Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and ...

Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III
fears: for the privileged, “do not worry, we are proponents of a liberated capitalism, your
interests are safe” and for the middle and working class, “if you work more, you will be
rewarded by improved incomes”. Accordingly, and in such a framework, the non-productive
citizens are to be sanctionned since they slow down therefore harm the national welfare policy;
how convenient does this sound to shake the French welfare system, accused thus of providing
assistanship to non-deserving citizens. In few words: carrot and stick policies, Bonapartist
fashion.
Social fear second; a playfield where Neo Bonapartism expresses all of its populist tips and
tricks. The first scapegoat is in fact an easy target since it does not cost any vote and what is
more rallies the extreme right electorate: the fear of the other, of the foreigner. And when such
a discourse is not hard-hitting enough, the French population is divided into two hierarchical
categories: the de souche one, and the immigration-related second class one. Here, the schema
is rather simplistic: insecurity, deliquency, social disturbances… quasi all the social troubles are
of the making of your foreign-origin neighbor, who by the way should leave “France if he/she
does not like it”. Not that France is particularly a “narrow-minded” society where racists, or to
be less radical, ethnic-oriented discourses are traditionnaly warmly welcomed, but the
relatively peaceful cohabitation of races, ethnicities, and religions was gravely affected by the
post-September 11 legacy. In parallel, the failure of the French model of assimilation brought
the immigration issue in the headlines, in general in association with social unrest and
deliquency. If the latter is associated with the extreme Right “they take our jobs” slogan, the
loop is looped, and ends up in an unprecedented Bonapartist-like national identity debate
supposed to redefine the identity-bases of the new France, the one where foreigners do not
A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/
104