France Collapse to Reset the West

The demise of the 5th Republic is the end of the Right-Left Paradigm.

Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Foreign Minister and architect of the Congress of Vienna famously said that “When France sneezes, all Europe catches a cold.” Such a statement is as accurate today as it was during Napoleon’s reign. Any revolutionary upheaval in France will spread to the rest of Europe and eventually the entire Western world; revolution being the operant word. Ultimately, as Tocqueville explained in his must-read account The Old Regime and the Revolution, “for never was any such event…so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.” Why inevitable? Because the Ancien Régime was so completely broken. Why unforeseen? Because of delusions of continuity, as ever. I would submit that the rapidly deteriorating situation in France and the West today mirrors that description.

“for never was any such event…so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.”

Alexis de Tocqueville on the French Revolution

Make no mistake, what is unfolding in France is the leading edge of a Western calamity unseen since perhaps the Revolutions of 1848. While there are many issues bubbling beneath the surface, the central driver bedeviling France and Europe, and America is debt. Budgetary problems are so Goliath in size, so overwhelming and irreconcilable that everyone in Paris (perhaps in Brussels too) has simply dismissed them as if they will evaporate on their own. The wizards of finance – the central bankers, finance ministers and technocratic elites – have mastered the art of “extend and pretend” to such an extent that average Frenchmen (plus euros and Americans in general) believe with religious conviction that no debt is too big to simply inflate away.

What is unfolding today in France is the leading edge of a Western calamity unseen since perhaps the Revolutions of 1848.

The “no confidence” vote against Prime Minister Michel Barnier in the National Assembly and the collapse of Macron’s coalition government are testament to that fact. France has an enormous Welfare State, a fiscal deficit that is 6% of GDP, and a debt to GDP ratio of 110% (2x Germany at 60%, less than the US at 120%). Internecine squabbling has taken place between the socialists on the Left-wing led by the multi-headed hydra called the Popular Front (Front Populaire) and the Right-wing socialists led by National Rally (Rassemblement National) but both sides are in violent agreement that any form of austerity is unacceptable. In the middle stands the wildly unpopular Macron whose flailing “moderate” coalition (Renaissance) wants more defense spending on Ukraine amid France’s fiscal meltdown. What a mess.

Both sides are in violent agreement that any form of austerity is unacceptable.

As catastrophic as the budgetary situation is beneath the surface things are even worse. On two separate trips to Paris in 2022 and 2023, I met with journalists, politicians, and military officers who uniformly described France as a volcano soon to erupt. Anger at Macron’s government is fiery, the immigration crisis is a time bomb, and suspicions of the EU and the Euro project in general are viral. The discontent of Frenchmen is often subdued, sort of like the sweaty palms of a seasoned poker player bluffing his way through a shitty hand. Parisians on the whole go about life nonchalantly as ever so long as they have le pan quotidian, ample days off, and promised benefits, but as I wrote recently, when it is time to move the French storm and quickly.

Teetering Republics

The pending collapse of the 5^th Republic means it is time for them to move, and quickly. A run through of France’s unsteady Republics offers a snapshot of frenetic politics Post-Ancien Régime:

1. First Republic (1792–1804) - 1789 precipitated the rise of the Directory, the Reign of Terror, and the Consulate, which collapsed when Napoleon became emperor in 1804

2. Second Republic (1848-1852) - The election of Prince Louis quickly dissolved the second republic when he declared himself Emperor Napoleon III in 1852 until the Prussians ended his reign in 1870

3. Third Republic (1870-1940) - After a descent into anarcho-communism during the Paris Commune of 1871 the third Republic lasted a fraught 70 years of persistent turnover: 107 cabinets and prime misters cycled through until the Wehrmacht invaded France in 1940

4. Fourth Republic (1946–1958) - What followed World War II was a reversion to the mean, some 21 governments in 12 years

5. Fifth Republic (1958-Present) - Finally, in the fallout of the Algerian War General Charles De Gaulle emerged as president. He rewrote the constitution and strengthened presidential powers

French history reminds of Churchill’s dictum that “the farther back you look, the farther forward you will see.” Since 1789 France has been chronically ungovernable, so today’s turmoil is more the norm than the exception. However, the consequences for the collapse of the 5^th Republic may be as far reaching as the French Revolution itself, the seminal political event in modern Western history. Remember, our political landscape remains defined by Right and Left, those seated to the Right of the King in the National Assembly defended monarchy, those on the left urged revolution. If Macron’s wildly unpopular and fragile government falls and he is ousted as President it will mean the end of that paradigm.

Since 1789 France has been chronically ungovernable, so today’s turmoil is more the norm than the exception.

