Few Quebecers are aware of the exceptional place that the sociologist and columnist in Journal of Montreal Mathieu Bock-Côté has managed to carve out intellectual life and political debates in France.
We are not talking here of a simple media success, but of a real power of influence, among other things the possibility of influencing politics over there in the context of the crucial French presidential election that is coming.
French seduced
The Québécois has completely seduced the French with his acute intelligence and virtuosity, objectively doing honor to a Quebec that is still sometimes perceived as not completely sided in our former motherland.
Not handicapped as he is here by his rather simplistic conviction that sovereignty would be the magic solution to all the ills of Quebec, Bock-Côté turns out in France to be less dogmatic than the intellectuals of the left as of the right, of Bernard-Henri -Lévy to Michel Onfray, whom the system spirit imprisons in their certainties.
Largely convincing, the thesis of The racialist revolution, the last work of the Québécois acclaimed in France, is that we are witnessing the rise of a new racism under the guise of anti-racism. The whole question is whether the essayist does not dramatize the case too much.
His status as a Quebecer having fairly protected him from criticism so far, Bock-Côté has established himself as a new thinker of the intelligent right in the newspaper. Le Figaro and the CNews television channel.
At the latter, he took the place, as political commentator, of the one everyone is talking about these days, “the French intellectual Trump”, the polemicist Éric Zemmour, whom he is expected to soon declare. his candidacy for the presidential election.
This is where it starts to get interesting for those who follow politics, among other things because sometimes it is made of things that were not supposed to happen but do happen nonetheless.
Marine Le Pen invigorated
Just two weeks ago, one could reasonably think that the political career of the head of the National Rally and main opponent of President Macron was over. Marine Le Pen appeared doubled on his right by the meteoric progress of Eric Zemmour who freed the French political debate from an extremely heavy right-thinking in immigration matters.
Let us recall that, unlike Quebec, French society is faced with the non-integration of a large number of immigrants, particularly from Algeria where, 50 years after independence, animosity – not to say hatred – still reigns. with regard to France, as President Macron was not afraid to assert recently.
But is it not that the political flavor of the day has perhaps just made the mistake too many, the one that will have been fatal.
Éric Zemmour launched on November 13 in an indecent partisan political diatribe publicized across the country in front of the Le Bataclan performance hall, the very day we commemorated the appalling carnage of six years ago, when 130 young spectators of a rock concert had been brutally murdered, one by one for hours, by Islamic terrorists.
The consequences of this gross lack of judgment and sensitivity were immediate for a Zemmour quickly dropped by major supporters like Jean-Marie Le Pen and the influential mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, his progress in the polls being stopped while Marine Le Pen seems to have regained the advantage.
The irony is that not only has the latter recovered her chances of facing Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential election, but that she finds herself potentially stronger for the gift Zemmour gives her by presenting herself as a much more brutal political figure. and extreme than his.
And this is where the role of a Bock-Côté can become significant, a moment close to Eric Zemmour, who has already spoken of him as a “friend”.
The Quebecker finds himself in a delicate situation. Either he will be able to distance himself from Eric Zemmour, which is sure to make noise in France with the accusations of opportunism and disloyalty that could ensue, or he will lose credibility by remaining associated with someone. one who has demonstrated that he has no judgment and who can be dangerous. To be continued…
Post Scriptum
We hope that Premier Legault’s interest in hockey will give him time to pursue his reflection on the application of Bill 101 at the college level.
Because it is a choice that he could regret for a long time, the most important structuring decision that he will have had to make in linguistic and identity matters in a mandate of which we begin to wonder if, beyond pandemic, it will not be limited to fine words that poorly camouflage fear of risk and the rise of mediocrity.
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