The latest recruit to this line-up of supposedly woke real-world Superfriends is French leader Emmanuel Macron, who in May beat Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right (though, she will insist, no longer antisemitic) National Front, in the presidential election. Since then, Macron has been the object of liberal admiration the world over, with pundits and observers swooning at his courage for standing up to Trump and Vladimir Putin, as well rejecting Le Pen–style xenophobia.
Like Trudeau and Obama, Macron is young, handsome, and charismatic. And, as with Clinton (and particularly Trudeau), he has embraced symbolic shows of social liberalism while explicitly positioning himself as a roadblock against the far right. All of this has helped obscure the more disconcerting elements of his beliefs, particularly his staunch support for economic reforms that would shift France toward a more free-market model.
In this sense, we can think of Macron as an updated, French version of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, with a dollop of the newer generation of triangulators. He’s consciously cast himself as the outsider who will break from politics as usual in defense of decency and democracy — and he’s done it all in the service of implementing a right-wing economic agenda.