Consultant and political analyst, Mathieu Slama works for several media, notably Le Figaro. He has published
The War of the Worlds, Reflections on Putin's Crusade Against the West
, (ed. De Fallois, 2016).
To discover
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The Youtubeur president has metamorphosed, during the summer break, into an Instagrammer president. In a t-shirt and then in a polo shirt from his resort, the Head of State offered his followers to ask him questions about vaccination and to answer them with short explanatory and educational videos, taken by him- even in "selfie" format. A process widely used by influencers on Instagram (whatever usage means that this kind of "question-answer" videos is done as a story and not as a post as is the case for the Head of State), but unprecedented for a President of the Republic, which also caused a lot of reaction on social networks, sometimes with amusement, which was undoubtedly also the desired goal.Emmanuel Macron therefore continues his “cool” and “young” communication strategy, after the (unfortunate) episode of McFly and Carlito.
The president duplicated this operation on TikTok, even authorizing himself, below one of the videos posted on the platform, an exchange with the fitness YouTuber TiboInShape which was obviously prepared by Macron's communication services: “
Is- what injecting the vaccine makes you gain muscle
”- Macron's response:“
Nothing replaces sport! On the other hand, the vaccine strengthens our defenses against the virus
”. A surreal exchange, which shows to what extent the Head of State has definitively abandoned any desire to resacralize the function, doing the exact opposite of what he had announced in 2017 and deeply damaging all the symbolism of presidential power.
If it is Emmanuel Macron himself who commits, it is because Jean Castex and Olivier Véran no longer convince anyone.
Mathieu slama
The “cool” presidency definitely buries the symbolic presidency.
There are objective reasons for this: to reach a young audience more reluctant to vaccination than its elders, to counter the anti-ax information which circulates a lot on Instagram and TikTok, not to leave the field free to opponents during the summer period.
And if it is Emmanuel Macron himself who commits, it is because Jean Castex and Olivier Véran are no longer audible and no longer convince anyone.
Sad reality of a period when the President of the Republic is forced to improvise influencer to reach a wide audience.
It is first and foremost an admission of failure.
But that is not the point.
What is striking about these videos is the change in tone they make.
We see the Head of State speaking in a peaceful manner, expressing his wish to respond to fears and concerns around vaccination, its side effects, its usefulness even for a young audience who is not at home. risk.
Even though he can not help specifying that we hear "
anything
" about the vaccine, we see that the tone is very different from that which has been used for several weeks to urge the French to vaccinate. .
Let’s judge instead. On July 25, Emmanuel Macron denounced, from French Polynesia, "
the irresponsibility and selfishness
" of the unvaccinated. At about the same time, a parliamentarian close to Macron confided in "off" to the newspaper Marianne that it was necessary to "
hysterize the debate
" so that people decide to be vaccinated. A week earlier, government spokesman Gabriel Attal made remarks of great violence against anti-pass demonstrators, describing “
a capricious and defeatist fringe, very in the minority, who would be happy to stay in the chaos and inactivity
”.
The anti-passes are reduced, by the government, to conspiratorial antivax and dangerous for democracy, even though many of them are not against vaccination.
Mathieu slama
Besides that, not a day goes by without a member of the government resorting to blackmail, responsibility and solidarity: “
Be responsible!
Be united!
They recite in chorus, implicitly accusing the unvaccinated of irresponsibility and selfishness.
Guilt rather than explanation, demonization rather than respect for each other's feelings, hysterization rather than rational and enlightened dialogue: this is what the government's strategy looks like since the start of the vaccination campaign and the establishment of the sanitary pass.
The anti-passes are reduced, by the government, to conspiratorial antivax and dangerous for democracy, even though many of them are not against vaccination and their main concern is the decline in freedoms and the establishment of a discriminatory system for the unvaccinated.
But here it is, last Saturday, the anti-pass demonstrations were an indisputable success, higher than the previous weekend: 200,000 demonstrators throughout France according to the Ministry of the Interior (perhaps double in reality), and especially a poll indicating that 50% of the French "
understood
" the anti-pass movement, while 40% of them "
supported
" it.
Here is the fundamental reason for this change of tone: the government is afraid, and understands that the strategy of the division has its limits.
His error was twofold: on the one hand, he underestimated the symbolic and legal rupture introduced by the sanitary pass, in many respects even greater than confinement;
on the other hand, to have divided society by its rhetoric and its discriminatory measures to such a degree that the situation escaped it.
The strategy of division of the government was simple: to create in the person of the unvaccinated one figure of scapegoat able to unite and consolidate its electorate in view of 2022. A cynical, opportunistic and dangerous strategy.
Health pass or confinement.
This false dilemma, logically and ethically absurd, works like blackmail.
Mathieu slama
It would be wrong, however, to interpret these circumstantial videos as a profound change in strategy. Because the basis of the rhetoric does not change. In one of the videos he posted, Emmanuel Macron takes up the false dilemma that the government keeps hammering in its communication: "
If we did not have the health pass today, then we would have been forced to close
”. In other words: health pass or confinement. This false dilemma, absurd from the point of view of both logic and ethics, works like blackmail: "
either you accept the health pass, or we will re-define you."
". With behind a speech deeply guilty for the unvaccinated, accused of plunging the country back into restrictions and deprivation of freedoms. Macron, in his videos, even went so far as to say that thanks to the health pass, the deprivations concerned only a few (the unvaccinated) and not all the French, and that it was to be rejoiced. Funny time when you should therefore be delighted to be discriminated against based on your state of health to avoid a total deprivation of freedoms! On the basis of the government's discourse, therefore, nothing changes.
Worse, the natural always comes back at a gallop. In the pages of
Paris Match
this week, Emmanuel Macron has thus returned to the offensive against the unvaccinated, attacking "a
few tens of thousands of citizens losing their senses as they can say that we are living in dictatorship
”, adding that he“
would not give in to their radical violence
”, and that“
their attitude is a threat to democracy
”and the cause of“
permanent disorder
”. What to continue to stir up the division and to swell the ranks of the anti-pass demonstrations on Saturday, August 7. The worst-case strategy, therefore, with unforeseeable consequences.