PARIS—The French political system, casually referred to as the “Republic of Friends,” is in the throes of one of its humiliating nervous breakdowns.
Now, a few weeks before an estimated 15 million baffled visitors, 10,500 bemused athletes and more than a billion bewildered TV viewers tune into Paris for the Summer Olympics, there’s an odds-on chance the government will be run by the sort of feral right-wing regime not seen in France since the Vichy administration ruled the country in cahoots with the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.
Time and nostalgia are a double-edged sword in France. What ended here 80 years ago with 567,600 corpses has been resurrected with such fiendish intensity that President Emmanuel Macron immediately drew a line in the sand, scheduling needless legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
