罗伯特·扎雷茨基 2017年，当法国选民首次选举埃马纽埃尔·马克龙为总统时，评论家们称他为该国“衰落”的解药。当时的说法中，这个词似乎涵盖了一种不仅是经济和文化，而且是存在性的状况：法国作为一个理念和理想，正像其国家债务日益加深一样，必然走向衰败。
In 2017, when French voters first elected Emmanuel Macron as president, pundits hailed him as the antidote to their nation’s “decline.”The term, in the parlance of that moment, seemed to encompass a condition that was not just economic and cultural but existential: France, as an idea and ideal, was decaying as surely as its national debt was deepening.
近10年后，随着马克龙第二个总统任期的结束，法国人几乎 unanimous 地认为他们的国家仍在下滑。在最近的一项Ipsos-BVA民意调查中，85%的法国受访者表示法国正处于衰落之中，98%的人对当前国家状况感到不满。
Nearly 10 years later, as Macron’s second presidential term comes to an end, the French are nearly unanimous in their belief that their country is still on a downward slope. In a recent Ipsos-BVA poll, 85 percent of French respondents said that France was in decline, and 98 percent were dissatisfied with the present state of the country.
如果当时有民意调查，早在1789年春天就可能看到这样的数字。在那个革命前夕，法国背负着巨额债务、物价飙升，并处于一个被无知且腐败的精英统治的僵化状态。如今，类似的因素再次叠加，加上对过去荣耀的记忆，正驱动公众相信法国第五共和国正在动摇。而衰落论，反过来又似乎在助长极端激进派的崛起，他们意图彻底重塑共和国本身。
One might have seen such numbers in the spring of 1789, if opinion polls had existed then. In that prerevolutionary time, France was burdened with staggering debt, skyrocketing prices, and in a sclerotic state overseen by a clueless and corrupt elite. Today similar factors, together with the memory of past glory, are driving the public’s belief that France’s Fifth Republic is faltering. And declinism, in turn, seems to be fueling the rise of extremist radicals intent on remaking the republic itself.
高卢式的忧郁或许容易被轻视。毕竟，很少有民族比法国人更倾向于宣称国家衰落的。该国政治和知识界精英成员指出，在19世纪和20世纪，法国一直有衰落的预兆——这一时期被威权政权（无论是波拿巴主义还是佩坦主义）和共和国政府（从第二到第五共和国）的兴衰所点缀。夏尔·戴高乐断言，没有伟大（la grandeur），法国就不是法国，这句话既表达了自豪，也透露出某种焦虑。
Gallic morosity might be easy to dismiss. After all, few peoples are more inclined toward claims of national decay than the French. Members of the country’s political and intellectual elite point to auguries of its descent throughout the 19th and 20th centuries—a sweep of time punctuated by the rise and fall of authoritarian states (whether Bonapartist or Pétainist) and republican governments (from the Second to the Fifth). Charles de Gaulle’s assertion that France could not be France without la grandeur could be said to channel a certain anxiety as much as pride.
戴高乐于1970年去世后不久，衰落主义思潮再次抬头。三十年的经济增长在该时期的全球能源冲击和金融危机中戛然而止。1976年，明显非高卢主义的总统瓦莱里·吉斯卡尔·德斯坦宣称，法国不再像过去那样是一个完全自主的大国，而是 commentators 所描述的“世界中等强国”——这一观点激怒了他政治光谱两端的对手。来自北非和中东的移民潮曾助力数十年的工业增长；随后，他们成为人们对国家衰落和解体日益增长的恐惧的替罪羊。
Soon after de Gaulle’s death in 1970, le déclinisme was again on the rise. Thirty years of economic growth came to an end with the global energy shocks and financial crises of that period. In 1976, the distinctly non-Gaullist president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, declared that France was no longer a fully autonomous power as it had been in the past, but was instead what commentators have described as a “world middle power”—an observation that angered his opponents across the political spectrum. An influx of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East had helped fuel decades of industrial growth; they then became scapegoats for growing fears over national decline and disintegration.
