Public Senate looks at intellectuals in the presidential campaign

Since the beginning of the Fifth Republic, writers, philosophers and economists have been involved in presidential campaigns. Some have chosen to do it in the shadows, others show their support publicly like Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alexandre Jardin or Marek Halter.

For their documentary I think therefore I vote, the intellectuals in the countrysideYves Azéroual and Yves Derai collected the testimonies of these intellectuals.

“It is a French peculiarity because elsewhere we do not group economists, sociologists or philosophers under the term of intellectuals. In France, it has become a form of tradition since Zola and ‘I accuse‘.” emphasizes Yves Derai.
But these statements are not without risk. “They can be wrong, but the presidential election is the supreme commitment. That’s why they want to go there. Some commit themselves against something, against an idea, like Raymond Aron who does not want no communists in government in 1974, explains journalist Yves Derai who adds, there are also those who are committed to issues that are important to them. Jacques Chirac will thus use a note on the social fracture written by Emmanuel Todd to make it a theme of his 1995 campaign.

For the first time in a documentary, Jean-Marie Le Pen returns to the barrage formed against him in the second round of the 2002 presidential election by intellectuals of all stripes. “He has always been irritated by these characters who were able to fight him, give him lessons. He is happy to settle his accounts in this intervention.”, says Yves Derai.

Commitment can also turn into disappointment. After the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, the writer Alexandre Jardin criticized a “marketing product” . André Glucksmann had also expressed public regrets after the accession to power of Nicolas Sarkozy. “By breaking up with the man they supported, they find a form of freedom and that is important to them.”, concludes Yves Derai.