Budgetary problems are the match, but the kerosene is broader discontent with the Globalist elites who run Europe. The French people have been uneasy about the EU, the Eurozone and NATO since the founder of the 5^th Republic, Charles De Gaulle openly regarded these "international" organizations as fronts for DC manipulation and British Atlanticism. Europe’s international institutions have “their technical value, but do not and cannot have authority and, thereby, political efficacy.” Under a “a supranational Europe,” De Gaulle declared, “is a Europe under American command.” Unfortunately for the French, like Europeans and Americans the world over, the entire Western political class has abandoned sovereignty, they no longer represent the national interests of the people whatsoever, and that gap is growing rather than shrinking. Danger close.

The euro project is little more than a conspiracy against the national interests of France, and the rest of European peoples.

The results speak for themselves. Average Frenchmen have seen their standard of living stagnate and economy decline, their country overwhelmed with foreigners, and innumerable policies from deindustrialization and greenification to mass censorship imposed upon them by foreign, undemocratic bureaucrats. Escalation against Russia in Ukraine and the downstream inflationary consequences thereof is but the latest hardship average Frenchman have been forced to endure against their will. These ruinous policies have all but confirmed Franco suspicions simmering since De Gaulle that the euro project is little more than a conspiracy against the national interests of France, and the rest of European peoples.

Globalism vs Sovereignty

That the real battle is no longer between Right and Left but between denationalized Western institutions and the globalist cabal who run them against the sovereign people is becoming clearer by the day. A brief exchange between Russian President and favorite DC / Brussels villain Vladimir Putin and a German businessman at the Valdai Discussion Club highlighted the clash. The German stood up and began to ask Putin a question in English. Putin quickly reproached him for not speaking German, a language Putin speaks fluently. He explained: “The sovereignty has to be within. That’s where it all starts.” Indeed, it is from deep within where the resentment in France is boiling and feelings of sovereign consciousness are curdling.

France has been gutted. The standard of living is deplorable, the country is overrun with Middle Eastern and African foreigners, refugees, and immigrants. As stated, the government’s coffers are empty, the industrial capacity is hollowed out, and public trust in government and perhaps faith in France itself has been wrecked. The various protest movements since 2018 when the Yellow Vest movement burst forth, followed by lockdown, pension-reform, and farmer’s protests express the festering intolerance for the status quo. Yet, the European Union remains the centerpiece of the globalist project, and it is there where the source of the frustration is to be found.

There are no major sovereign nationalist parties in Paris who represent French national interests, which no longer coincide with the European Project, if they ever did. The Euro, the European Central Bank, the European Parliament etc. exist to subsume, undermine, and ultimately erase the national character of European peoples, especially the two constituent parts of Europe according to De Gaulle: “the Germanic and Gallic peoples.” Both Germany and France are the principal focus of the denationalization globalist agenda, and both are seething with discontent against the EU. So, what comes next?

The Fourth Voice

It is the “fourth voice” that will save Europe. Financial Analyst Arnaud Girod refers to France’s giant bond market (the financing vehicle for France’s debt) the fourth voice after the Left, Right and Center political parties. The fourth estate played a decisive role in spurring the French Revolution because violent anti-monarchist polemics like Babeuf’s Le tribun du peuple (“The Tribune of the People”) actively fanned the flames of revolution. Today, it is fiscal meltdown and the collective failure of French leadership to stave off financial catastrophe that will irk the population into revolt. The fate of France now rests firmly in the hands of international speculators and bond traders who will break the French State sooner or later.

The fourth voice is making its presence known. Since Covid and the massive money printing that followed, the interest rate Western governments are paying to finance their ballooning debt has been surging, moving higher in lockstep with spiraling deficits and debts. With the largest welfare state in Europe, France’s position is deteriorating rapidly while absolutely any effort to implement even meager reforms has been categorically rejected. France is the dynamite that will blow up Target-2 as the PIIGs did to Target in 2012.

France’s demise will spread like a virus in a full-fledged contagion.

This time, however, the Eurozone and the European Union will not survive, and neither will governments from Berlin to Paris, and London to DC. Financial markets are driven by mania and always have been. Once market forces turn against France the fiscal dam will break. Like a dead carcass floating in the River Piranha, investors will savage the coffers of France and governments across Europe until the budgetary bones have been decalcified. France’s demise will spread like a virus in a full-fledged contagion.

What comes next? The metapolitical moment and the end-of-cycle is fast approaching. There is no telling what average Frenchmen will do when the 5^th Republic defaults and promised pensions, healthcare, and college tuition are suddenly eliminated; heads may roll as they have in the past. As happened in 1789 when a feverish anti-monarchism swept across the continent, a similar explosion will wash away the current globalist order, its international institutions, the Godhead of “progressive-democracy”, and an inversion will ensue. In short, a revolution across the West is imminent and let the record show I believe it will start in France.

Welcome to the end of cycle.

Stay liquid, stay alert.