Gilles-William Goldnadel is a lawyer and essayist. Every week, he deciphers the news for FigaroVox. He publishes
Manual of resistance to far-left fascism
(New editions of Passy, 2021).
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I would like to share with my readers this intuition that I have long nurtured from the fruit of my observations.
I take political opinions from the psychology of passions rather than from reason.
Anger is one.
One of the most remarkable sociological facts of recent years is characterized by the right-winging of opinion.
The result of the first round of the presidential elections only confirms this.
This right-wing movement is only equaled, in a striking contrast, by a journalistic world that is still largely dominated by the left, like the academic or artistic world.
Public service broadcasting is particularly representative of this state of affairs which is reluctant to share fairly.
This contrast shows that the media now exert their influence on the people only in a residual way.
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Several explanations combine.
The power of social networks, and in particular what the media power calls by a term as contemptuous as it is significant the "fachosphere", which I have renamed the "unfortunate sphere", and which has succeeded in splitting the media monopoly and mainly its power hiding the reality that bothers him and conversely focusing on the facts that suit him.
The madness of certain ideological constructions ("Wokism", racialism, theories of gender, Islamo-leftism, etc.) which literally panic a people anchored in reality and which persuaded them with some reasons that the world in the making held asylum or re-education camp.
But there is a complementary and seemingly paradoxical explanation that I want to consider in this column.
I do not rule out the hypothesis that it is precisely because the media are resolutely on the left that the people, irritated, have turned symmetrically to the right.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
A people aware of the identity and security dangers that await them through irresistible massive immigration and exasperated by ideologized media that remain in denial, if not in contempt.
Media without more reliable compasses, thus becoming unpopular for a confused people.
This loss of professional credibility associated with a moral mistrust would explain this loss of influence coupled with a revulsive effect.
Three subjective examples from my subjective personal observation of the past week that have caused my own irritation tempered by habit and resignation:
The Jeremy Cohen case, first, whose bereaved family I assist.
Part of the press considered that the declarations of political leaders were part of "recovery".
This is how receiving Marine Le Pen on Monday, who had expressed her emotion, Madame Salamé questioned her about a possible "instrumentalization".
Same remark by the press review officer, Mr. Askolovitch, referring to this "recovery", regarding an article published by Éric Zemmour in Valeurs Actuelles after the victim's father asked to meet him to help him. .
Thus, for part of the press - curiously joined by the candidate-president who had alleged for his part a "manipulation" - one should not evoke in electoral times the death of
a young Jew attacked by the "rabble" and immediately afterwards run over by a tram.
All within the framework of a police passivity such that the family had to replace the failing investigators to prevent the definitive loss of evidence.
The people would have good reason to think that the only instrumentalization by default would be concealment.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
I am thinking of poor Sarah Halimi (whose family I also assisted) and whose torture followed by assassination by the Islamist Traoré, despite the presence of the police, was conveniently hidden until the second round of the previous elections presidential.
Some mourners no doubt fear that such revelations will favor a candidate rather than a candidate.
Read alsoDeath of Jérémie Cohen: towards a new Sarah Halimi case?
Be that as it may, it will be noted that when, for example, some import the American George Floyd affair onto the French media terrain, without fear of racialism or genuflections, no one is initiating a trial of indecent instrumentalization.
The family of Jeremy Cohen will, on the contrary, have wanted to remain cautious, in the current state of the investigations, as to the anti-Semitic hypothesis.
Second example: the systematic if not systemic media refusal to consider any attack on civilians in Israel as terrorist.
Islamist assassins being considered more delicately as "attackers".
Here again, it is difficult not to note the ideological and obstinate refusal of reality, when it comes to Israel.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
Lastly, and to finish, one will notice this editorial of the
World
of Saturday which
“in the name of the republican values and the national interest”
recommended not to vote neither Le Pen nor Zemmour.
It should be noted above all that the same newspaper was careful, in the name of the same values, to symmetrically warn against a possible extremism of the pro-Castro candidate Mélenchon.
It is difficult not to notice here the spirit of asymmetry and the ideological tropism of a left-wing newspaper, formerly moderate, but perfectly embodying a certain contemporary media extremism far removed from the people.
Already, with the same ideological consistency,
Le Monde
had unsuccessfully published an editorial supporting Jeremy Corbyn against a Boris Johnson accused of being a populist.
The favorite of the World was dryly beaten.
Mr. Mélenchon strangely put this defeat on the back of the chief rabbi of England.
A few weeks later, the English foal of Le Monde and M. Mélenchon together was banned from his Labor Party for virulent anti-Semitism.
On Sunday, the "populist" Johnson was in kyiv, alongside Zelensky, to bring him economic aid and armaments.
You will then be surprised that a certain press no longer prints as before.