The French political circles are abuzz after the right-wing Valeurs Actuelles news magazine published a letter from the country's active servicemen agreeing with their retired colleagues that France is headed toward a civil war unless President Emmanuel Macron steps up the fight against Islamism
BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th May, 2021) The French political circles are abuzz after the right-wing Valeurs Actuelles news magazine published a letter from the country's active servicemen agreeing with their retired colleagues that France is headed toward a civil war unless President Emmanuel Macron steps up the fight against Islamism.
The letter immediately drew criticism from the authorities, with Interior Minster Gerald Darmanin accusing its signatories of lacking courage and Defence Minister Florence Parly denouncing it as irresponsible.
Understandably, the country's Right and Left differed in their reaction. Leaders of the far-left parties Generation.s and Unbowed France, Benoit Hamon and Jean-Luc Melenchon, already drew parallels with the failed coup d'etat of 1961 when a group of generals tried to prevent President Charles de Gaulle from abandoning French Algeria.
On the other hand, the leader of the right-wing National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, expressed solidarity with the letter's position, a fact that has not gone unnoticed.
Meanwhile, at least 18 soldiers are already reported to be facing legal consequences for signing the letter.
With the 2022 presidential election approaching it is not unnatural for the Macron government to be concerned with loyalty among the troops, many of whom, if the letter is any indication, feel frustration with the current situation. What is even more dangerous, however, is that the letter may reflect general public's dissatisfaction with the government's failures to curb extremist violence.
"It is a bit normal that between 44 and 60% of the police and the military vote for the right-wing candidate, but that 49% of the French say they accept the idea of an intervention of the army to restore order and security says a lot about the decrepit state of the French state. General De Gaulle called it 'la chienlit,' or complete chaos," Pierre Henrot, a former high-ranking Belgian military official and security consultant, told Sputnik, adding that polls show that the threat of a civil war is taken very seriously by the people, even those on the left.
Francois Asselineau, the president of the Popular Republican Union (UPR), doubts that the military is planning to overthrow the government, but has little reservation about saying that Macron is likely to be doomed.
"It is true that the French increasingly feel that they are led by a president who has lost the rudder. Macron is finished. I wouldn't be surprised if he stepped aside before the 2022 election to make way for a credible figure," Asselineau told Sputnik.
Pierre-Antoine Plaquevent, the head of the think tank Strategika, also agrees that the letter signals danger for the government as the crisis in the military and the country is much deeper.
"France is in a serious structural crisis, between Macron's desire for deeper integration into world governance, as desired in particular by George Soros and on the other hand the remains of the French state which are tensing up in the face of this stasis, the danger of civil war being more and more evident," Plaquevent explained, adding that the military could support a political change during next elections.
Whether the country will seek its salvation in the military class is impossible to say, but France does have a rich history of military leaders reaching heights of political power.
"The French have always had a weakness for the uniform. We inevitably think of General De Gaulle, but the man he put down at the Liberation of France was Marshal Petain, victor of Verdun and national figurehead; another soldier. In fact, it goes back higher: look at the brief infatuation of the French with General Boulanger, King Louis-Philippe who always appeared in full uniform, and of course the era of Napoleon Bonaparte," Henrot recalls.
