On February 28, the war in Ukraine began four days ago when the main candidates for the presidential election were invited to Matignon for a briefing. Before the meeting, Eric Zemmour converses with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, behind the seat assigned to Marine Le Pen. The latter arrives and stings in a loud voice: “When are you going to stop trying to take my place?” » Ten days later, the candidate of the National Rally (RN) is reassured by observing the fall of her rival in the polls. Some place him in fourth position, behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Why such a discrepancy? The emergence of the war in Ukraine in the debates of the campaign had destabilized both of the candidates, overtaken by their pro-Kremlin positions. ” The adventure of sovereignist radicalism leaves the mythical construction to reveal its potential and nightmarish effectsemphasizes Luc Rouban, CNRS-Cevipof research director, author of studies on authoritarian temptation. These candidates carry a national story against European construction, globalization, the progress of history. Putin was the herald of this counter-story. But the epic has shifted into reality: it is nationalism in action, not in dream. » Even Jean-Marie Le Pen regrets, from Montretout (Hauts-de-Seine), “the end of the boreal dream” dear to identities, “Europe from Gibraltar to Vladivostok”.
Unlike Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour has made words his best weapon… which turns out to be a drag in times of crisis. “If we had listened carefully to Putin, we would have taken this threat seriously”deciphers the philosopher Michel Eltchaninoff, author of Inside the mind of Vladimir Putin (Actes Sud, 2015), for the media Philonomist. The Russian president was seen as “the bad boy of a good movie”, “who speaks frankly, makes jokes and disturbs the world order”. In this vein, according to Cécile Alduy, semiologist and author of The language of Zemmour (Threshold, 2022), “Zemmour is transparent, it does not bias, it displays color, you just have to read it and listen to it. »
There are two possibilities, continues the professor at Stanford (California): “Either he is in a delirium of adoration of force for force, without lucidity on the geopolitical consequences of this will to power; or he himself believes in a policy of violence, in a xenophobic and authoritarian nationalism which considers human and peoples’ rights secondary. His rhetoric of violence should be taken literally for what it is. “When a gun appears in the story, the logic of the story dictates that it be used sooner or later”, abounds Giuliano da Empoli, former adviser to Matteo Renzi, who published Chaos Engineers (Lattes, 2019). The “ incendiary rhetoric” could “to make voters who were at risk of tipping over think about it”despite still strong anti-immigration and anti-Islam motivations.
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