{"id":368497,"date":"2018-07-08T07:55:16","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T06:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/emmanuel-macrons-extreme-centrism-is-a-threat-to-democracy\/"},"modified":"2018-07-08T07:55:16","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T06:55:16","slug":"emmanuel-macrons-extreme-centrism-is-a-threat-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/emmanuel-macrons-extreme-centrism-is-a-threat-to-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmanuel Macron\u2019s &#8220;Extreme Centrism&#8221; Is a Threat to Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>French President Emmanuel Macron has been crusading to all corners of the world, receiving applause for his impassioned pleas on behalf of the postwar liberal order in the face of rising authoritarianism and nationalism.<\/p>\n<p>This spring, in\u00a0<a title=\"his address\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2018\/apr\/24\/macron-charm-trump-lead-europe-french-president\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his address<\/a>\u00a0to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the new French leader compared the ongoing political divisions within Europe to a \u201ccivil war\u201d and pledged to never \u201cyield to any fascination for authoritarian sovereignties\u201d \u2014 a clear reference to the ongoing democratic backslide in Hungary and Poland.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do not want to be part of a generation of sleepwalkers,\u201d the 40-year-old president declared. \u201cI want to belong to a generation which has made a firm decision to uphold its democracy.\u201d He also pledged to \u201cdefend European sovereignty because we fought for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few days later, the French president was in Washington DC as President Donald Trump\u2019s first visiting head of state. In his\u00a0<a title=\"address to the US Congress\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/french-president-macron-charms-both-parties-in-an-impassioned-speech-to-congress\/2018\/04\/25\/bbd600ba-4894-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.f68989203691\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">address to the US Congress<\/a>, Macron reiterated the need to stand up for democracy and urged lawmakers to preserve and strengthen the liberal international order the US itself helped to create. \u201cThe United States is the one who invented this multilateralism,\u201d Macron said. \u201cYou are the one now, who has to help preserve and reinvent it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet in practice, Macron\u2019s own relationship to democracy has often contradicted his lofty rhetoric. Although 63 percent of French people think Macron has improved the image of France abroad, 58 percent are dissatisfied with his presidency \u2014 and 73 percent described him as authoritarian, according to\u00a0<a title=\"a recent IFOP poll\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ifop.com\/media\/poll\/4022-1-study_file.pdf\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a recent IFOP poll<\/a>. And no wonder: Macron has repeatedly undermined democratic processes in France to implement his unpopular neoliberal reforms.<\/p>\n<p>As a former investment banker at Rothschild, Macron envisions the transformation and revitalization of France through a Silicon-Valley-style neoliberalism, which embraces the \u201ccreative destruction\u201d theory of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. And,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/emmanuel-macrons-extreme-centrism-is-a-threat-to-democracy\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>French President Emmanuel Macron has been crusading to all corners of the world, receiving applause for his impassioned pleas on behalf of the postwar liberal order in the face of rising authoritarianism and nationalism. This spring, in\u00a0his address\u00a0to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the new French leader compared the ongoing political divisions within Europe to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-368497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}