An American in Paris? Non, It’s the French President
‘Entrepreneurship is the new France,’ says Emmanuel Macron. One philosopher is skeptical.
‘Seeking the American Macron!” the
Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol tweeted the other day, expressing his
disdain for Republicans and Democrats. To hear the French philosopher
Alain Finkielkraut
tell it, Mr. Kristol should look in Paris.
Like the
anti-Trump Mr. Kristol, Mr. Finkielkraut didn’t care for either choice
in his country’s recent presidential election. He has no truck with the
xenophobic nationalism of
Marine Le Pen’s
National Front. As for President
Emmanuel Macron,
he is far too American for Mr. Finkielkraut’s taste.
The new leader’s official presidential portrait photo was unveiled last week, and the French media noted
its striking resemblance to
Barack Obama’s
from 2012. Mr. Macron sent supporters to knock on voters’ doors, a
campaign practice that is familiar to Americans but was unheard of
here. When the president sings “La Marseillaise,” the French national
anthem, he closes his eyes and holds his hand over his heart. “This is
not our tradition,” Mr. Finkielkraut, 67, told me in a recent interview
at his book-lined apartment near Jardin du Luxembourg.
Mr.
Finkielkraut himself is a distinctly French type, a celebrity
intellectual à la Régis Debray,
Pascal Bruckner
or Bernard-Henri Lévy. His complaints about Mr. Macron—and
America—run deeper than political symbolism and ritual. He argues that
France faces a “civilizational” crisis, a degeneration of social bonds
whose symptoms include a decaying language, an inability to integrate
immigrants, a contempt for French history, and a rise in terrorism,
which he calls “the new ambient music of Europe.”
Much of this he
blames on multiculturalism, which he sees as a worldview made in
America. “France is an old civilization; it has the right to preserve
itself,” he says. “The multicultural society is a multi-conflicted
society.” In particular, large waves of Muslim immigrants have failed to
adopt the values of the secular republic, known as laïcité.
Candidate Macron celebrated France’s cultural disunity, proclaiming:
“There is no such thing as a single French culture.” To Mr.
Finkielkraut, multiculturalism is a form of American “imperialism”—one
that, by denying a country like France its right to maintain its
particular identity, belies its claim to celebrate diverse cultures.
“We
willingly accept the replacement of the French language by ‘Globish,’ ”
Mr. Finkielkraut laments. To illustrate, he cites the English-language
slogan of Paris’s 2024 Olympic bid: “Made for sharing.” Originally used
in a Cadbury chocolate commercial, the slogan was later adapted by
Burger King for its wedge-sliced Pizza Burger.
Then there is the new president’s economic program. “Emmanuel Macron’s philosophy is that of homo economicus,”
Mr. Finkielkraut explains, referring to the theory that man’s
motivations come down to rational self-interest. Mr. Macron, a former
investment banker, often sounds less like de Gaulle than Zuckerberg.
Last month he proclaimed in English: “I want France to be a nation that
thinks and moves like a startup.” He promised the French state would be a
“platform and not a constraint” and added: “Entrepreneurship is the new
France.”
The new France sounds a lot like the old America, but
Mr. Finkielkraut isn’t alone in thinking the country already resembles
the U.S. in its social problems. One of the most popular books in Paris
is
Christophe Guilluy’s
“The Peripheral France,” which cites growing inequality between
big cities like Paris and Lyon, which benefit from globalization, and
the left-behind rest of the country.
Never
known as a cheery people, the French are now the most pessimistic on
earth. One 2016 global poll found 88% of Frenchmen felt their country
was heading in the wrong direction—the highest rate of gloom among all
nations surveyed. To be sure, France’s sclerotic welfare and regulatory
state has stymied growth. But Mr. Finkielkraut argues that what his
country needs isn’t a Silicon Valley on the Seine, but a raison d’être—a
sense of confidence in its purpose and way of life.
Mr. Macron
ran on the slogan, “En Marche!”—“Forward!” or “On the Move!” That’s also
the name of his new party. It begs the question: En marche où? Where to?
Ms. Katz is a
Robert L. Bartley
Fellow at The Wall Street Journal.