We have no crown jewels: the Louvre panic is a distraction from the real threat the far right poses to our democracy
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ccording to some international commentators – and France’s perpetually doomsaying conservatives – the break-in at the Louvre was much more than a burglary; it was the latest chapter in a grand narrative of national collapse. Never mind that it was probably carried out by a couple of chancers with a crowbar: for some of the pessimists, it’s civilisation itself that’s being prised open.
Funny how the same people who decry France’s alleged dysfunctionalism probably marvelled at the Paris Olympics of summer 2024 – that brief, dazzling interlude when the city actually worked, the trains ran on time, and millions around the world fell a little bit in love with France again.
The Louvre heist is hardly a harbinger of France’s decline – any more than the Notre-Dame fire in April 2019 was a symbol of the nation’s de-Christianisation. One a daring burglary, the other a simple construction accident – yet both reveal far less about the fate of France than about the relentless trimming of state funds for the upkeep of its cultural heritage.
