A phrase said by the communist candidate for the presidency of France, Fabien Roussel, aroused the ire of voters, who rushed to call him a nationalist and a rightist. The controversy revolved around the speech “good wine, good meat, good cheese: this is French gastronomy”, said in early January on a TV show and published on his Twitter profile, which generated several outrage reactions.
“Advance the left instead of making discreet invitations to the identity right,” replied one user. Another suggested that the Communist Party, of which the politician is a part, become the Conservative Party.
“Roussel is today accused by a part of the left of having, in certain ways, a discourse that recovers that of the right”, says political scientist Tristan Haute, a professor at the University of Lille. “And that contributes to highlighting the left’s dissent on issues related to consumption in general.”
At first glance, the controversy may seem like a French edition of the “coxinha x mortadella” that marked the polarization between toucans and PT in the 2014 presidential election in Brazil. Would meat, wine and cheese, so striking in the Brazilian imagination as symbols of France —perhaps not meat—, be the items in the diet of rightists and conservatives? What, then, would be on the table of leftists and progressives?
In reality, this ideological dispute is limited to a fight between voters and does not reflect a polarization between politicians. In this presidential campaign, the left is fragmented, and the biggest competition is concentrated mainly in the right and ultra-right camps.
Haute describes the French political landscape as very sliced, but not polarized. “France was the archetype of the left-right divide, but today it is not.” On the other hand, he explains, this division continues when voters are urged to position candidates. Although they do not consider themselves to be left or right, they are able to easily distribute the presidential candidates in these fields.
And although there is no polarization in practice, this engagement of the population is also part of a strategy to mobilize voters, given that the shadow of abstention hovers over the election, whose first round takes place on April 10th. Roussel, however, is not the only one to make use of this tactic. “To Marine Le Pen [da ultradireita] and, on the other hand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon [esquerda]there is the challenge of mobilizing these voters who are more of the working class and are also very young”, evaluates Haute.
Youth who are not very willing to vote, but do not give up discussions on the internet. At this point, the discussion motivated by the communist’s speech has another layer: what, after all, is French identity?
According to a January survey by the Ifop (French Institute of Public Opinion), for only 8% of respondents bread, cheese and wine are French symbols – the first places go to the language (21%) and to the triad freedom, equality and fraternity ( 20%). Still, 66% say they believe the country’s identity, whatever it may be, is disappearing. For Pascal Perrineau, a political analyst and professor at the Sciences Po University in Paris, this identity crisis has a backdrop of migration, which also ended up contributing to a strengthening of the right in the country.
“The issue of migration linked to Islam has become something extremely important for many French people. It imposes questions of national identity, and in this sense the forces of the right are better positioned”, says the academic. “The left is bothered by this issue of migration, of identity.”
Thus, what was supposed to be Roussel’s defense of access to products, and probably of French tradition, ended up becoming the target of virtual ovations. “What if we don’t drink? What if we are vegetarians? Vegans? French gastronomy is not limited to that. What needs to be defended is access to the healthiest possible food”, defended one user. “And when you don’t like wine, meat, or cheese… Do you hand over your ID card?”, asked another user.
There were those who still responded to vegetarians with the phrase attributed –probably wrongly– to Marie Antoinette, when bread was at exorbitant prices in a country that was boiling on the eve of the French Revolution. “Let them eat quinoa.” The grain, of course, replaces the brioche in the famous phrase.
The guillotine for Roussel, however, will be figurative. With a left in crisis, the candidate has only 4.5% of the votes in the polls, with no chance of advancing to the second round and defeating Emmanuel Macron.
