OPINION: Macron is no warmonger, whatever France's pro-Putin billionaire says
In the name of French national and Christian values, every Bolloré-controlled print or broadcast voice has, in recent weeks, become abashedly pro-Putin and pro-Trump. They are also anti-Macron and anti-European, but that is not new.
President Emmanuel Macron, according to Bolloré's flagship newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, is deliberately and cynically "stoking fear" of peace-loving Russia. According to Bolloré's 24-hour disinformation channel C-News, Macron wants to foment a war with Moscow so that he can declare a state of emergency and remain President beyond the end of his second term in 2027.
In sum, according to the coordinated propaganda campaign of Bolloré-world, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are angels of peace. Macron and the European Union hunger for war.
What has been the effect of this barrage of Putino-Trumpian lies on French public opinion? None, so far.
President Macron's approval rating has soared (modestly) in the last month from 24 percent to 31 percent. Three quarters of French voters, according to an IFOP poll for Ouest-France, approved of his would-be Churchillian TV address last week in which he called on France to summon the moral strength to stand up to Russian aggression.
Marine Le Pen and other figures in the Rassemblement National are pushing a somewhat more subtle line than the Bolloré empire. Putin may not be the paragon that they once claimed, they say, but Macron is exaggerating the threat from Russia. The real dangers are immigration and Islamist terrorism.
None of this is much to do with Ukraine. The next French Presidential election is more than two years away but the pre-campaign-campaign has already begun.
Emmanuel Macron cannot run again but the hard and far right is worried that the Macronist soft centre, discredited by eight years in power, will be re-invigorated by the Russian threat and a European renaissance.
The Bolloré empire has never cared for facts or balance. The far-right commentariat on C-news now includes the former head of the French language version of Russia Today. As if by magic, all Bolloré outlets are abruptly repeating Kremlin propaganda verbatim.
They have been emboldened by Trump's triumphant mendacity to attempt a similar putsch against the conventional wisdom of the media and political elite in France. They hope to deepen hatred of the Macron centre and distrust of the EU by convincing the French that Putin and Trump are champions of anti-woke, anti-gay, anti-migrant, Christian values.
I doubt it can work. The great majority of the French public is not as gullible as half the American public. They know lying bullies when they see them. The same is true in the UK.
So far the Trump-Putin axis has been a domestic political windfall for both Macron and Sir Keir Starmer. The UK hard-right media, from GB News to the Daily Mail has largely taken an anti-Trump line. In France, the gesticulations of the Bolloré's far-right propaganda machine risk discrediting the billionaire and his minions, not Emmanuel Macron.
Is there any truth in the allegation that Macron is exaggerating the Russian threat? His TV speech to the nation last week was sombre but realistic. If America's military and nuclear guarantee is coming to an end, the era of European freeloading is over.
Even if an uneasy truce is agreed in Ukraine, the Russian menace will remain. This is not just Macron's view. It is the view of all European capitals save Budapest and much of the British and EU right-wing media from Le Figaro to the Daily Mail.
There was, however, an obvious gap in Macron's 15- minute address last week. There was no mention of Donald Trump.
Macron's Prime Minister François Bayrou and his foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot have angrily condemned the behaviour of the US President towards the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Bayrou spoke of the 'brutality' and 'attempted humiliation' of Zelensky by Trump and his Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office last month.
From Macron, not a word. Two weeks after he claimed to have 'made progress' in his own visit to the White House, Macron is still unwilling to abandon what he claims to be a 'friendship' or special relationship with Donald Trump.
Whatever he may think privately, he refused to state publicly in his address last week that Trump's America is no longer an ally of France or Europe. Far from the warmonger portrayed by the Bolloré media, Macron was attempting one of his precarious balancing acts.
He wanted to galvanise French and European resistance to Trump and Putin without quite abandoning Trump. Starmer has played a similar game in Britain.
By avoiding direct criticism of their alleged 'friend', they hope to steer the US away from abandoning Ukraine to Russian aggression and avert a transatlantic trade war.
Progress so far on the trade war: zero.
On Ukraine, Macron and Starmer deserve some credit for this week's twist in the soap opera. The one-month ceasefire agreed by Kyiv and Washington on Tuesday was originally a French and British idea. The US also seems to have moved a little towards the Franco-British demand that Ukraine must have security guarantees in any settlement.
Donald Trump will of course claim all the credit for any 'deal' that emerges. All the same, there has been a shift in the US position which may justify - for now - Macron and Starmer's annoying refusal to criticise Trump publicly.
Will Russia accept a ceasefire? And what will the Putin-lovers of the Bolloré media chorus say if the peace-loving tyrant in the Kremlin refuses?
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