Erik de la Reguera: Macron have launched the battle for Notre-Dame – the extreme right are biding their time

– This is now undoubtedly a part of the French fate. The next few years we will have the rebuilding of the Notre-Dame as a joint project, " said president Emmanuel Macron night on Tuesday.

the Fire has been extinguished since then, thanks to the valiant efforts of the Paris fire brigade. The holy relics were in the cathedral has undsatts, possibly with the exception of those that were in the fallen spirans top.

the Building's basic structure seems to have fared relatively well, and with a little luck it is possible to build Notre-Dame, such as Emmanuel Macron promised, but to demolish more than it plummeted down.

" We are a nation of builders! We will make the cathedral even more beautiful than it was, and I want it done within five years. We can do it, asserted Macros in a speech broadcast on tv on Tuesday night.

the Cost will be enormous. But for the president of Macros is nothing that is higher priority in the here and now. Not the Yellow vests. Not Donald Trump. Nothing.

For Macros is aware that the forces on the extreme right want to use storbranden as a part of their story about France's decline and crisis for all, what they see as the original French: catholicism and conservative values, blood far back in time, the French civilization and its alleged superiority.

Read more: False claims spread after the Notre-Dame-the fire

According to the French authorities all suggest for the time to brandorsaken was an accident linked to the renovation work that was going on in the Notre-Dame cathedral. But on social media, unsubstantiated rumors already started to spread that the fire was an arson, rumors that may more or less open support of right-wing propagandasajter.

time would reveal that a crime may have caused the fire – or maybe just blatant negligence of an individual construction workers – is the right-wing politicians such as Marine Le Pen ready to step in and turn storbranden of Notre-Dame to the elections.

In this case, the tip soon be directed against an ethnic or religious group.

It is the Emmanuel Macron wants to prevent, when his government is now launching a very ambitious restaurationsarbete.

the Notre-Dame cathedral, Our lady of Paris, is the very definition of a landmark, in a city that perhaps more than any other embodies the modern Europe.

It is a building that ”always” existed, and that many French people have difficulties to imagine living without.

A building that is Paris, and whose damage it is impossible not to relate to.

until the catastrophic happens, that you realize how much these landmarks mean. The reactions after the fire – even in other countries, like Sweden, show just how much of this is not just dead matter.

Notre-Dame is not just the sum of the patiently worked stenmassorna, the near thousand-year-old wood in the roof, the vaults and the holy relics. Nor is it solely a question of religion, even if all the world's catholics, of course, is the worst affected.

Here is something else.

Here are the history.

Here are the French identity.

of the generations that have gone before, and who looked up to these lofty towers, these ceilings and förbluffats of the demons on the walls and of the grizzled ”wife's” as fragile as a solid beauty.

This is, of course, also conflict. No one knows how many anonymous workers who lost their lives during the nearly 200 years that the construction work was going on before the cathedral was completed in 1345 on the island of Île de la Cité in the river Seine.

All the gold and riches could certainly have been used to something else.

But the workers left, of good and evil, a memory. A memory that has lived on as an open book, and written about by every new generation.

This memory was written about by the revolutionaries who almost destroyed the cathedral in 1793. Of Napoleon Bonaparte, as this sounded, crowning himself emperor. Of Victor Hugo and his novel ”the Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Of the resistance fighters and diplomats, who prevented the nazis from destroying this and other historical landmarks in the final stages of the second world war – and that of many others.

over to the French not been able to preserve this memory intact to future generations.

the Silence at the barricade around the Notre-Dame spoke its clear language. All of this is Emmanuel Macron aware of.

It is already clear that this is a project that will characterize the whole of his remaining time in power.

The French government has promised to shoot for a large amount, but also appeal to the outside world to do its work. As well, for Macros it seems the response to be large.

the Two French billionaires, Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault, has donated the equivalent of more than three billion kronor (200 and 100 million). Many ordinary French people have also started to rattle, on the basis of their considerably more modest conditions.

A taxi driver as the DN spoke with on Tuesday told me that he along with a group of colleagues decided to spend 100 euros (about 1000 dollars) each to the project. A substantial amount even if the monthly income is about sek 10 000.

It is likely that more such fundraisers going on in Paris right now.