Storm in a glass of water or fundamental differences at Les Républicains?
Guilhem Carayon defends the first analysis.
The president of the Young Republicans provoked contrasting reactions within his own camp after appearing on one of the magazine
L'Incorrect
alongside Stanislas Rigault, his Zemmourist counterpart, and Pierre-Romain Thionnet, boss of young RNs.
In reality, more than the interview, in which Guilhem Carayon believes that only an LR candidacy will be able to win the next presidential election, it is the illustrated title of the cover of L'Incorrect which is causing controversy.
“
The Republicans.
Reconquest!
National rally.
Young people cut the cord
”, headlines the magazine openly favorable to the union of the rights and referring to the famous formula of the “sanitary cord” between the right and the extreme right.
The cover of the Incorrect DR
“
It revolted me
,” explains François Durovray.
President LR of the Essonne department discovered this cover while he was surveying the Agricultural Show.
He then immediately split a tweet to claim the head of the president of young LR.
“
Inadmissible to highlight commonalities with far-right parties without talking about what fundamentally differentiates us first.
These remarks lead to fatal confusion.
I ask Eric Ciotti to dismiss Guilhem Carayon
”.
A request to which President LR does not intend to respond.
On the I24News channel, he felt that the comments made were in line with the LR line.
On Twitter, deputy Julien Dive thanked François Durovray for his reaction, without going so far as to ask for a resignation as he explains to
Figaro
.
For the parliamentarian from Aisne, the president of young LR has above all committed a "
fault on the form
".
"
Debating with our opponents is not the problem but being very clearly displayed in a newspaper connoted with explicit coverage and messages sent leaving the feeling of a kind of compromise with the extreme right which would be building
".
Pierre-Henri Dumont, his parliamentary colleague from Pas-de-Calais extends the criticism by denouncing a "
political fault
".
"
Guilhem finds himself on the cover with people who deeply want us dead because in reality, the business of Le Pen and Zemmour is to kill LR
”, notes the deputy.
Having drafted the autonomous statutes of the Young LRs, he too does not want any sanction for their president, but he believes that he should never have accepted this interview so as not to fall into a “trap
”
.
Guilhem Carayon claims not to have been aware of how the magazine was going to title these cross interviews and not to be "
fooled by the power of the image which sometimes exceeds that of the word
".
"
99% of the people who attack me did not understand what I wanted to say
", he continues, without considering himself "
responsible
" for the editorial line of
L'Incorrect
and defending himself from any compromise.
"
I would even have been contradictory with this title knowing that in the 12 pages of my interview I defend the exact opposite, a line of independence as much with regard to Macronism as Lepenism
".
“I am not a sectarian”
However, the president of young LR admits to being a little tired of having to justify himself and believes that the criticisms aimed at him are unfounded.
Like that of having agreed to debate with representatives more to the right than him.
“
Me, I am not sectarian, I am not a member of rebellious France, I am a Republican, I shake hands with everyone and I debate in accordance with the basis of our democratic system”, insists the
door- speak LR, claiming the need to "
descend
" in all arenas.
“
Debating with a communist as I did recently on the France insoumise Youtube channel did not make me an admirer of Lenin.
And debating with the RN
this time will not make me a lepenist either
".
He assumes the fact of “
systematically accepting
” all the interviews offered to him, whatever the media.
He also recalls another intervention on the chain of Current Values with Ambroise Méjean, president of young people with Macron and Stanislas Rigault, spokesperson for Generation Z.
“
Going to defend the convictions of our movement everywhere and all the time is my responsibility and my duty.
People who read these newspapers might be convinced by our ideas.
42% of French people voted for Marine Le Pen in the presidential election.
We have to get them back.
And I prefer substantive debates to anathemas or even silences which would correspond to a form of contempt for these voters
, ”he insists.
Bruno Retailleau clearly supported him on Thursday morning on BFM-TV.
“
Guilhem Carayon was respectful of the party line... That there are points of convergence, for example on a report of immigration which is massive, that does not shock me.
Democracy is debate
“, defended the president of the senators LR.
"Police of Smiles"
Guilhem Carayon regrets that some of his colleagues reacted on the front page of the newspaper without having "
taken the time
" to read his words.
Knowing that Xavier Bertrand was expected Thursday on RMC, he sent him a message of explanation to avoid any ambiguity.
"
I don't want some LR representatives
to believe something I didn't say
."
And if some, like the deputy Dumont, reproach him for being reckless with this photo where he appears “
smiling with his gaze turned towards the RN
”, Carayon replies: “
It would be ridiculous to be the police of smiles.
You can't lower yourself to that level
."
François Durovray however criticizes him for sentences revealing, according to him, a “
certain intellectual proximity
” with his interlocutors.
"
What is highly reproachable are the words he makes
", points out the chosen one.
To this accusation, Guilhem Carayon responds in a tone of regret: “Too
bad, he falls into the trap of our adversaries, uneducated censors on the left who want to ban us from debating.
He is the one who is having it in this case and moreover, the DNA
of the right, intrinsically, is freedom of thought, debate and conscience.
My generation is perhaps more sensitive to the decline in freedoms than his because it is undergoing this phenomenon
".
A subject that the president of Young LR has already included in the menu of his next internal work.