随着20世纪进入21世纪，这种法国式的执念日益扩大并愈发阴郁。在罗伯特·弗兰克（Robert Frank）于1994年出版的《衰落的魅影》（La hantise du déclin，即《对衰落的执念》）这一精彩的历史著作之后，出现了诸如尼古拉·巴韦雷兹（Nicolas Baverez）2003年那篇激烈论战的小册子《正在倒塌的法国》（La France qui tombe，即《倒塌的法国》）等作品。
As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, this French fixation expanded and darkened. Following Robert Frank’s fine historical account La hantise du déclin (The Obsession With Decline), published in 1994, came works such as Nicolas Baverez’s wildly polemical 2003 tract, La France qui tombe (Falling France).
随后，公众对宣称法国末日到来的书籍的需求日益增长。评论家们纷纷提供 grim 的预测——最臭名昭著的是埃里克·泽穆尔（Éric Zemmour），他在十多年前出版了畅销书《法国的自杀》（Le suicide français），该书将排外愤怒与浅薄的历史观结合在一起。该书推动了“大替换”理论的传播，该理论声称西方精英正在促成大规模穆斯林移民潮，以取代“纯正法国血统”的法国人（les français de souche——这一带有强烈负面意味的术语指的是所谓“纯粹法国血统”的人）。
And then the public appetite for books proclaiming the End Times for France grew fiercer. Pundits furiously supplied the grim prognoses—most notoriously Éric Zemmour, who a little more than a decade ago published his best-selling Le suicide français, which married xenophobic rage to potted history. The book boosted the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims that Western elites are enabling great waves of Muslim immigrants to replace les français de souche—the loaded term for those of “purely French heritage.”
泽穆尔随后成立了一个名为“重征！”（Reconquête!）的政治运动，这是对中世纪天主教统治者收复摩尔人统治下的西班牙（“重征”）的刻意且沉重的引用。尽管该党在政治上仍然边缘化，但其主张——即法国的移民政策等同于国家自杀——已经进入主流。现任司法部长杰拉尔德·达尔马宁（Gérald Darmanin）最近提出，对合法移民实施为期三年的暂停，宣称法国已达到“我们在移民融合和同化方面能力的极限”。
Zemmour went on to found a political movement named Reconquête!, a heavy-handed reference to the medieval “reconquest” by Catholic rulers of Moorish Spain. The party remains politically marginal, but its message—that France’s immigration policies amount to national suicide—has gone mainstream. The current justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, recently proposed a three-year moratorium on legal immigration, declaring that France has reached “the limit of our capacities for integration and assimilation” of immigrants.
根据CSA研究所于5月进行的一项民意调查，这一观点以及暂停移民的提议获得了63%公众的支持。
This view, and the moratorium idea, have the approval of 63 percent of the public, judging from a CSA Institute opinion poll conducted in May.
这些数字部分解释了为什么玛丽娜·勒庞在明年春季总统选举的民意调查中领先如此显著。她继承父亲让-玛丽·勒庞所创立的运动——当时称为民族阵线——该运动曾汇聚新纳粹分子、反犹太主义者以及坚定支持法国在阿尔及利亚殖民统治的人士。如今该党更名为民族联盟，主要将穆斯林视为法国一切问题的根源，取代了过去对犹太人的妖魔化。
Those numbers partly explain Marine Le Pen’s remarkable lead in polling for next spring’s presidential election. The movement she inherited from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then called the National Front, once gathered neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and die-hard supporters of the French colonial administration of Algeria. Now called National Rally, the party mainly demonizes Muslims in place of Jews as the source of all of France’s ills.
但就在上周，该党主席乔丹·巴德拉被揭露，在他十几岁末期曾沉浸在大屠杀否认者阿兰·索尔的著作之中。符合其党的民族主义理想，勒庞承诺实施她所说的“国家优先”政策，即在众多社会福利方面，优先考虑法国公民而非非公民，并且她表示愿意通过公投修改宪法以实现这一目标。
But just last week, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, was revealed to have spent his late teens marinating in the writings of the Holocaust denialist Alain Soral. In line with her party’s ethno-nationalist ideals, Le Pen promises a policy that she calls a “national priority,” which would give French citizens preferential treatment over noncitizens for an array of social benefits, and she has said she’d be willing to change the constitution by referendum.
