Two weeks after the November 13th terror attacks, France's Fifth Republic is gripped by fear, a clamour for war and the spectacle of a government that is out of control. This headlong rush towards security at all costs – including the arrest of climate activists ahead of the Paris climate summit - is storing up new crises for the future. The fact that it is a socialist government that has taken France down this route recalls the bad old days of the discredited Fourth Republic, writes Mediapart editor François Bonnet.
Two weeks after the Paris terror attacks of November 13th, the face of France's Fifth Republic has radically changed. It has now taken on the hideous visage of fear, a clamour for war, of a government out of control. This is a long way from the “spirit of January 11th” celebrated in the mass marches that took place following the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and the anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish supermarket in east Paris.
