 Starting with French President Emmanuel Macron's repression of the Yellow Vest uprising in 2018 and 2019 and deepening this year with ongoing repression of dissent and protest and culminating in two recent pieces of proposed legislation, one of which would grant extraordinary new powers to law enforcement and the other of which is seen by many as targeting Muslims who make up 8% of France's population, we have seen an authoritarian turn from Macron and from his government. Here I think it's worthwhile to understand, to remember that before becoming president, Macron had never actually held elected office. He was by most accounts a brilliant technocrat and a charismatic figure, but he had limited experience with the art of doing politics. His neither left nor right 2017 campaign mantra was successful at the polls, but afterwards it begged the question, if neither left nor right, then what are you for? And to this Macron has had little to no answer, nor does he have a strong basis or aptitude for building consensus. With his approval ratings permanently mired in the 30s and the unruly masses unwilling to concede when he makes his regular concessions to the right, Macron has increasingly adopted an authoritarian outlook on what it means to govern France. I would argue that we saw this shift from 2018, late 2018 onward, but that Macron is also here drawing on a much longer history in French politics, which successfully leapfrogged the French Revolution through the figures of Louis XIV on one side and Napoleon on the other, and which persists to this day in the collective political imaginary. To those unruly masses, Macron now increasingly attempts to respond, I am the decider, I am your sun king.