In an interview with Provence Wednesday January 5, Valérie Pécresse candidate The Republicans for the presidential election affirms to want “bring the Kärcher out of the cellar.” A explicit reference, of course, to the comments made by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2005 at La Courneuve. This formula has become a real rhetorical standard.
An expression whose objective is less to carry a proposal than to call for mobilization. And to convince us of this, we have to go back to its origin. We are in June 2005. A young boy in La Courneuve, in the city of 4000, is the victim of two stray bullets during a settling of scores. Nicolas Sarkozy was then Minister of the Interior. He goes to the apartment of the victim’s family, without any camera, and it is in this context that he declares “we are going to clean up the city of 4000 at the Kärcher”.
There is no camera but the interview was reported by a journalist of the world, who was present with the family, but that Nicolas Sarkozy had not noticed. Jean-François Achilli, journalist at franceinfo, recounts it in his book, The firm Sarkozy. The expression is shocking, but the Minister of the Interior persists. He reaffirmed it a few days later, in the News of France 2. “I spent two and a half hours in this city, declares Nicolas Sarkozy. And what did the locals tell me? That they can’t take it anymore. And that they don’t understand why the state tolerates what we wouldn’t tolerate anywhere else. So those who cry out and are shocked by the verb to clean. I confirm that. My duty is to clean the city of the 4000 from trafficking and traffickers. “
The metaphor is as striking as it is pejorative: voluntary or not, it instantly becomes one of the emblems of Nicolas Sarkozy’s communication. And 16 years later, it’s exactly the same expression that we find in Valérie Pécresse. The Republican candidate, traveling to Salon-de-Provence on Thursday, January 6, takes the opportunity to reiterate her statements: “We must bring out the Kärcher, it has been stored in the cellar by François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron for 10 years. Today, it is time to clean up the neighborhoods. We must track down the bosses, the thugs, the criminals, the dealers . They are the ones who must be harassed. They are the ones who must be punished. They are the ones who must be deprived of their citizenship. ” “You have to bring out the Katrcher “,” it’s time to clean up the quarters “, it’s Nicolas Sarkozy in the text.
In practice, the proposals of candidate Les Républicains nevertheless remain vague. “The caïds, thugs, criminals, dealers “, she tells us, “you have to hunt them down, harass them, punish them.” She even adds wanting “deprive them of their citizenship”. Okay, sure, but how? With what concrete proposal? It is still very vague. Hence this notion of rhetorical standard. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether the proposals are vague and the metaphors worn out. The image of “cities cleaned with kärcher” is used neither for what it wears, nor for what it evokes, but rather for what it mobilizes. In the eyes of LR voters, it is a rallying cry, which allows us to play on an emotional fiber: nostalgia for the Sarkozy government. The converse is also true, for left-wing voters, “the Kärcher“remains a foil.
We therefore understand the tactics underlying Valérie Pécresse’s statement. Since Emmanuel Macron made shocking comments about the vaccination pass, the risk for her is to appear moderate, and therefore inaudible. By seeking the cleavage, it tries to refocus the political debate around itself. It is a classic of electoral communication. Think, for example, of the “Gaullian” heritage. It is now claimed by a very large part of political leaders, to the point that we no longer know exactly what it designates. We had also observed this, among environmentalists, around the term “radicalism”. From Sandrine Rousseau to Yannick Jadot, everyone claimed responsibility, without what we always understand how their positions were radical.