PARIS — After a weekend of violence across France, the political camps have spent the days since trading blame over the 'chaos'. The Bureau's field note is narrower: every camp deplores; one camp deposits. The far-right National Rally has been quick to capitalise on the anger and fear over law and order. The Bureau files the party not as a movement but as a bank — an institution licensed to store numbers — and the numbers it stores are aggrieved citizens, accruing interest payable at the ballot box.
Dr David Lees, Reader in French Studies at the University of Warwick, told FRANCE 24's Mark Owen that Marine Le Pen "is trying to use these events as a vehicle for pushing her popularity ahead of the elections next year". Inside the party's communications unit, the vehicle is booked as a revenue vehicle, and the deploring has run every morning since the first pane went in — a streak of zero missed deplorations. "We deplore the violence in the strongest available terms, every morning, Form 17-B, Déclaration d'Indignation, filed before the coffee," said Henri Cabrol, the party's deputy communications chief. "Deploring is free. The polling is the paid product. We did not break a single window. We simply own the only shop in France that sells order. And when a customer smashes his own window, we do not call it vandalism. We call it foot traffic."
The other camps have answered with blame: the government blames the mayors, the mayors blame social media, and everyone blames the previous government. "Blame is the only currency our side still mints at full capacity," said Martine Ould-Cadi, adviser to a regional Socialist president. "We denounce the exploitation of tragedy, and we will keep denouncing it right up until the exploitation works." The Bureau has valued the currency: it circulates at par and is accepted nowhere in payment.
The Resources Desk has prepared the standard invoice for the weekend. Payers: the shopkeepers of the affected districts, filed under 'windows and deductibles'; the residents, filed under 'sleep'; the Treasury, filed under 'policing overtime, recurring'. Payee: one party, filed under 'law and order', sub-line 'electoral revenue, collection scheduled next year', with windows broken in the course of business entered as 0. The absurdity hides under the last line. On Terra, a crisis is charged to whoever suffers it and credited to whoever has an election approaching. The locals call this 'capitalising'. The ledgers call it a transfer, executed in public, countersigned by fear. The Bureau declines to file it as a scandal; the Bureau files it as a pricing decision.
The elections are next year. The weekend's losses were filed under 'the public'; the gains were filed under 'Le Pen'. The ledger, as usual, balances. The column headings are the only part the locals got to write: one reads 'chaos', the other 'momentum'. Payment terms, already recited across the affected districts: deplore in the morning, collect at the election.
