Paris (AFP)

From the attempted intrusion into a Parisian theater where Emmanuel Macron attended a play taking part with Marlene Schiappa during a public meeting, the contestation of power has taken a radical turn in recent days, in a form of echoing the "yellow vests" crisis.

"We are witnessing acts of totally new social movements", observes the historian Jean Garrigues, professor at the University of Orléans who evokes "a + gilet-jaunisation + of the movement against pensions" and a "hysterization of the debate in the 'public space' as much as an 'unprecedented radicalization under the Fifth Republic'.

Several dozen opponents of Emmanuel Macron gathered Friday evening in front of the Bouffes du Nord theater where he spent the evening. They tried to enter before being repulsed by the police.

The day before, Secretary of State Marlène Schiappa had had to face opponents during a public meeting - she had denounced attempts at intimidation -, while several greeting ceremonies of LREM deputies or members of the government were canceled. The Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, notably gave it up after the announcement of union action.

"We also consider that what feeds the violence is that the concessions made last year during the crisis of" yellow vests "were made under the pressure of violence," he continues.

At the height of the crisis, in December, the Head of State appeared struck by the violence of the rejection of his person, symbolized by the "Macron resignation" taken up in chorus in the rallies or by the boos and insults of furious demonstrators running his convoy during a visit to Puy-en-Velay.

"It is power in itself that is disputed, including in its embodiment of representative democracy," said Jean Garrigues.

In the majority, one intends to relativize and one disputes "any insurrectionary climate": "A small minority which is radicalized", according to the boss of the Republic in progress, Stanislas Guerini. "Very small groups who decide to create an incident", for Senator Alain Richard.

- The pressure cooker -

In their time, presidents Nicolas Sarkozy or François Hollande had to endure demonstrations of distrust already deemed unpublished at the time.

The two had known burnt portraits, hanging effigies and insults during numerous trips, in front of fishermen, at the Agricultural Show or during a ceremony of November 11. On Monday, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a relative of Emmanuel Macron, also recalled that General de Gaulle had been targeted by numerous attempted bombings.

But the personality of the head of state, target number one in all demonstrations, and especially the conditions of his accession to power, give the current challenge a new acuity, according to political scientist Stéphane Rozès: if the "French depression has lasted about three decades ", Emmanuel Macron does not keep, according to him," not his initial promise to put the country back in place "and" to break radically with the old world ", continues the teacher at Sciences Po and HEC, also president of Advice, analysis and perspectives (CAP).

Jean Garrigues abounds: "It is a kind of pressure cooker but, somewhere, Emmanuel Macron raised the lid himself by exploding the left-right binary system in 2017. It is the first symptom: it is there the whole paradox ", notes the researcher, who points out the Jupiterian posture of the beginnings of the quinquennium, according to him remained - negatively - in opinion.

Some close to the head of state no longer hide their concern: "We must admit that the rally advocated in 2017 is a failure", despairs a walker from the start, who deplores "a lack of ambition of the quinquennium" and " the promise to overturn the table "broken.

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