EDITORIAL. After the Crépol drama, the escalation of political recovery

The murder of a 16-year-old young man, stabbed during a village festival in Drôme, on the night of Saturday to Sunday triggered a wave of emotion. Many politicians reacted even if it meant exploiting this tragic news item, while the investigation has barely begun.

The attack by a dozen young people against a popular ball, from Saturday night to Sunday, November 19 in the small, quiet village of Crépol, in the Drôme, triggered an escalation of political recovery. The tragedy was enough to strike people’s minds since a 16-year-old young man was killed and eight others were injured. The police are tracking down the fleeing attackers, the investigation is only just beginning, but it only took the far right a few minutes to resolve it.

A “raid”A “massacre” committed by “barbarians”the result of a “war of civilization” or even a “francocide”, these are the terms used pell-mell by Marine Le Pen, Éric Zemmour, Marion Maréchal or Jordan Bardella. The leader of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, denounces him, “a killing committed by scum”. The identity of Crépol’s attackers is, however, still unknown.

A political recovery that does not date from yesterday

The extreme right trying to surf on a tragic news story is a very old practice. As early as the 1980s, National Front executives were scouring the regional daily press in search of perpetrators of crimes with foreign surnames and Jean-Marie Le Pen threw them out to the vindictiveness of his public in his meetings.

The goal is always the same, to stir up emotion, certainly legitimate, and to draw political conclusions from a news item to stigmatize immigration and immigrants in general, always with the pretension of being the only ones to tell the truth. while the media would hide it from the French. This is obviously false, all the newspapers, all the radios and all the television channels deal with the Crépol drama, but only stick to the known facts.

However, the echo of these controversies has changed and the resonance chamber is multiplied. It now only takes a tweet and a few minutes to hysterize discussions on social networks. A practice of which the far right does not have a monopoly. On November 20, the rebellious leaders chose to express indignation on the X platform about a racist attack that occurred in Val-de-Marne.

To each his own victim and to each his own electoral clientele, so to speak. When elected officials turn into influencers in search of buzz to satisfy their community, general interest disappears and politics itself loses what legitimacy remained.