It was sort of a rematch! We remember that the debate had been lively, two weeks ago, between Valérie Pécresse and Éric Zemmour. She was, this time, confronted with one of her main spokespersons. At first it seemed that the two women were going to be able to explore the extent, or the absence for that matter, of their differences. Until one word makes everything go wrong…
“You do like left-wing journalists, you love to fight over words…
– Coming from the extreme right, that’s huge!
– I’m not extreme right! And I don’t consider the National Rally to be far-right.”
Are Marion Maréchal and, by extension, Éric Zemmour far-right? This was obviously the main issue of the debate. And again, I left half the occurrences aside: that tells you the place this question took in the discussion.
From a political science perspective, the far right is a meaningful concept. It has been worked on by several researchers, so that it has been and, to a certain extent, still remains a relevant tool within electoral sociology. The problem is that in the public debate, this word has taken on a negative connotation, so that no political leader claims it anymore. It has become, in fact, a scarecrow: a concept that we launch and defend ourselves from, and which therefore becomes less and less convenient for categorizing the political field.
But this controversy around a label has nevertheless been of interest from the point of view of political debate. Because after a while, Marion Maréchal ended up explicitly asking Valérie Pécresse if, for her, Éric Zemmour was on the far right. And his answer is not so clear as that: “You are the division of the extreme right. The extreme right is Marine Le Pen, and there is you who divided your own family, who left your aunt… Zemmour wants the merger, he is accomplice of the far right because he will end up joining forces and voting for Marine Le Pen.”
Éric Zemmour would therefore be an “accomplice” of the far right, therefore, in fact, without being on the far right himself. But yet, Marion Maréchal had been accused two minutes earlier of being on the far right… Unless, in fact, no: it was Marion Maréchal LE PEN who was on the far right. Valerie Pécresse: “Madame Maréchal walks masked. A little Le Pen, a little Marshal. A little extreme right, and from time to time not really…”
So that’s where we’ve come to! It is no longer even a debate on political etiquette, but on the surname of one of the two interlocutors: that is to say if we are far from a substantive discussion.
The procrastination of candidate LR can be explained quite simply: the ambiguity of her attack is explained by the ambiguity of her political positioning. She seeks to distinguish herself from Éric Zemmour, while addressing a part of her electorate. It has also taken up some of its concepts: the great replacement, the great downgrading, the French paper, etc. This is why she tries to afflict him with the accusatory concept of the extreme right… while clearing him of it, so as not to offend potential voters. And this is not the first time this has happened.
Since the debate in this presidential campaign, a large part of the duels we have witnessed have not opposed political adversaries, but rather competitors. The result is debates that are as little divided on the proposals as they are fierce on the expression. I don’t know who the winner was last night. The losers, on the other hand, are the citizens, who are still waiting for a major debate on the substance!