In “L’Affaire Madame”, which appears on Friday, Emmanuelle Anizon, journalist at “Nouvel Obs”, reveals an investigation into the sector which spread the rumor that the First Lady is a transgender woman.
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A rumor that has become an obsession. Since 2017 and the election of Emmanuel Macron, conspiracy theories have regularly spread on social networks claiming that Brigitte Macron, née Trogneux, is in reality a transgender woman whose first name was Jean-Michel. A vast conspiracy has since been at work to hide this change in marital status, according to this rumor which has also resulted in more serious accusations of child abuse brought against the First Lady.
Despite defamation complaints from Brigitte Macron from 2022, the case continues to circulate under different “code names”. To the point of leading the President of the Republic himself to react publicly on March 8. “The worst thing is false information and created scenarios, with people who end up believing it and who upset you, including in your privacy.”denounced Emmanuel Macron.
Well beyond an innocuous celebrity rumor, this theory reflects distrust of power as a real social fact, as noted by journalist Emmanuelle Anizon, who goes back to the origins of this slander in a work published Friday March 22: “The Madam Affair, anatomy of fake news: the day the first lady became a man. She answers questions from franceinfo.
Franceinfo: When was this theory first formulated?
Emmanuelle Anizon : It all started on December 10, 2021 when a person called Natacha Rey, on a completely obscure YouTube channel run by a medium, explained that she had been working for three years to demonstrate that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman. This show, contrary to all expectations, is extremely popular on social networks, hundreds of thousands of times. And it forces Brigitte Macron to intervene on TF1 and RTL, at the beginning of January 2022, that is to say one month later, and to file a complaint for defamation. There are several reasons for this “success”. First, it affects the top of the State and everything linked to the elites and the top of the State. There is absolutely extreme distrust, and there we touch on the first lady. So that immediately arouses interest.
You have infiltrated the environment in which this rumor was born, studied the profile of those who spread it. Who are they ?
There are those I call the “defiant”. It’s important to me because when we say “conspirator”, we are immediately judged. The “challengers” encompass a wider variety of people. We all saw during Covid, in our families, to what extent people around us could have different levels of mistrust. There is the idea of 50 shades of distrust. There are people who are not necessarily marginal, who are not necessarily extremists. On a social level too, it is very diverse. I met very different people. Someone who worked in a bank and who voted for Emmanuel Macron in 2017, an insurer, a young 28-year-old entrepreneur who does cultural events… It’s very important not to caricature. It also arouses the curiosity of ordinary citizens. Because this rumor today, we talk about it at dinners as a joke. It is something which reaches spheres other than the original sphere.
How is the diversity of these profiles explained?
What brings them together, and This is where it is very current as a problem, it is that we are no longer in a right-left interpretation grid. We are in an interpretive grid of rejection of elites, of extreme distrust of elites and institutions, both political and media. There is also a rejection of globalization, particularly economic, and the idea that those who direct this globalization are directing against the populations. This is what brings all these people together. If these people are afraid, are defiant, no longer believe in what they are told, it is also because there have been huge gaps in media and political transparency, and we are paying dearly for it today. ‘today. And in this idea that the elites are bad, there is the idea that they are misguided, that they hide the reality of what they do and what they are, the idea that they lie about their true nature.
“What really bothers them about the idea that Brigitte Macron is transgender is that it would mean that she lied, that she constructed a false story.”
Emmanuelle Anizonfranceinfo
What is their objective in maintaining this rumor?
It’s very variable. Natacha Rey is absolutely sincere in her approach: she has devoted a large part of the last few years to it and she is convinced that she has the truth. It’s not a cynical person who does this for reasons of destabilization. She had a very bad experience with the way her work was received, the way the justice system and the media treated her as a conspiracy theorist and transphobe. It took me several months to convince her to meet me because she was extremely suspicious. Around her, there are plenty of people who are also absolutely sincere in their search for truth. And then, beyond these people, there is obviously a political recovery. This rumor was relayed by Facts and Documents, a fairly confidential newspaper classified to the extreme right, and is linked to the American Trumpists. There, the goal is indeed to destabilize the State. We see today that the American Trumpists are using this Brigitte Macron affair, so we are really in something totally political and geopolitical.
Why does the rumor persist despite its absurd nature?
Reality is often imperfect. When Natacha Rey asks for a birth certificate, the town hall does not answer her and tells her that this birth certificate does not exist, even though it does exist. It breeds distrust. When she saw the wedding photo where Brigitte Macron’s first husband is erased because she doesn’t want us to look back on her life before, it completely fuels mistrust. Natacha Rey relies on these silences, on these imperfections, on all the little flaws to provide proof. The dialogue is very complicated because every time we try to rationalize, there are these imperfections because the world is not square. And each of these flaws is seen as a sign.
By publishing this work, what reaction do you expect from the general public?
Ce livre, j’aimerais bien que ce soit un pont qui permette d’échanger. Pour moi, le plus gros problème aujourd’hui, c’est qu’on n’a plus de dialogue. Il y a un fossé qui s’élargit. On voit bien que ces questions gagnent nos entourages, on ne peut pas continuer à faire semblant de se dire “finalement, tout ça c’est loin et c’est une bande d’abrutis”. J’ai un positionnement d’immersion, de raconter pour essayer de comprendre un phénomène de société dont on sent bien qu’il est de plus en plus important autour de nous et que la simple position de jugement ou de ricanement ne suffit pas. Je me dis que si je peux participer à expliquer le fonctionnement de l’intérieur d’une fake news, c’est utile. C’est le fond de ma démarche.