“Never with Le Pen!“. How many times have we heard this expression in recent days! Not only on the left, but also in the moderate area. Almost always the peremptoriness of the dictation is not followed by an argument that motivates it, much less a careful examination of any programmatic points judged” unacceptable.”
Nobody, for example, bothered to understand on what basis an agreement with the Gaullists was signed in France National Rally. The newspapers, for example, had no doubts: the pact is simply “shameful”, regardless. How can such a reaction be explained? Why this Pavlovian, unconditioned reflex?
I believe that it is a still strong residue of another age, one in which ideological politics predominated, which, as is known, is the exact opposite of democratic politics, and indeed of politics tout court. There was a time, absolutely to be forgotten, in which the political opponent was to be considered an absolute enemy, the Absolutely Other, to put it in philosophical jargon. His otherness was not limited to the political sphere but affected the moral sphere.
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Indeed even anthropological. It was depicted as a sub-human, “impure” being, and therefore also irredeemable. The political struggle therefore took on the features of a permanent “civil war”, a conflict where it was thought that in the end only one of the two contenders would remain alive. However, it is a completely different thing to consider politics be it democracy, which are based respectively on logos and mediation. They presuppose that adversaries recognize and listen to each other so that, through normal political dialectics, the ideas of one prevail over those of the other. Or that a compromise is reached between them at a point of equilibrium that is good for both.
Ideological politics reached its peak, as is known, in the twentieth century, which not by chance was a century generally adverse to democracy and dotted with many enormous tragedies caused by political power. It will be objected: but perhaps it is not really the party of Le Pen heir of that tradition? The first consideration to make in answering this question concerns the well-known double weighting which we often witness in these matters: why don’t we want to grant to the right what has been granted to the left, which is also largely heir to the deleterious twentieth-century politics but fully legitimized today to govern? Why has it been accepted that only it has evolved and accepted the rules of democracy?
Of course, the fact that the left has blunted its revolutionary tendencies over time is good for everyone. However; Shouldn’t democracy, which is inclusive by definition, rejoice at the mere fact that other actors, kept outside the door, now cross the threshold of the house? We realize that there is nothing more antidemocratic than erecting “sanitary cordons”, as he still wants to do Macron? That this is above all anti-democratic because it doesn’t care about the opinion expressed by the voters and what is the common feeling of a majority part of the country?
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In essence, it can be said that, if today there are residues of the previous mentality, they can be found above all on the left or in the centre, as the last “never with” clearly goes to show. That most of the parties that make up what are today derogatorily called “the right” are not only coherently inserted in the democratic game, but have an absolutely non-ideological vision of politics is so evident that only congenital “bad faith” can put it into doubt . Voters have noticed this and, being generally wiser than those who would like to speak on their behalf, they have rewarded the right massively, during the recent European elections but also in previous national elections. Read today, almost two years after the Meloni government took office, the catastrophist stance taken the day before on the fate of Italian democracy seems simply ridiculous to everyone.
An objection could arise to these reflections of mine: doesn’t admitting that everything is possible in politics, even what wasn’t possible yesterday, which therefore should “never say never”, justify inconsistency and transformism? We must avoid any misunderstanding: the coherence of the politician is measured not in the abstract, as ahistorical loyalty to certain ideals, but in the concrete ability to bear witness to his ideas in particular historical conditions and taking into account the balance of power. Throw at Eric Ciottithe president of Républicainsbecause he would have “betrayed” De Gaulle it doesn’t deal with history. Probably the General, as a consistent democrat that he was, in cornering a party that no longer exists today, that of Le Pen senior, hoped that sooner or later that then “nostalgic” electorate would be won back to an authentically conservative. If so, history has proved him right.
