Mulhouse, 25, rue du Sauvage. They are 400 to 500 demonstrators – elected officials of all stripes, associative and union activists, simple citizens – to have moved, on this freezing Thursday January 13, in front of the birthplace of Alfred Dreyfus, to denounce the remarks made by Eric Zemmour about the Alsatian and Jewish captain, wrongly convicted of treason at the end of the 19th centuryand century. Founded at the end of December 2021 by three personalities from the city – Bernard Eichholtzer, former school principal, Pierre Freyburger, former socialist municipal councilor, and historian Marie-Claire Vitoux – the “Mulhouse accuse” collective has brought together more than 500 signatures of inhabitants of the city of Bollwerk and well beyond.
Their cement: indignation in the face of falsifications which “aim to create fear and only propose distrust and hatred of the other as a political project”. Their open letter, declaimed one hundred and twenty-four years to the day, after the publication of Emile Zola’s “Letter to the President of the Republic” in the newspaper Dawn, takes up point by point the untruths stated by the candidate on CNews, October 15, 2021.
“Candidate Zemmour’s remarks attack the honor of one of our most illustrious citizens. We cannot let the history of Mulhouse be trampled on like that. These lies hurt us all”, explains Bernard Eichholtzer. “We call for an individual and cross-partisan commitment to no longer let the words of hate pass. We, the citizens, are the first politicians”, adds Marie-Claire Vitoux.
“You don’t need a baccalaureate + 5 to say no to lies”
The movement thus initiated was to continue throughout the presidential campaign, through “country cafes”, debates organized “to present, dissect and counter falsifications”. First theme announced: that of the xenophobic theory of the “great replacement”. Another meeting on the history of the Vichy regime is scheduled for February, at the initiative of a Mulhouse bookstore.
The members of the collective would like to see a form of citizen vigilance emerge during the campaign. “As soon as you read, as soon as you hear on the radio, television or on social networks a false and dangerous position taken by any candidate in the elections, relay it! We will collectively prepare an argument to dismantle the falsification, launches Marie-Claire Vitoux. You don’t need a bac + 5 to say no to lies. »
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