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EMMANUEL MACRON

Is Macron really trying to send a ‘message from France’ with boxing photo?

A photo of French president Emmanuel Macron in boxing gloves has sparked an outpouring of commentary and analysis attempting to decode what, if any, message the Elysée is sending with the sporting snap.

Published: 21 March 2024 11:17 CET

Is Macron really trying to send a 'message from France' with boxing photo?

France's President Emmanuel Macron, pictured during a visit to Thailand.Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The 46-year-old president was pictured on Wednesday pounding a punching bag in images posted to the Instagram account of his official photographer, Soazig de la Moissoniere.

The arty black-and-white shot is among dozens posted on Instagram by de la Moissoniere, who posts pictures every couple of days showing the daily life of the president – from formal pictures of meeting and greeting foreign leaders to more candid snaps of Macron with his wife Brigitte and his three dogs.

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A post shared by Soazig de la Moissonnière (@soazigdelamoissonniere)

But while the more staid pictures of politicians (usually men) sitting around tables generally pass without comment, the boxing photo has inspired a rash of attempts of analysis about what it ‘really’ means.

“(Macron) is a technocrat having a go at the populist style, by trying to respond to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin on his own turf,” said Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, an expert in political communication, told Agence France Presse.

The images follow weeks in which Macron has defended his comments about not ruling out sending NATO troops to fight in Ukraine, invaded by the Russian leader more than two years ago. Putin has often sought to project physical prowess with judo or boxing bouts and a now infamous bare-chested horse riding excursion in 2009.

With boxing, Macron has turned to a sport “compatible with exercising state power” Moreau-Chevrolet said.

“It’s a violent sport but with rules – like politics. As often with Emmanuel Macron, it’s also a very theatrical image of a hero overcoming suffering,” he added.

Others were less flattering – Green party MP Sandrine Rousseau complained of “masculinist codes used to excess” in a post on X, the same language she had used to condemn Macron’s talk of sending troops to Ukraine.

“What a miserable form of politics. What a defeat for progressivism. What lazy political communication,” she added.

An alternative explanation might be that for the photographer, the boxing picture was a lot more interesting than yet another shot of men having a meeting?

It was another photo from de la Moissoniere – this time of Macron wearing a hoodie shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – that sparked the last round of frenzied speculation on what ‘message’ the picture might have been sending.

Political knock-outs

Boxing has numerous acolytes in the French political class, with Macron’s former prime minister Edouard Philippe a passionate fighter.

The sport taught him to “overcome the fear you can feel in scary situations”, he has said.

Right-wing women politicians have also stepped into the ring in France, including the leader of the Paris region, Valérie Pécresse, and Rachida Dati, now Macron’s culture minister.

“Even if people might think it’s an odd sport for a woman, it projects the image of being a fighter,” Pécresse told weekly Le Point.

Likewise Macron’s former government spokesman Olivier Véran has also been posting pictures of himself boxing in recent days – albeit with slightly less cool photos than his former boss.

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A post shared by Olivier Véran (@olivierveran)

French voters became used to seeing right-wing former president Nicolas Sarkozy in a tracksuit or on his mountain bike, or 1970s leader Valery Giscard d’Estaing on the football pitch or the ski slopes.

Turning to physically robust sports has not always played well for politicians.

Britain’s Boris Johnson – himself pictured in the past wearing red boxing gloves – was left red-faced in 2015 when he flattened a 10-year-old Japanese rugby fan while playing during a visit to Tokyo.

In France, the national boxing federation boasted 60,000 members last year – more than double the figure for 2021.

Boxing has also migrated from being a working-class sport once beloved of the French Communist party to a more middle-class pursuit, with gyms springing up in wealthy cities like Paris.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) has also been growing in popularity since the sport, which combines kickboxing and wrestling, was legalised in France by Macron’s government in 2020.

The first bouts organised by global outfit Ultimate Fighting Championship were held in 2022 and are now broadcast regularly on TV channel RMC sport.

MMA counts tens of thousands of fighters and hundreds of clubs across France.

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Anonymous - 25 March 2024 at 11:18 CET

Embarrassing.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.