Investigative journalist Marc Endeweld is one of the most informed observers of French president Emmanuel Macron. In a series of works, he has examined the political intrigue that fueled Macron’s dizzying rise to the summit of the state — before he dragged his country into the depths where Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is today at the gates of power.

The first of these books, L’ambigu monsieur Macron (2015), was written when the future president was still economy minister in François Hollande’s Parti Socialiste–led government. Macron’s notorious statement, when he occupied that role, that he wasn’t a socialist marked the public beginning of his so-called outsider campaign for the 2017 presidential election. In fact, he wasn’t really such an upstart candidate. Boosted behind the scenes by right-wing networks surrounding former president Nicolas Sarkozy — and with more than a leg up from his politically influential wife Brigitte — Macron won only after the murky political elimination of his main conservative rival, former prime minister François Fillon, who was revealed to have embezzled public funds by fictitiously employing his wife as a parliamentary assistant.

Macron, says Endeweld, has one overriding drive: a thirst for power. And he’s methodically pursued that ambition with another aim in mind: the eradication of the Left. He spoke to Jacobin’s Marlon Ettinger about the president’s apparently baffling move to call snap elections despite poor poll scores, his remaking of the French political system, and the networks of power behind his rule.