French presidential polls show that its new ideological battlegrounds are history books, as in India

A couple of months ago, nobody in their right minds could have predicted how the French presidential campaign was about to unfold. The events of the last few weeks have been so unsettling that commentators have compared them to the House of Cards, the American television show about the irresistible ascent of a contemporary Machiavelli. Last week, Libération, the main Left-wing daily newspaper, ran a cover story on the elections titled Beyond reality, which also happens to be the French translation of The Outer Limits, a 1970s science-fiction television show.

French House of Cards

When the campaign started, François Hollande, the outgoing president, was expected to run as the Socialist candidate. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had announced his comeback to politics, was hoping to win the right-wing primary and become Hollande’s contender. Their rivals in their own camps did not seem to enjoy much clout. Only Marine Le Pen, the National Front candidate was a certain fixture of the election.

Six months later, with less than 10 weeks before the vote starts, Hollande and Sarkozy are out of the picture. Hollande, because he decided not to run in the face of dropping popularity polls, and Sarkozy, because he lost his party’s primary. Today, Benoît Hamon, a relatively lesser-known politician at odds with the current Socialist government is the Socialist candidate. François Fillon, the conservative candidate who campaigned on his Christian morals and rectitude, is poised to lose what was deemed an un-losable election after the press revealed a corruption scandal involving his entire family. Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former minister of economy, with no political party behind him and no experience of running for any public office, has emerged as the most serious and viable obstacle to Marine Le Pen becoming France’s next president.

Looking to history

Readers might find this difficult to follow. Don’t worry, the French find it difficult too. So much so that they turn to the past for answers, trying to draw historical parallels in order to make sense of the present. And so, never in recent French history has history been summoned more frequently.

The conservative camp, from right-wingers like Sarkozy and Fillon to Marine Le Pen’s extreme right National Front, has for many years identified its heroes from French history. Characters like Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks whose reign started in 488, or Joan of Arc, the 15th century virgin-warrior who was killed by English invaders and was later made a saint by the Catholic church, are being flaunted as patriotic symbols in the manner the Shiv Sena presents the 17th century Maratha ruler Shivaji as the paragon of Maratha pride in Maharashtra.

But during this campaign, French conservatives go further and claim, falsely, that the stories of these heroes are not being taught in schools. Like in India, the new ideological battlegrounds in France are classrooms – more precisely history classes.

The scholar Benedict Anderson, who died over a year ago, explained in his seminal work, Imagined Communities, how nationalism is carefully crafted and engineered through mass information and propaganda. The selection of heroes extolling national virtues is an integral part of this process.

Of course, this has nothing to do with serious academic findings. These aggrandisements only serve a nationalist historiography and a contemporary political discourse of us vs them. These historical characters are picked not so much because they tell us something about who we actually are but because they can be construed as a symbol of whom we should not identify with. For instance, by placing an emphasis on Clovis and Joan of Arc, the French Right is conveying the message that French identity is not plural and secular but Christian, that it is not Republican but pre-French Revolution. Similarly, Shivaji is projected as a symbol of a united Hindu Maratha identity poised against Muslim invaders.

The Algeria war (1954-1962), also known in Algeria as the war of independence from French colonisers, is another issue that is being debated during the French presidential election campaign. While François Fillon is against all forms of repentance and even construes colonialism as “a form of cultural exchange”, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech in Algiers last week where he equated colonisation with a crime against humanity. Events that happened more than half a century ago have now become a major bone of contention between the centre-right Macron and the right and extreme right. And everyone on the political spectrum is now being asked for an opinion on what ought to be the official stance of the country regarding the Algeria war.

In France, like in India and elsewhere, nationalists are stating their claims to history. The content of schoolbooks is going to be a major political front in the years to come if nationalist forces are to prevail.

Back to the 1930s?

History seems to be summoned frequently on the progressive front too. The very real possibility of Marine Le Pen being elected as the next president of France is particularly frightening to anyone who thinks France should be inclusive, secular, and part of the European Union.

Political pundits, who were left flabbergasted by both the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s election as US president, are now adamant that these two events were ominous forebodings for Europe. After all, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi already rule in Turkey, Russia and India respectively, and it seems either naïve or presumptuous to think that France would necessarily be spared from this populist and nationalist wave that is sweeping the world.

Many commentators have remarked upon the similarities between the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the current situation in the US, India and France. Trump, Modi and Le Pen have repeatedly been compared to Hitler. Trump’s Muslim ban evoked memories of anti-Semitism in Europe (and in the US) in the 1930s, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, of which Modi was once a full-time worker, was founded in 1925 and openly organised according to the principles of Mussolini’s fascist party in Italy, and Le Pen’s National Front has strong links with neo-Nazi groups.

Online fact checking

The sense of foreboding is best conjured up by historian Mathilde Larrere, who is particularly active on Twitter. Her areas of research are revolutions and citizenship and she teaches at the Université Paris Est-Marne la Vallée. She uses Twitter to comment on political news by drawing historical parallels, and by fact-checking historical claims made by politicians. In August, she fact-checked one of the historical claims made by Manuel Valls, the French prime minister at that time, and hasn’t stopped since. Over the past year, she has become a Twitter sensation and is now a regular guest on a famous web television show.

According to Mathilde Larrere, “the constant references to the 1930s can be explained: although we live in vastly different times, we also witness now the rise of the extreme Right, the new acceptability of racism and the economic crisis, three factors that were also combined then.”

For a couple of years now, special issues and entire shows on history have become ubiquitous both in the French print media and on French television so as to capitalise on the current thirst for an explanation of present events with the aid of the past. While this intention is certainly commendable, one has to be particularly careful not to limit one’s understanding of history to boundaries imposed by the nation state and by nationalism, not to have an insular vision of one’s country and/or culture, and to encourage subaltern voices to be heard. National identity is a fiction. Identities are real, complex, multifaceted and non-exclusive. A serious study of history tells us that, and this is why historical scholarship has become so important politically in countries governed by nationalist sentiments like France and India.