LETTER FROM BENELUX
It is undoubtedly because they do not understand much about their own system and they find that of their German or Dutch neighbors boring that the Belgians and their media are so interested in French politics. With, for a few weeks, a phenomenon named Eric Zemmour which feeds a little more their curiosity.
The person concerned is not a stranger in Brussels, where one of his visits in 2015 gave rise to a controversy: whether or not the author of the French suicide, guest in a bookstore? “No, in the name of freedom of expression”, insisted at the time the president of the League of human rights, Alexis Deswaef, judging that “His speech is easily disassembled: he truncates the figures and his words turn grotesque. Let us guarantee him his right to freedom of expression; it can be taken apart and sank anyway by itself ”.
At the time, the daily The evening he judged that “For Zemmour, everything was better before, even under Pétain” and titled: “Zemmour, veni, vidi, Vichy”. Some businessmen had, for their part, received the person concerned in a very select club where his speech, rather moderate for the occasion, had not shocked anyone.
The change in the status of the “maybe candidate” for the French presidential election in 2022 has, of course, revived interest in his person. Even in Flanders and the Netherlands, where, like its French-speaking Belgian counterpart, the press is initially surprised by the omnipresence of Zemmour in the French television media and the lack of critical analysis of his remarks.
“Shame in prime time”
“The polemicist has already won: all this current noise helps him sell his books by the thousands and sets the pace”, wrote, on October 2, the columnist of La Libre Belgique. He felt that the runaway around a man “Willingly forger of history” would eventually fall back. “But the risk is that it will happen too late and that each candidate has not had [d’ici là] the time, or the courage, to dig one’s own furrow ”.
On September 24, it is a whole page that The evening devoted to a titled analysis “How Zemmour capitalizes on media naivety”. Recalling the double conviction of the “polemicist” and the accusations of sexual assault against him, the daily was astonished at the place it has been given in the public debate, even though after the episode Donald Trump, and the mea media guilty of “feeding the monster”, the lesson seemed learned.
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