The journalist and essayist, former member of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, believes that the President of the Republic “embodies the ability to move” on the issue of the fight against Islamism.
Journalist and essayist Zineb El Rhazoui announced on Twitter on Saturday evening her support for Emmanuel Macron for the presidential election. “I have decided to fully commit myself to President Emmanuel Macron. It is the choice of the heart and of reason. France needs it”, she writes, even if for the time being the tenant of the Élysée has not officially applied for re-election.
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Invited by Darius Rochebin on LCI in the process, the journalist answered questions about her motivations. “Coming from where you are – the most threatened woman in France – some would say: “go towards nationalism, Éric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen”“, remarked the journalist. And Zineb El Rhazoui to answer: “I come from a fight against Islamism which was forged far from these little Franco-French debates, from the far right and from political games”, she explains. “Emmanuel Macron embodies the ability to move on these lines. He is of all the presidents of the republic the one who has pushed the lines of the dialectic the furthest.
“A few years ago, no politician could approach Islam without saying “beware, it is a religion of peace and love”, she continues. “The secular camp wanted the words to be said, to be pronounced. Emmanuel Macron ticked them, and the acts came behind.
Outcry from hard-right supporters
His statements caused an outcry on social media. Many people called for his boycott: Zineb El Rhazoui lost hundreds of Twitter followers in the space of a few hours. “I am deeply disappointed,” writes a user. “The” fight “, the convictions of Zineb El Rhazoui, it was therefore a show”, is indignant another. “Wanting to ‘defeat Islamist fascism’ with Macron is as coherent as fighting tax evasion with Cahuzac”, reacted Grégory Roose, journalist at Current Values.
More surprisingly, Zineb El Razhoui had in the past expressed his disagreements with the President of the Republic, denouncing in 2019 his “cynicism”. “I may have understood a little what some French people mean when they refer to the contempt of the President of the Republic“, she had declared on the plateau of the Terrans of Sunday!, commenting on the meeting of Emmanuel Macron with the representatives of the French Council of the Muslim Worship (CFCM), at the same time as she laid a wreath of flowers in front of the premises of Charlie Weekly, January 7, 2019.
Some even thought she was close to the far right, especially after the publication of a photo dating from 2018 with the controversial youtuber Papacito. In 2019, Zineb El Razhoui called him a “cultivated”, “talented” and “intelligent”.