Paris (AFP)

While Emmanuel Macron targets speeches which, according to him, inoculate "the idea that we would no longer be in a democracy", here is a non-exhaustive lexicon of the rise in tension of the political debate, seen through the expressions of responsible from all sides.

Barbarity

The boss of the LR group in the National Assembly, Damien Abad, protested on January 22 against the CGT's power cuts against the government's pension reform: "How can a union like the CGT afford to make power outages, barbaric acts, acts which are contrary to the rule of law and legality which must be punished? "

Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his part accused the police of "barbarians" by speaking with demonstrators claiming to have been victims of police violence during a March for the climate.

Diet

"We are in an authoritarian regime", assured Friday Ségolène Royal, scathing "a power which does not listen, which does as it pleases, which attends to the suffering of citizens without reacting".

But it is probably Jean-Luc Mélenchon who uses the term "diet" the most: almost ten times in his last blog article.

Hostage-taking

The expression is often used to speak of strikes penalizing users. The unions recall its real significance in the light of the attacks that have affected France. But officials continue to use it, like LR Oise deputy Eric Woerth in mid-December: "It is completely unacceptable to think that we can block the French, take them hostage during the Christmas holidays ".

Populism

The word is pejorative for some, positive for others. Secretary of State for the Ecological Transition Brune Poirson thus joked this week at the National Assembly the "green populism" which "aims either to use ecology as an excuse to break the current system", in reference "to the 'extreme left with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Insoumis and Yannick Jadot at EELV "," either to boast an ecology of withdrawal, whose secret project is to close France in on itself and to isolate it, as Marine wishes The pen".

"I want you to call me a green populist," retorted the leader of the rebels, for whom populism finds nobility in the defense of the working classes.

Dictatorship

In Mantes-la-Ville in September 2018, the head of the National Rally Marine Le Pen had called on her supporters to wave the French flag, "a symbol of freedom, in these times of the closed dictatorship". The same month, she described the European Union as a "populicidal dictatorship".

Reacting on Twitter to the government's decision to no longer assign political color to the unlabeled candidates in the municipalities of less than 9,000 inhabitants during the municipal elections in March, the LR MP for Eure-et-Loir Olivier Marleix, to denounce a "make-up", tweeted the hashtag #democrature, condensed of democracy and dictatorship.

attempt

Haranguing the strikers at a RATP bus depot in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced, in the pension reform, "the coup de force and the attack on democracy social "perpetrated according to him by the government, in particular because the deputies like him will have to" pass a text of law with holes ".

Terrorism

At the beginning of January, Jean-Pierre Pont, LREM deputy for the North, compared the blockages of refineries or the power cuts of certain strikers mobilized against the pension reform to "facts of terrorism".

Rebellion

To qualify the seizure of 2 million euros in aid to the RN in July 2018, Marine Le Pen spoke of a "coup" of judges, a "death penalty" against the party, "persecution" and "dictatorial drift".

© 2020 AFP