Tribune. Singular temporal concordance. November 15 was published in The world a forum from a collective of 285 women from politics and academia demanding that “Stop the omerta” and “ the perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence are excluded ” of political life. A #metoo extended to spheres which until then seemed preserved: those of power. Those who, barely a week later, suffered a real earthquake with the fall of Nicolas Hulot.
No causal link between the two events, the collapse of the latter due to journalistic investigative work carried out for more than four years, like an amplified response to the shock that the person concerned had to face in 2018 with his questioned by the newspaper Ebdo [dans des affaires de harcèlement et d’agression sexuelle]. One week apart, therefore, which makes the mirror effect all the more striking. Because, with Nicolas Hulot, it is first and foremost a whole system of representations that is undermined. The one who suddenly falls off his pedestal is precisely the one who pranced at the head of the favorite political figures of the French for many, many years. A living quasi-myth in a way.
A lookout, an icon
Better, he had made the cause now the most consensual – the climate – the fight of his life. A lookout and an icon. One would have also thought that the fight for ecology made it possible to nurture a different relationship to the world and to its fellow human beings, manifesting towards all of these an empathy and care in the form of political coherence. No one is a prophet in his country: we discover that this is not the case or, rather, we find confirmation, after the already resounding “Baupin affair” [L’enquête ouverte en mai 2016 contre Denis Baupin, alors député écologiste, pour agressions et harcèlements sexuels]. But what is equally striking is the line of defense adopted by the respondent, who immediately invited himself to a television set, preceding the broadcast of the report incriminating him. A line of defense therefore set before the person even knew of the facts against him, through the story of a dozen women testifying against him of sexual assault and rape.
Using the stance and hackneyed arguments taken out of the “survival kit” of the politician involved, between vehement denial and oiled rhetoric, Nicolas Hulot in turn invoked his scorned honor, his dirty name, his bruised relatives, the court media that does not deliver justice but orders lynching, the end of his political struggle and even his own social death. The presumed innocent already condemned by the pack, become a victim of his self-proclaimed victims with the greedy complicity of journalists. Affirming “Fall from the clouds”, do not have “Neither near nor far committed these acts”, qualifying “These affirmations” – which he was not aware of – of “Purely false”.
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