最新的Ifop-Fudicial民意调查于9月30日发布，显示勒庞以31%至36%的支持率领先。极左翼政党“不屈法国”的创始人让-吕克·梅朗雄正为第二名展开竞争，支持率为14%至17%。与勒庞一样，梅朗雄也承诺不服从侵犯法国主权的某些欧盟法规；同样，他似乎对乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基的信任程度不如对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京；此外，与勒庞政党的部分成员一样，他也喜欢玩弄反犹太主义的陈词滥调。
The most recent Ifop-Fudicial poll, published on September 30, put Le Pen in the lead with 31 to 36 percent support. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder of the extreme-left party France Unbowed, is fighting for second place, at 14 to 17 percent. Like Le Pen, Mélenchon has pledged to disobey certain European Union regulations that infringe on French sovereignty; also like her, he seems to trust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky less than Russian President Vladimir Putin; and, along with some members of Le Pen’s party, he enjoys flirting with anti-Semitic tropes.
两位候选人均完全掌控他们所创建或重建的政党，似乎满足了公众对“敢于打破规则的强有力领导人”的广泛需求——这一点在2019年Ipsos民意调查中已有体现。勒庞是反动派，梅朗雄是革命派，但他们有一个共同的目标：埋葬目前形式的法国共和国。梅朗雄希望用仅由议会主导的第六共和国取代融合总统制和议会制的第五共和国混合政体；而勒庞的“国家优先”政策将削弱法国共和主义的普世主义基础——若通过公投强行推行，这一工具将被提升为绕过立法机构的手段。
Both candidates exercise full control of the parties they either created or re-created and seem to satisfy the public’s broad desire, according to a 2019 Ipsos poll, for a “strong leader who will break the rules.”Le Pen, the reactionary, and Mélenchon, the revolutionary, share a common goal: to bury the French Republic in its current form. Mélenchon seeks to replace the hybrid regime of the Fifth Republic, which fuses presidential and parliamentary institutions, with a Sixth Republic dominated solely by Parliament. Le Pen’s “national priority” would undermine the universalist foundation of French republicanism—and imposing it by referendum would elevate that instrument as a means of circumventing the legislature.
对于厌恶两极的法国选民而言，前景黯淡。他们的困境源于马克龙总统在2024年的一项决定。他的政党“复兴”及其他中间派政党当年在欧洲议会选举中遭受重创。愤怒的马克龙解散了国民议会，并宣布举行提前选举。与传统左右对峙不同，此次选举中出现了三个规模相当的阵营：复兴的残余力量、国民联盟，以及一个匆忙拼凑的左翼政党联盟——该联盟由“不屈法国”、共产党、社会党和生态学家组成，宣称要形成一个“共和屏障”以对抗勒庞。
For French voters repelled by both extremes, the prospects are grim. Their predicament stems from a decision President Macron made in 2024. His party, Renaissance, and other centrist parties took a beating in elections for the European Parliament that year. Infuriated, Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called for snap elections. Rather than the usual face-off between the traditional right and left, three blocs of roughly equal size emerged: the remnants of Renaissance, the National Rally, and a hastily slapped-together coalition of left-wing parties—France Unbowed, Communists, Socialists, and the Ecologists—that purported to form a “republican rampart” against Le Pen.
人格冲突导致共和党阵营土崩瓦解，使得国民联盟和不屈法国得以在民意调查中巩固其地位；与此同时，一位如今已成跛脚鸭的总统一直在主持一系列无力应对的政府，这些政府似乎根本无法在议会通过预算。国民议会陷入瘫痪，众多政客纷纷加入即将到来的总统选举竞争。第一轮投票将于4月18日举行，而在极有可能出现无候选人获得多数票的情况下，第二轮投票将于5月2日进行。
Personality clashes have since reduced the republican rampart to rubble, allowing the National Rally and France Unbowed to solidify their places in the polls while a now-lame-duck president has meanwhile presided over a series of flailing governments that can’t seem to pass a budget through Parliament. The National Assembly has been paralyzed, and a host of politicians have tossed their hat into the ring for the upcoming presidential election. The first round of votes will happen on April 18 and, in the extremely likely case of no candidate winning a majority, the second round will take place on May 2.
