For at least a century, one word has constantly recurred in the rhetoric of all those preparing to become dictators: the word “system,” used to designate their enemies.
Before coming to power, Mussolini lambasted and denounced the Italian “sistema politico,” which he deemed decadent and corrupted by party machinations. Similarly, before 1933, the Nazis systematically used the term “Das System” or “Systemzeit” (“the time of the system”) to refer to the Weimar Republic and its institutions; the parties were called “Systemparteien” (“the parties of the system”), and their leaders “Systempolitiker”; the liberal press “Systempresse.”
Pre-war communism employed the same strategy: Marxist-Leninists referred to the “capitalist system” or the “bourgeois system” as a totality responsible for all crises, wars, and miseries—one that no reform could remedy and from which only a revolution could liberate society.
In today’s France, we see this approach—both on the far right and the far left—fulfilling exactly the same function: to dismiss pluralistic institutions en masse (parliament, the free press, rival parties, the market economy) without having to provide a precise explanation or even refute any specific argument.
Without much effort, I found hundreds of instances of this word and its derivatives being used by Jean-Marie Le Pen, then by Marine Le Pen and her lieutenants, right up to the present day. Just a few examples: on May 1, 2015, in her speech before the statue of Joan of Arc, she proclaimed: “Because it feels more threatened than ever, the system is digging in its heels, becoming more rigid, and continuing on its mad course.” In 2017, in Nantes, she explained that the state is placing itself “at the service of the system and its survival,” adding: “The system is wavering between my two main rivals.” ” On April 1, 2025, on the TF1 set, she denounced a “political decision” that “violates the rule of law” and lambasted “the system.” That same day, during a question to the government, Jean-Philippe Tanguy denounced “the system’s vendetta against its sole opponent, the National Rally,” adding that “the system respects only the ballot boxes that reinforce its power.”
In Perpignan, in March 2026, Bardella praised Aliot, who he said had fought “year after year to defend you against the established system”; ever since she became a candidate again, Marine Le Pen has used the word “system” almost daily as a synonym—depending on the context—for “elites,” business leaders, political leaders, journalists, judges, and powers of all kinds. And finally, Sébastien Chenu, who, in a tweet on September 1, 2026, branded me as “an architect of the system.”
Without much further effort, I also found countless instances of this term in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s speeches. In 2016, he wrote in his book *Le choix de l’insoumission*: “The system manages to convince you that the poor have brought it upon themselves.” In 2026, he presented a platform, “L’Avenir en commun” (A Shared Future), centered on the “overhaul” of “systems” deemed unjust; scattered throughout the paragraphs, he discusses the “tax system,” the “health care system,” the “energy system,” the “political system,” the “capitalist system,” and the “technocratic system.” And today, on a daily basis, both he and his senior staff readily speak of the “media system,” the “Macron system,” and the “lockdown of the country by the system.”
Today, this tactic is not unique to France: in the United States, Donald Trump has built his entire campaign since 2016 on portraying Washington as a “rigged system.” He proclaims, almost every day: “that system is wrong.” In Italy, the Five Star Movement builds its legitimacy on the promise of positioning the movement “outside the system” (“fuori dal sistema”). In Spain, Podemos, founded in 2014, echoes this accusation almost word for word. And we hear it every day in the rhetoric of the AfD in Germany, which speaks of “Systemparteien” (“system parties”), shamelessly adopting the vocabulary of the Nazis.
In all cases, the tactic is the same: a multitude of causes for discontent are condensed into a single word, which requires no fixed definition to garner support. “The system” is thus a figure of speech, a rhetorical device, whose main virtue is to lead each listener to identify their own enemy within it (the exploitative boss, the overbearing bureaucrat, the lying journalist, the greedy banker, the freeloading immigrant, or the capitalist exploiter); without the speaker ever having to specify the meaning they ascribe to the word, nor to bear the burden of proof that a specifically named adversary would require, much less to provide a coherent response to the problems they denounce.
The Argentine theorist of populism, Ernesto Laclau, formalized this mechanism under the name “empty signifier”—the focal point around which frustrations crystallize that, in and of themselves, have nothing in common. The word no longer describes; it unites.
The only response to “the system” is then to tear it down entirely, to make a clean sweep. Against “the system,” there is then nothing but revolution and a single party.
As the presidential campaign in France gains momentum, we must not forget this lesson from history: those who denounce “the system” herald dark years ahead. The answer is clear: never let the use of this word pass without asking what it actually means. The resulting silence should be enough to make voters understand the dangers of such manipulation.
The Conjurer by Hieronymus Bosch (1453–1516).