return of retirement at 60 or the emblematic “ban on the veil in public spaces” obviously inconceivable in practical.