France: a government outside the law, a state out of control

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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.

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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.

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