The writer and essayist Patrick Buisson, a figure of the conservative right, has died at the age of 74, Le Figaro learned on Tuesday 26 December. He was an adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidency from 2007 to 2012, during which he defended an "uninhibited right" and the promotion of a discourse on "national identity".
As early as the 1980s, as a journalist, Patrick Buisson campaigned for a union of the right in order to block the left and the alliance between the Socialists and the Communists, which had favoured the victory of François Mitterrand. Regularly at odds with the National Front since the time of Jean-Marie Le Pen, he led Philippe de Villiers' campaign for the 1994 European elections and then the 1995 presidential election.
"The People's Cause"
In 2016, he supported François Fillon in the LR primary for the presidential election. Also an adviser to Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, he has regularly criticised the National Rally for its strategy aimed at the left-wing electorate, on the contrary moving closer to Marion Maréchal. In April 2023, he told Le Point that "the RN will never come to power as long as Marine Le Pen is its candidate". During the 2022 presidential election, he had instead moved closer to Éric Zemmour, the Reconquête candidate, with whom he appeared alongside Philippe de Villiers.
A political advisor, Patrick Buisson was also a prolific intellectual, the author of some twenty books. In 2016, he published La Cause du peuple, a best-selling essay in which he harshly judged Nicolas Sarkozy's five-year term. In 2021 and 2023, he published two major books, The End of a World, and Décadanse, in which this "uncontemporary", an avowed Catholic, described the decline of the West. From 2007 to 2018, Patrick Buisson was also director of the television channel Histoire. A member of Action Française in his youth, he was a journalist at the far-right weekly Minute from 1981 to 1987 and then joined the conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles.
Read alsoPatrick Buisson: "Western society commits suicide by dancing"
Patrick Buisson has been in trouble with the law for his political consultancy activities. He was first convicted in 2014 for recording discussions with Nicolas Sarkozy at the Élysée Palace, without his knowledge. The following year, he was indicted in the case of the Élysée polls - 130 invoices for advice, including about fifteen polls, paid by the presidency of the Republic without prior calls for tenders. He was sentenced in January 2022 to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of €150,000 for concealment of favouritism, misuse of company assets and embezzlement of public funds.
For several months, Patrick Buisson had been writing his memoirs, nourished by portraits of the political and intellectual figures whose paths he had crossed over the past half century.