Quotes:

Twenty retired generals (some four-star), a hundred mostly retired senior officers and a thousand military personnel signed a chilling letter in the right-wing French weekly Valeurs actuelles addressed to the President of the Republic, the government and parliamentarians. It appealed for ‘honour to be restored to our rulers’ and warned of a ‘disintegration’ of French society as a result of government policy: ‘… there is no time for prevarication, if not, tomorrow civil war will put an end to the mounting chaos and the deaths, whose responsibility will be yours, will be counted in their thousands.’ According to the organiser of the letter the true number of signatories is 10,000.

It looks like this sentiment could be more widespread among the French military than previously thought.

At first there was silence by French authorities, partly out of embarrassment that such a state of affairs should occur in an advanced democracy. But goaded by the far left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (no stranger himself to threatening insurrection) the minister of defence, Florence Parly, has now publicly criticised the letter and the leader of the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, who called for the signatories to join her movement. Macron has said nothing, despite being the titular head of the armed forces. His stature amongst the military suffered badly in 2017 when the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Pierre de Villiers, resigned in fury at the president’s double-dealing on defence spending. De Villiers has since become an extremely popular media figure penning a number of books on the secrets of leadership and is touted as a potential candidate against Macron for the presidentials. Coincidentally, or not, de Villiers’ brother, the right-wing politician, Philippe, wrote a column in Valeurs actuelles the week before entitled: ‘I call for insurrection’.

This is the big difference between the US and France. In the US it's mainly the left that's insurrectionist while in France it's mostly the right.

The difference between the failed 1961 putsch and today’s letter is that French authorities had good intelligence prior to the generals’ insurrection and were able to prepare for it. Today’s episode has taken the political authorities by surprise. There will be no coup d’etat, but the political ramifications will be far-reaching, especially as a recent study showed some 40 per cent of the French military were already intending to vote for the Rassemblement National. With the Chief of the Defence Staff now stating that any serving military personnel will be court martialled, the disciplinary process will last until the 2022 presidentials, and the surrounding debate on the state of France is likely to favour Marine Le Pen.

The French military is clearly radicalizing. It's good to know that such a big percentage of them are on the side of the nativists.

Article:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/france-s-military-wages-war-on-macron-s-values