There’s so much noise and confusion that it’s hard to recognise this country. A land of shy sunshine to which the discreet clouds seem to recommend that nothing should be tarnished. It’s a country whose temperate climate has long appealed to, and even cured, those born in a volcanic land. In his brilliant “Découverte de l’archipel” (Livre de poche), the writer Élie Faure set out to discover the souls of Europe, praising France’s unique ability to “keep the tumult of passions within the framework of intelligence”.

It seems that the burning hatred poured out over several decades on our homeland, its culture, its traditions, its attachments and its memory have finally eroded this ability. We cannot emerge unscathed from waves of Islamist attacks, social upheavals, the digital revolution and the collapse of political ideals. In the aftermath of the summer legislative elections, which were marked by two dramatic events, no one can predict how the country will navigate towards the autumn, and it is faced with the impasse of radicalism.

Between the virulence of the National Ralluy, which won in the first round then lost in the second to a Republican Front made up of odds and ends, and that of France Insoumise, which wrongly claims to rule the left, a storm is raging in the Assembly, the mirror of a fractured nation.

If we owe this great replacement of reason by passions to the whims of the prince, Macron having played France at dice with his dissolution, the phenomenon did not take hold from one voting Sunday to the next. In reality, we are the citizens of a sick body, explains Jean-Yves Camus, essayist and researcher, director of the Observatory of Political Radicalities.

The dear old Gaullian country is riddled with badly healed scars. From the 1789 Revolution to the Algerian War and the Occupation. We could almost say – by extending this demonstration – that the current political fragmentation is a heap of contradictory heritages. LFI is re-enacting the Algerian war by exploiting the Muslim electorate with Palestine, with Rima Hassan in charge of draining the masses. The instructions to withdraw from the Republican Front were given the air of resistance to the fascism of the dark years. The National Rally, whose historians and academics condemn 1789 to the flames of oblivion, claimed to be the voice of the new poor, from the peasants and fishermen scorned by the castle to the working class abandoned by the Left.

Everything was false and everything was true. The French people, despite their divisions, voted with all their heart and soul, in a move that stunned observers on the international stage. Our 67% turnout puts those capitals that are quick to lecture us back on the ropes. Once again, the world is watching the French. If, as Jean-Yves Camus points out, our diplomatic influence is in free fall, from Lebanon to Africa, the same cannot be said of our moral and intellectual influence.

“Amaze me!”, whispered the late, talented Françoise Hardy. Emmanuel Macron misunderstood this invitation. Overacting as usual as saviours, he made a caricature of them by taking us on board his raft of the Medusa. We didn’t sink. The French, who also remember May 68, are not giving up on putting imagination into power. This is what is at stake when coalitions are put on hold for lack of a majority. However, in order to triumph, the imagination must overcome the imaginary. It is precisely on these that extremes thrive.

The anti-Semitism displayed by several LFI stars is a disgrace to the left. Unfortunately, the case is not new. In a vigorous and original text, historian Pierre-André Taguieff sheds light behind the scenes of an age-old betrayal: the betrayal, from the 19th century onwards, of the socialists towards the Jews who hoped in them and, paradoxically, persisted in believing in them. The insults hurled at Raphaël Glucksmann who, with Place publique, defended and still defends the colours of the left within the “New Popular Front”, bear witness to this tragedy.

Tomorrow’s history books will show the gaping chasm that has been opened up among French Jews by the infamy of the entire LFI establishment, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who, well before the European and legislative election campaign, claimed that “Jesus was killed by his compatriots”. John XXIII, the good Pope of Vatican 2 who, in 1962, put an end to the teaching of contempt, must be turning over in his grave. The election of Raphaël Arnault in the first constituency of Vaucluse did not reassure anyone. On the evening of 7 October, this person on the S list said: “The Palestinian resistance has launched an unprecedented offensive against the colonial state of Israel”. Spokesman for the anti-fascist movement known as “The Young Guard”, he is in fact the embodiment of the old guard of hatred. Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI group, gave him an effusive hug on his arrival at the National Assembly.

In response, the National Rally staff presented themselves as the guarantors of Jewish safety. All his reassuring statements, in a climate of maximum anti-Semitism effectively provoked by the quasi-Palestinian campaign of the Mélenchonists, added water to the millstone of the movement’s normalisation. Things were different in the depths of the RN. The comments of “black sheep” invested in haste have hit the headlines. The verbal flatulence of the candidates combined with their unpreparedness. A former RN MP and a member of Reconquête, the lawyer Gilbert Collard denounced the lack of a new cultural and intellectual generation in his camp the day after the second round.

Radicality has to be fought at the base: if it is not removed, the facelifts at the top will eventually crack. We have not seen the last of the clash of extremes. It will take every ounce of French genius to break this deadlock…