截至目前，已有34位总统候选人宣布参选，其中大多数来自中左和中右阵营。还有其他几位候选人，包括前总统弗朗索瓦·奥朗德和前总理多米尼克·德维尔潘，正在试探选情。
At last count, 34 presidential candidates have declared themselves, mostly from the center left and center right. Several others, including former President François Hollande and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, are testing the waters.
候选人的激增证明了曾经清晰分为左右两派的政治格局如今已高度碎片化。这不是健康竞争的迹象，而是民主分裂的表现：众多候选人中，大多数仅拥有相对较少的支持者，他们最终将有助于确保第二轮选举由代表法国民主最大威胁的两位候选人之一胜出。
The proliferation of candidates attests to the fragmentation of a political landscape that once neatly divided into left and right. It is a sign not of healthy competition but of democratic fragmentation: This multitude of candidates, most with relatively few supporters, will ultimately help secure the second-round election for one of the two contenders who represent the greatest danger to democracy in France.
这种对决日益临近的前景，强化了一种普遍的衰退感知——一个国家不仅跌落至中等强国行列，而且其政治中心已不再稳固。这在一定程度上解释了《世界报》专栏作家索莱娜·德·鲁瓦耶所描述的、如今萦绕法国政坛的“一种失败主义精神”。八月，马克龙在访问法国南部一个小镇时也使用了这种措辞，敦促一小群民众抵制“蔓延的失败主义精神”，无论是针对近期的山火还是政治局势。
The growing prospect of this face-off reinforces a widespread perception of decline—of a nation not just reduced to the ranks of middle powers, but where the political center no longer holds. This explains, in part, what the Le Monde columnist Solenn de Royer describes as “a spirit of defeatism” now haunting French politics. During an August visit to a town in southern France, Macron adopted that language, urging a small crowd to resist “the rampant spirit of defeatism,” whether in response to recent wildfires or in politics.
几周后，两位知名建制派政治人物、保守派的泽维尔·贝特朗和社会党的贝尔纳·卡泽纳夫联手，呼吁各自的追随者不要因勒庞看似势不可挡的崛起而陷入绝望。
A few weeks later, two well-known establishment political figures, the conservative Xavier Bertrand and the socialist Bernard Cazeneuve, joined forces to press their followers not to give in to despair in response to Le Pen’s seemingly irresistible rise.
这种抵制宿命论的号召在法国历史上曾多次响起——从1871年巴黎公社的墙垣之内，到一战战壕的纵横交错。战间期的和平主义被认为源于一种衰退的预感，戴高乐在1940年的BBC广播讲话中谴责了这种思维。但或许无人能比历史学家马克·布洛赫更深刻地洞察法国的衰退主义心态、并以更大勇气对抗它，他记录了1940年法国败于纳粹德国。
The call to resist such fatalism has been sounded before in France—from within the walls of the Paris Commune of 1871, and across the trenches of World War I. A presentiment of decline was thought to fuel pacifism in the interwar period, and de Gaulle decried such thinking in his BBC address in 1940. But perhaps no one in France has offered greater insight into the declinist mentality, and greater courage to combat it, than Marc Bloch, the historian who chronicled France’s defeat by Nazi Germany, in 1940.
他部分归因于精英阶层“只太乐于对他们受命保卫的国家、以及提供他们所指挥士兵的人民感到绝望”。80多年后，问题不再在于法国政治精英准备对国家绝望，而在于国家准备对其政治精英绝望。
He attributed the debacle in part to an elite “only too ready to despair of the country they had been called upon to defend, and of the people who furnished the soldiers they commanded.”More than 80 years later, the problem is less that France’s political elite is ready to despair of the country than that the nation is ready to despair of its political elite.