Sami Naïr: "If the far right wins in France there will be a civil war"

Barcelona"I must think very carefully about my words, but I believe that if the far right wins we will have a civil war in France." These words from the French political scientist Sami Naïr have left frozen the audience that was attending the latest dialogue of the Enfoquem conference, organized by ARA at the Sant Pau Modernista Site. The moderator, Esther Vera, asked him at that moment with her gaze to reason his prediction, and Naïr was completely transparent: "In France, the political tradition is violent, it is not consensus-based like in Italy. Perhaps it is a product of the Cartesian mentality, they think that problems are solved logically with violence."

The outlook presented by Naïr has been essentially pessimistic regarding the future of France and also that of the EU. "I do not know if we are in time to avoid a victory for the far-right," he admitted. And he gave as an example of the normalization of Lepenism in France that no one is shocked by the fact that its candidate, Jordan Bardella, is openly antisemitic. Naïr wanted to make it clear that the rage accumulated in France over the last decades could lead to a violent outburst if Marine Le Pen reaches the Élysée. "But where does this rage come from?" asked Vera. And here the French thinker of Algerian origin pointed to the weakening of the social state and intermediary institutions, such as unions and parties, as the origin of the current social destructuring. "There is more poverty and the middle class has been destroyed; people can no longer afford an apartment in Paris or Lyon and have to move out of the cities," he explained. The philosopher located the beginning of the disaster in the management of the 2008 crisis and austerity policies. "It was a financial crisis, which turned into a social crisis and is now a regime crisis," he stated, referring to the protests that are shaking the country. "We have a part of the population outside the political system, and the far-right is taking advantage of this," he warned.

And what would be the recipe to avoid the derailment? For Sami Naïr, the key would be to recover the role of the state as a strategic actor in the country's economy. However, for that, he admitted, it would be necessary to have a pact with Germany to lead the entire EU in this direction. "If France fails, Europe explodes," he warned.

Naïr has once again come up against the harsh reality when explaining the current clash between northern and southern countries over the European budget. "The northern countries want to destroy the CAP and the cohesion funds, that is to say, they want to finish off the southern countries like France. This is not the Europe we expected –he lamented–. We are in a situation of world war, with Putin tearing apart an entire country and the madman Donald Trump destroying the system of international relations, and Europe is not reacting", stressed Naïr.