Foreign Desk: The French and Their Fears

Since the War on Terror was declared, some European countries have developed a reputation as critics of Bush’s foreign policy. Top of the list is France, the country whose prime minister was applauded by United Nations Security Council delegates in February 2003 as he denounced the planned war in Iraq. Yet while French leaders may think themselves exempt from the War on Terror, French politics is increasingly oriented around the principle of security, and politicians are using the language of fear to articulate their programs and visions.

This trend has been described by Christophe Lambert, in a recent book, The Fearful Society. Lambert launches a broadside attack against the many ways in which French society understands itself through the prism of fear. As director of a leading French advertising agency, Publicis, Lambert has experienced at first hand the impact fear has had on business practices, and on the advertising world in particular. In his book, he extends his analysis to other fields, claiming that France suffers from “fear of the future, fear of losing, fear of others, fear of taking a risk, fear of solitude, fear of growing old”.

Lambert’s attack on fear is part of a broader critique of the current “malaise” that the country suffers undertaken by various commentators. According to these writers and analysts, fear has become an obstacle to carrying out the reforms needed in order for France to meet the demands of a “globalised” 21st century. Unfortunately, what these analyses aim for is not a real understanding of why fear and security have become the central pillars of political and social life in France. Rather, they see such trends as obstacles to the realization their own political agenda, namely the trimming back of the French étatiste tradition, the deregulation of the country’s labour market, and other reform measures called for by the exigencies of globalization. Unsurprisingly, in their pursuit of this goal, these critics often end up pinning the blame for France’s “fear culture” on lacklustre politicians, much in the way that those unhappy with the War on Terror in the United States tend to blame George W. Bush. Jacques Chirac’s ineffectual presidency, for instance, comes under fire from Lambert.

The left in France has taken these arguments at face value. It believes that taking on the fear agenda inevitably means also taking on shibboleths such as the welfare state model, or making concessions to the much despised “neoliberalism”. The bankruptcy of the left when faced with a politics of fear and security was most apparent in 2002, at the time of the presidential election. When faced with a Gaullist and more extremist right that had firmly embraced the politics of security, the socialist party vacillated, unsure whether to join the security bandwagon itself. Caught between the radical anti-capitalist slogans of Trotskyite extreme left parties, and the right’s dominance of the security agenda, the socialists had no real political alternative of their own. Their voters were lost to the margins, and the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, was ousted in the first round of the elections. This has left a deep mark on the party’s activists, convincing some that the party should move more to the left, convincing others that it should compete with the right on the terrain of fear and security – a conclusion that American Democrats have also come to in their battle with the GOP.

There is an urgent need in France today to rescue the principles of liberty and freedom from the right. This can be done by defending these principles in and of themselves, rather than as mere instruments through which France is able to adapt and accommodate itself to the demands of globalisation. There is also a need to challenge the left’s own fear that any defence of these principles inevitably cedes the terrain to the “neoliberals” and far right “fascists”. Liberty is not a right-wing concept. That the left in France thinks so is merely a sign that they themselves gave up on defending liberty a long-time ago.