Stéphane Rozès is a teacher at Sciences Po and president of the Cap.
FIGAROVOX. - 12,500 people at his meeting, seven giant screens, blue, white, red light jets… What does the scenography of Éric Zemmour's meeting inspire you?
Stéphane ROZÈS. -
We judge the scenography of a meeting from its consistency with the image and the message that the candidate wants or should convey to his supporters, potential electorates and to the country.
After the Zemmour rocket which, with a bang, succeeded in imposing the theme of France in the presidential election, placing it in the voting intentions in the second round, then, a decline following its positions on French Jews and Vichy, on the immigration-terrorism link at Bataclan and the oppositions in Marseille, and finally, in the continuation of a video of successful candidacy and a failed interview on TF1, and which was supposed, as usual, to allow him to specify his motivations and his project, it was decisive for him to succeed in this meeting.
The former journalist, essayist and polemicist, split the crowd like the Red Sea to climb onto the platform in front of an imposing desk and the crowd, which thus dubbed the candidate to his cheers.
Stephane Rozès
Beyond the popular success in these times of pandemic and despite opposition in the street, from his point of view, the form of the meeting was consistent with the necessary construction of a presidential credibility in terms of incarnation and beginning project.
Breaking with the current meetings marked by a profusion of speakers, videos and festive festive moments, the scenography was classic as if to return to the fundamentals of the country, because the Zemourian "reconquest" passes through the direct, vertical meeting without mediation between the candidate. and the tricolor assistance, a metaphor for the French people and a National Story.
The former journalist, essayist and polemicist, split the crowd like the Red Sea to climb onto the platform in front of an imposing desk and the crowd, which thus dubbed the candidate to his cheers.
"
The sovereign interprets the spectacle of the people"
said Hobbes.
The scenography and the words of the candidate as the savior of France threatened with decline and replacement by another culture, were to be illustrated by the staging of a slender candidate whose only strength comes from that of the imposing assistance and French face to all those who want to prevent its "reconquest".
Read alsoEric Zemmour's meeting: "When the essayist appropriates the codes of the politician"
The Napoleonic
"Impossible is not French"
set a demanding ambition for everyone.
The centrality of the chiseled speech, the choice of discreet glasses and the teleprompter should reinforce the idea of commitment between the candidate and the French, the seriousness and the spontaneity and precision of the subject.
The sequences of the crowd taking up slogans and Marseillaise intersecting the speech of the candidate who has fun and lets the crowd unfold were a metaphor for a conversation established with the country.
Thus, the Zemmour meeting, by making it presidential, relaunches its dynamic.
The media, judges, as well as politicians were booed during this meeting. Eric Zemmour has he definitively completed his Trumpist transformation?
In the United States, populism against Washington is traditional and recurring.
In France, Eric Zemmour is in the tradition of Bonaparte.
Raymond Aron indicates that fascism does not have a stable cultural base in France.
On the other hand, popular Caesarism is the expression
"of a sentimental and political crystallization which can be done around a leader without glorious ancestry".
(1)
Eric Zemmour made the concern over the fate of France, from latent in the depths of the country, to manifest.
Stephane Rozès
In the current moment, with financial capitalism which prevents one from projecting into a better future, from the mid-1990s there is a popular feeling according to which there would be on one side the elites: financiers, rulers, great leaders company, senior magistrates, journalists, political scientists controlling their future and on the other hand, a people of individuals left to their own devices. As if the former had captured the control of the course of things to the detriment of their responsibilities and representations of the latter.
Eric Zemmour launched to his activists: “If they hate me, it's because they hate you; if they despise me, it is because they despise you. You, this people they had underestimated, whom they even thought they had gotten rid of ”. Is playing on the anger of potential voters a good strategy?
The movement of "yellow vests" was an unforeseen great jacquerie, supported by two French out of three, notwithstanding the violence condemned.
"Macron feeds your people",
this "yellow vests" sign says enough about its nature, both fiscal and social but also political, of questioning the lord, sovereign and republican monarch on his duties whose power comes from the French and not from Parasitic aristocracies, powerful or technostructures.
To read also Clip of Éric Zemmour: "Let speak those with whom we do not agree"
Éric Zemmour thinks of giving a political outlet and of sovereignty to a movement which in its deep anthropological political reasons has not been understood, hence a divide which has not been bridged. (2)
"
I reach out to voters, executives, supporters, Republicans, many of whom were represented by my friend Eric Ciotti,
"
he concluded.
After this meeting, can he hope for the rallying of the disappointed with the LR Congress and more broadly the government right?
Valérie Pécresse won politically but the nature of the debates and results of the first round indicates that Eric Ciotti won ideologically because Éric Zemmour made the concern about the fate of France, from latent in the depths of the country, to manifesto .
It is still too early to know if this is a tremor or an earthquake.
In the latter case, if Éric Zemmour continues to preside, specifies his project and builds a rallying capacity, then nothing is excluded.
Marine le Pen is always there in ambush with its popular anchorage.
Macron in a context of multiple concerns remains the candidate for reinsurance and lesser evil.
It's up to Valérie Pécresse to build her path.
She has strong personal assets but challenges to build a singularity and political coherence.
(1) L'ombre des Bonaparte, R. Aron, 1943, London.
(2) “The yellow vests, a French jacquerie”
,
S. Rozès, Political and parliamentary review, March 2019.
