CREPUSCULE By JUAN BRANCO 1 Foreword, by DENIS ROBERT1 It was early November 2018 when the French President completed his remembrance tour with a visit to Pont-à-Mousson, on the Moselle river. He was to close a conference, using English loanwords to “make up” the future world as he saw it: Choose France Grand Est. I have a friend there who is a doctor. I suspect he might have voted for Emmanuel Macron in both rounds of the presidential election. Let’s be perfectly honest, I did the same in the second round, without any qualms whatsoever. This friend of mine, who I suspect always votes for the right wing, sent me a long e-mail message a few days later with ten or so instructive photographs attached. It was as though a lethal gas had wiped out an entire town. Not a single inhabitant of Pont-à-Mousson was in the streets. Place Duroc was completely shut off to the population. The same was true for Prémontrés abbey where the five hundred conference attendees, elected officials and leaders, hand-picked, searched and wearing ties, were penned in. That afternoon, it was as if the town was anaesthetized. The people had been sidelined. There was not a soul around, no free citizen in a radius of approximately 500 meters around Emmanuel Macron. Nothing but metal barriers, rural police forces and anti-riot police waiting in dozens of coaches parked along the river banks. Television that evening, and newspapers the day after, noted the success of the presidential visit, but failed to report the sidelining of the unwelcome common people. “I’ve never seen that before, this is totally crazy”, my friend remarked about the conspicuous fear of having the President confronted by opponents. It was November 5th and the yellow vests were still folded in the boots of vans. Juan Branco was adding a final touch to his Crépuscule (Dusk) manuscript which he had just posted on his blog. It was still confidential. One week later, the yellow vest protesters would start to grouse on social media, then on roundabouts. The carbon emissions tax on diesel cars was making the have-nots yell. And the rich hide. The nation split and the rulers stalled for time. In unison, high-profile commentators played down the movement taking form and root. The gap between rich and poor was widening and would soon become an abyss. Right in the middle, a chasm opened up that the so-called intermediate bodies and those given to political gossip attempted to bridge. But no one managed to do it. Intermediate bodies had been atomized by Emmanuel Macron and his La République En Marche (LREM) movement. The gist of media remained indulgent to the rulers and developed fancy theories to hide the fact that they did not understand the revolt going on. I have in mind the photographs from my doctor friend. A president who’s hiding so much from his population is a cheating and frightened president. How else could this be accounted for? Juan, then just a Facebook friend of mine, posted a message inviting me to read his text. I did not do so immediately due to reluctance for its apocalyptic message: “The nation enters miscellaneous convulsions where hatred and violence have taken hold. This enquiry into the inner gears of the Macronist power, written in October 2018, proves 1 Denis Robert is one of the most famous French investigative journalists, known for his work uncovering the Clearstream case. 2 the point of those hatreds and violent acts one was so keen on discrediting”. There is so much of this sentiment on the Internet. Yet, in spite of its abstruse style, its lengthy sentences and the hardship of on-screen reading, something hooked me in its tone: that Juan Branco seemed to know his subject and set the appropriate distance. I saved the document. I was surrounded with friends, journalists, neighbours, kins, most of which playing down the Yellow Vest movement. On Facebook, the fire was spreading, but on the mass media, things went their slow way, calling the demonstrators2 at best “oddballs” or “hillbillies” (Jacques Julliard), at worst “hooded thugs” (Pascal Bruckner), “far right or far left bastards coming down to streets to smack the police” (Luc Ferry3) or “hordes of petty people, of looters eaten up as much with resentment as with lice” (F.