Whether on social networks or during various debates, the political climate is getting worse every day in France since the Hamas attack.
Emmanuel Macron is traveling to Israel on Tuesday October 24. The day before, Monday, it was the hemicycle of the National Assembly which burst into flames. No major incident but an electric climate. Élisabeth Borne targeted the rebels, asserting that “minimising, justifying or even exonerating terrorism means accepting that it will strike again tomorrow in Israel, in France or elsewhere”. Mathilde Panot responded by accusing the government of being indifferent to the fate of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza. But it is especially on X, the former Twitter, that political responsibilities are pouring into indecent verbal violence.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been singled out but he is not the only one. On Sunday, as we said, he retweeted a video showing pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Place de la République, with this comment: “Here is France. Meanwhile Madame Braun-Pivet is camped in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre” of Palestinians. Outcry. Very moved, the President of the Assembly accused the Insoumis of hanging a target on her back. Remember that Yaël Braun-Pivet has just filed a complaint because she has been subjected to a torrent of anonymous anti-Semitic threats. But on Monday, Laurent Wauquiez went a little further into ignominy.
He retweeted the same video with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s comment, but adding his own: “Collaboration, 80 years later”. Yes, “collaboration”which means that for Laurent Wauquiez, there is an occupier, in this case this crowd made up of many foreigners or French people of foreign origin brandishing Palestinian flags.
Anti-Semitism, racism, demagoguery
The far right is accustomed to this kind of slippage, but here it is Laurent Wauquiez, who aspires to represent a party called the Republicans in 2027, who succumbs to the Godwin point, the zero degree of political thought. In fact, each new dramatic episode of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict awakens evil passions in our country: anti-Semitism, more than 588 anti-Semitic acts and 336 arrests in two weeks, racism, or quite simply bistro demagoguery when Gérald Darmanin accuses , without proof, Karim Benzema to join the Muslim Brotherhood.
The role of social networks, the weight of the extreme right, the overbidding of the radical left or the threat of Islamist terrorism, everything accumulates to outline a clash between two Frances. And the government is struggling, for the moment, to make a reasonable, calming and unifying speech heard.