Beyond the Debt Mirage — French Media as the Mouthpiece of a Billionaire Boot Camp

5 min readMay 4, 2025

Introduction: The Fiscal Guillotine, Live at 8PM

Turn on the evening news in France and what you’re watching isn’t journalism — it’s a public flogging disguised as analysis. Public debt is trotted out like a medieval curse, recited in solemn tones by pundits who work for the billionaires who caused it. The message is clear: you are the problem, and the solution is your silence, your sacrifice, your slow suffocation.

This isn’t economics. It’s indoctrination by spreadsheet, courtesy of a media cartel that worships markets like medieval priests worshipped fire.

Welcome to austerity’s televised tribunal.
Welcome to France’s boot camp for neoliberal obedience.

🧠 1. Debt Isn’t a Deficit — It’s a Disciplinary Collar

They don’t want you to understand debt. They want you to obey debt.

On French TV, debt isn’t a solvable policy issue. It’s a moral failing. A scarlet letter for the public sector. A leash around the neck of anyone who dares to believe hospitals and schools should exist for people, not balance sheets.

“We’ve lived beyond our means” isn’t economic insight — it’s fiscal original sin. And the punishment? Endless cuts to the things that keep society humane.

🧠 Debt is not a number. It’s the whip. And you’re supposed to thank them for using it.

🧱 2. French TV: Not Newsrooms — Confession Booths for the Poor

Let’s drop the polite fiction. CNews, LCI, BFM — they’re not news outlets. They’re corporate megaphones run by men whose yachts have yachts. Bolloré, Arnault, Drahi — tax evaders with media licenses.

These networks don’t report. They indoctrinate. They hand out sermons dressed up as segments:

“Struggling? Work harder.”
“Homeless? Budget better.”
“Want healthcare? You’re bankrupting the nation.”

It’s not just misinformation. It’s class warfare with graphics packages and ambient lighting.

📺 This is what happens when oligarchs buy the microphone — and aim it at your throat.

🎭 3. The Spectacle Rewires You — You Become the Broadcast

Debord warned us about the spectacle. But this isn’t just distraction — it’s reprogramming. You don’t just watch austerity propaganda. You metabolize it.

You stop asking. You stop dreaming. You start thinking that public services are charity, not rights. You flinch when someone says “raise taxes on the rich,” because you’ve been trained to believe they’re the only ones keeping the lights on.

That’s the magic trick: they make you fear being the burden, while they walk away with the bank.

🩸 They don’t need riot cops. They’ve installed self-censorship in your nervous system.

🧨 4. The Oligarchs’ Great Erasure

It’s not just what they say — it’s what they make you forget.

France once had a social model worth envying. Universal healthcare. Free universities. Strong labor rights. But try finding that memory in a Bolloré-owned newsroom. They’ve buried it in budget graphs and endless “crises.”

What we’re witnessing isn’t a shift. It’s a counter-revolution. Not fought with tanks, but with takes.

Arnault doesn’t just want your money.
He wants your historical amnesia.

🧨 They’re not just ending the welfare state. They’re erasing the idea it ever existed.

☠️ 5. Necropolitics: The Budget Is a Bullet

Achille Mbembe gave us the word for it: necropolitics — the power to let people die by policy.

French media doesn’t report on austerity. It normalizes necropolitics. Cuts to maternity wards? “Necessary reforms.” Closing rural bus lines? “Tough choices.” Starving mental health clinics? “Living within our means.”

All wrapped in a moralizing tone that makes letting people suffer sound like civic virtue.

🪦 **“We can’t afford it” is how the rich say: you can die now, quietly, please. **

✊ Burn the Blueprint, Not Your Future

The first step is to reject the lie that public services are luxuries and billionaires are saviors.

Remember what solidarity looks like. It wasn’t that long ago.
Rage against pundits who wear suits like armor and spew cruelty like data.
Rewrite the narrative — in pamphlets, podcasts, graffiti, and satire.

You don’t need “balanced coverage.”
You need an insurgency of signal.

📡 The revolution won’t be televised — because billionaires own the goddamn cameras.
But the feed is hackable. And the frequency is open.

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