-O. Giesbert). Every Saturday, while the President remained stashed, the yellow vest protesters were yet occupying more and more space. My contacts often kept trotting out the acme of media comments, being scared of violence in the streets, criticizing the lack of organizing and clear claims, mixing up the yellow vest protesters with far right. Those reasonings sounded narrow-minded, duplicate and eventually groundless to me. They expressed a fear of the unknown and of the insurrection smoldering. I had just published an enquiry depicting how billionaires plunder States4, with a little help from merchant bankers and law firms. I had been thinking a lot, writing some books, directing documentaries that focused on growing inequalities, on the clout of finance on economies and the impoverishment of middle classes: how come such a wealthy nation as ours could yield so much poverty? On social media as well as in public debates, I took sides with the yellow vest protesters. They are expressing a revolt which is salutary and essential. They restore our honor and our pride despite excesses and blunders. I was repeatedly asked: “Did you read Crépuscule? Did you see the performance of Juan Branco shot at Mermet’s radio broadcast?5” One evening in late December 2018, I decided to do both. First, I discovered a calm and ardent young man with a structured thought who was developing a well-argued and original criticism of Macronism. Then I plunged into his book Crépuscule. I got out of that reading exhausted, but thrilled. I could not drop his manuscript. Despite the digressions and the sometimes-emphatic stance of his, it was the first time I was reading such a well-documented and compelling narrative of what Macronism might be, that was presented as a fabulous democratic scam. 2 On that subject, see the article by Serge Halimi and Pierre Rimbert: “France’s class wars”, in the February 2019 issue of Le Monde diplomatique, that lists, from Bruno Jeudy to Hervé Gattegno and from Sébastien Le Fol to BHL, the inglorious litany of mean words written by those French opinion leaders in their op-eds. 3 Former French Minister of National Education, writer and radio host. Notorious for openly asking the police to use weapons on Gilets Jaunes protestors during a public radio broadcast show : “Qu'ils se servent de leurs armes une bonne fois, écoutez, ça suffit”. 4 Les Prédateurs, written with Catherine Le Gall, published by Le Cherche-midi, 2018 5 On the 21st of December, Juan Branco was the guest of Daniel Mermet’s radio broadcast, Là- bas si j’y suis. His 30 minutes or so performance would rapidly gain him over a million views. 3 Macronism is neither a humanism nor an ideology. On reading Crépuscule, it conspicuously shows as a complete makeup by oligarchs. It is a system for preserving and optimizing the gains of an (affluent) bourgeoisie who did not know which way to turn after the failing of the two last presidential incumbents. Emmanuel Macron made his own contribution. He conquered crowds. He trod waters. He consolidated and perpetuated the relation of domination of the elite over common people. He did not seek to get himself or his family wealthier, like the traditional and greedy tyrants used to. But he was able to stand the pain, he toiled for his own caste, his friends, those who helped him make it to the throne. He sought to preserve and make their interests thrive. Macronism is an elaborate, modern and hi-tech form of despotism. Albeit an enlightened despotism, but still a despotism. And that’s it? Yes, that’s it. The first version of his manuscript -Juan would regularly update his blog to refine his text- was divided in two parts. The first part -a hundred pages or so- is a monologue on Emmanuel Macron takeover. The second one, which is shorter -forty pages or so- is a portrait of the new undersecretary of Youth and Sports, Gabriel Attal. Both parts share a promise of “doom” for the young president and his henchmen (which includes the little-known Gabriel Attal). The hearsay around the text and the downloads went cheerfully on. Juan shortly became a star of social media, multiplying videos and interventions on Facebook and Twitter. By the end of December, his book had registered over a hundred thousand download and some of his videos totalled two million views. We maintained a brief correspondence. I called on Juan to work his text over, to make it denser, more flowing, focusing on his readers. I induced him to indulge in a journalistic and didactic work and offered him to go in quest of a publisher. I did so without any calculation, out of infatuation for that story and that manuscript in progress. I had never read yet, nor understood that well the deep rationale behind Macronism. What I did comprehend was that the media advertised Emmanuel Macron. I had read someplace that he was cozying up with Xavier Niel. Seeing the queen of paparazzis, Mimi Marchand, take the exclusivity to look after the president’s image had left me surprised. I had noticed that Brigitte Macron would only wear apparel coming out of companies owned by Bernard Arnault.