A Divine Surprise

France and the Tradition of Republican Defense

Blum, Daladier, Thorez and Salengro, 1936

“When the republic is threatened, the word 'republican' changes its meaning. It takes on its old historic and heroic significance.” —Léon Blum, 1934

The choice of title for today’s newsletter is both slightly blasphemous and a little perverse: “divine surprise” was how Charles Maurras, anti-Dreyfusard arch-reactionary, greeted the fall of France, the destruction of the Third Republic, and the rise of Pétain. Yesterday’s surprise was quite of a different order: the united left surged to become the largest parliamentary group and the Rassemblement National fell to Third, behind Emmanuel Macron’s bloc. Candidates dropped out when needed and French voters backed the RN’s opponents, even when they were ideologically unpalatable: A grand, old democratic nation in action. It’s worth reflecting that the far right has never come to power in France except on the back of Hitler’s Wehrmacht. But although victory by the Rassemblement National seemed foreordained a few days ago, with some polls and commentators even raising the specter of an outright RN majority, these results perhaps shouldn’t be that surprising. This is what always seems to happen: with the right at the gates, the French electorate unites to “defend the republic” and deals the forces of reaction a stinging rebuke.

This strategy, or reflex, or tradition—or myth, even—of “republican defense” was perhaps on most striking display in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round in the presidential elections only to be crushed by Jacques Chirac, who received 82 percent of the vote. Left and center-left united to defeat the far right. In recent years, the “front republicain” seemed to have weakened, with National Front and its successor RN, steadily chipping away. The strategy of apparent moderation, normalization or “de-demonization” of the RN seemed to be working. The memory of the Occupation and Resistance was fading. Its anti-immigration themes were being taken up by other parties in attempts to co-opt their support, which only seemed to strengthen the RN’s hand. It seemed only a matter of time before the barrage broke. Some were declaring the republican front a dead letter as early as a decade ago. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron managed 66 per cent against Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine. In 2022, Le Pen got over 40 per cen of the vote. Those that declared end of the Front républicain appeared vindicated: Macron would not wholeheartedly commit to endorsing the Left in the case of a loss, nor would Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of left populist La France Insoumise, fully back Macron, saying only that “not one vote” should go to Marine Le Pen. Some 45 percent of Melenchon voters in the first round said they abstained from the second.

This time around, there were signs of cracks in “republican discipline” again. Éric Ciotti, leader of the center-right Le Republicains announced he would form an alliance with the RN, leading to a violent schism within a party which claims the legacy of Charles de Gaulle. And rather than immediately call for his voters to back any candidate on the left in the second round, Macron balked, calling on the electorate to reject “extremes.” Fortunately, there are other voices in French politics than the self-proclaimed “Jupiterian” president: Macron’s prime minister Gabriel Attal spoke of “France’s destiny” and “moral duty” and called upon candidates from the president’s bloc to drop out in three way races. Some even want to credit him now with “saving the Republic.” But it’s the French people that deserve that honor, finding a way to rebuke an arrogant incumbent without welcoming in the heirs of Vichy. In so doing, they returned to a democratic tradition more than a century old.

This tradition of republican defense has roots in the early days of the Third Republic, in the crisis of 16 May 1877, when the dissolution of the chamber pitted a Leon Gambetta’s republicans against the monarchists of President Mac Mahon and Albert de Broglie, and when Georges Clemenceau formed the “Concentration républicain” of Radicals and Opportunists to repel the authoritarian-populist onslaughts of General Boulanger. During the Dreyfus Affair, Waldeck-Rousseau’s 1898 cabinet combined Radicals, moderates, and for the first, time, a Socialist. It labeled itself a "government of republican defense” against the Army, the Church, and a putative anti-Dreyfusard coup attempt. The anti-fascist Popular Front of the 1930s extended “republican discipline” to the French Communist Party, who in response to the crisis 6 February 1934, joined with the Radicals and Socialists to defeat the Right. In 1956, during the Fourth Republic, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber of L’Express coined the term “Front républicain” for the union of center-left and center-right parties that combined to defeat Pierre Poujade’s national populist movement. (Jean-Marie Le Pen, future founder of the Front National was elected that year to the National Assembly as a Poujadist.) With the emergence of the FN in the 1980s, the republican front became a regular tactic to throwback Le Pen’s forces.

Governing France now will no doubt be extremely difficult, but I can’t help noting with some satisfaction a modern example of this little newsletter’s main political program, the tradition it doggedly hangs on to in the face of historical obsolescence: namely, the belief in broad democratic alliance against fascism and all its cousins. Perhaps the front is not so unpopular after all.

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In case you missed it, check out my essay in the latest Harper’s.