On April 21 twenty French generals published an open letter addressed to President Emanuel Macron, threatening a coup. Macron’s vigorous response has been to say…nothing. A few more junior officials have responded, but feebly and insipidly, to the threat.
The letter, which was also signed by many senior military personnel below the rank of general, belies the myth that ‘democracy’ is the default mode of capitalism. It demonstrates there are sections of the ruling class who will not hesitate to jettison the paraphernalia of democracy when the working class threaten their control of the economy.
The letter makes it clear that there are many high-ranking soldiers who have no problem launching a military coup if they think the government of the day are not acting forcefully enough against the ‘suburban hordes’.
‘The hour is grave. France is in peril,’ the generals wrote. France is disintegrating and ‘Those who run our country must imperatively find the needed courage to eradicate these dangers.”
The generals go on the threaten that Macron’s failure to act decisively against ‘Islamism and the hordes from the banlieues’ will lead to ‘the intervention of our active-duty comrades in a perilous mission to protect our civilisation’s values and safeguard our compatriots on the national territory.’
By ‘hordes from the banlieues’ the generals mean the unemployed young people who live in dilapidated tower blocks in the suburbs around Paris, who are refusing to accept the almost daily harassment they experience at the hands of the police. They protested (successfully) against a proposed law making it illegal to publicise videos of police beating up young people.
The danger for the ruling class is that the numbers of unemployed and angry working class youth could be swollen by an anticipated surge in unemployment when the trillion-pound grants and loans to deal with the pandemic end.
The French state, who would not hesitate to arrest and put on trial ‘un-French’ agitators calling for an armed uprising, are suggesting that any active members of the military who signed the letter could face mild administrative consequences such as ‘delisting’ or ‘immediate retirement’. And, of course, as far as the already retired generals are concerned, no legal action is proposed.
For the working class this demonstrates the double standards of a state which claims to be acting in the defence of democracy when it attacks the left, and takes no action when democracy is threatened from the right.