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Likelihood conflict will break out continues to grow
Although most of the media talk lately about civil war cites political polarization in the United States of America, the likelihood is greater a similar kind of conflict will break out in today’s Fifth Republic France. PEXELS
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In recent weeks, Canadians have been understandably focused on the federal election campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats and tariffs, or the war in Ukraine.
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However, a different political news story may be ready to explode in France. Although most of the media talk lately about civil war cites political polarization in the United States of America, the likelihood is greater a similar kind of conflict will break out in today’s Fifth Republic France.
At the end of March 2025, a Paris court ruled Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s Rassemblement National (RN) political party, was guilty of embezzling European Union (EU) funds. The court also sentenced Le Pen, the front-runner for the next presidential election, to house arrest for two years, effectively banning her from running for president in 2027.
Le Pen quickly called the ruling a “political decision,” and alleged she was the victim of a “witch hunt.” Her lawyers have filed an appeal, but the ban remains in effect.
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Reaction in France to the ruling reveals a sharply divided country. Le Pen’s own party has stated she has been “unjustly condemned.” “French democracy is being executed,” uttered the RN president, Jordan Bardella. By contrast, most of France’s media, as well as its financial and political elites, cheered the sentence.
Meanwhile, RN support continues to climb, making it the odds-on favorite to win the first round of the presidential election in 2027, with or without Le Pen.
The Le Pen ruling is the latest in a series of events dating back over the last year, but what makes current day French national politics so potentially explosive is the country’s history in the modern era.
The French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, toppled the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI, but it ushered in an age of political turmoil unmatched by any of the world’s other industrialized nations. Countries like Russia, Spain, Germany and the United States have experienced their own versions of domestic political strife, but none had undergone what France has since 1789. Between 1789 and 1804 alone, France went from being an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, republic, dictatorship and then an empire under Napoléon I. In the more than two centuries since the Revolution, France has had seven regime changes, punctuated by murderous civil wars in 1793, 1848 and 1871. France was saved from civil war over the issue of Algerian independence in 1958 when General Charles De Gaulle became president and introduced the Fifth Republic, whose constitution has lasted up to the present day.
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But there are signs these days the Fifth Republic may be on its last legs. In 2021, as the BBC reported, 20 retired French generals and 1,000 active service duty members warned that the country was headed to “deadly civil war” unless the government dealt with the growing “Islamism” centered in France’s immigrant suburbs.
Talk of “civil war” surfaced again in June 2024, when French president Emmanuel Macron, after his political party was trounced in the EU elections, called a snap election for France’s parliament. After Le Pen’s party won the first round, clashes between riot police and anti-RN demonstrators broke out in Paris. Macron accused Le Pen’s RN voters of fomenting “conflict and civil war.”
Then, as a sign of the deep cleavages separating right and left on the political spectrum, numerous left-wing and centrist candidates withdrew from the second round in an effort to avoid splitting the vote. The tactic worked and Le Pen’s RN finished third in the vote. But an expert at Queen Mary’s University in London told France 24 Macron “had lost his bet.” The second round of voting left France’s parliament “in limbo,” according to Politico, and the following months were a time of political chaos and parliamentary deadlock.
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Meanwhile, Macron has pursued a “cordon sanitaire” policy designed to steal Le Pen’s ideas but shut her and her party out of power by siding with any political party but the RN.
Voters, however, remain on edge. One Frenchwoman, distressed by the escalating political polarization in the country, told CNBC during the final round of voting that “it’s going to be kind of like a civil war. I hope it will not reach that, but people will just not mix any more, and will be scared of each other. And this is very scary.”
The question is how much longer can Macron and his allies play this parliamentary game? Will they honor constitutional norms in their fierce opposition to the RN, or resort to “exceptional” measures to subvert a hated enemy? Will the Fifth Republic survive the mounting extremist rhetoric surrounding French politics going forward?
If the answers to these questions remain elusive, the recent willingness of many Frenchmen to indulge in the language of civil war is nonetheless ominous.
Ian Dowbiggin teaches history at UPEI.
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