Arnaud Benedetti is editor-in-chief of the Political and Parliamentary Review and Associate Professor at Paris Sorbonne University. He publishes
How are the policies dead ?, The great malaise of power
(ed. Du Cerf, November 4, 2021).
Éric Zemmour wanted to strike a blow. Far from communicating languages and their portmanteau words, his declaration of candidacy video is a rise in dramaturgy, a dive into the soul of France, a call first of all whose microphone as close as possible to the narrator does not constitute nothing more than a nod to General de Gaulle on June 18. Some will find this address emphatic, others will see it as a break with the lukewarm waters of communication. The hour is therefore erected as that of resistance and combat. Thus the Zemmourian gesture intends to breathe new life into a pre-candidacy, in difficulty for a few days, now transmuted into candidacy. It was necessary to turn the page of a bumping engine. It is immediately done, in theexpectation that this will remain sustainable, which has yet to be demonstrated. The stage is set. It will be national, but even more French, that is to say in accordance with the dominant imagination of the country. Zemmour intends to be this Frenchman who speaks to the French, it remains to be seen which ones because the question will not fail to be put to him by his contemptors.
This text is voluntarily a hymn to the past, to the grandeur of this past, and to the internal exile of which many French women and men would feel the hostages.
Arnaud Benedetti
Formally, there is first a quest for aesthetics, a disserting classicism, the reactivation of a literary and historical France. It is written, read, illustrated, set to music, without teleprompter, in-depth library as if the presence of the book was there to recall the cultural roots of politics at the moment when it seems to have deserted them. This text is voluntarily a hymn to the past, to the grandeur of this past, and to the internal exile of which many French women and men would feel the hostages. Basically, Zemmour is and remains Schmittian first: he points to the opponent, the one who in his eyes replaces and does not assimilate but especially the one who would have betrayed: the parade of political professionals, competing former ministers or themselves ex-presidents, the head of theState in activity also, but also of these opinion leaders, emblematic of the elites said the officials, imputes the responsibilities, does not intend to spare them, a sort of column of abandonment thus designated to national sagacity. Only Marine le Pen escapes the whistleblower scope.
The narrative construction, necessarily, leaves out of scope any element of nuance, and it is somewhere fair game: here no room for the ambivalence of a "at the same time", everything rests on the clarification of the stake. .
Arnaud Benedetti
The background has undeniably found the only suitable form: a tense narrative that befits the candidate's approach, all of fighting, highlighting contrasts through a superposition of present anxiety-inducing, sometimes violent images and images of yesterday, harmonious and happy. The narrative construction, necessarily, leaves out of scope any element of nuance, and it is somewhere fair game: here no room for the ambivalence of a "at the same time", everything rests on the clarification of the stake. . Declineism is not inevitable. The title of his latest book,
France has not said its last word
, prepared the ground for the launching of the whistleblower which was not, according to his words, listened to.
The rubicond is now crossed: “alea jacta est”.
Certainly the opening is rather successful;
it remains to be seen if it will perform and in what condition beyond a single prologue.
