Fabien Roussel was the guest of the presidential mornings of franceinfo, Wednesday January 26. After listening all his speeches for several days, Clément Viktorovitch was able to release his rhetorical signature, and surprise: what characterizes the candidate is that he is a communist!
This is the structure that underlies all of Fabien Roussel’s speech: a systematic opposition between the rich, from whom power must be regained, and the people, to whom he intends to return it. From a rhetorical point of view, this is called an antithesis, but politically, it has another name: it is quite simply class struggle!
So certainly, he dusts off the vocabulary, there is no question of talking about the proletariat which rises against the owners of the means of production. But the purpose is the same: Fabien Roussel places himself on the side of a vast majority which he presents as dominated by a tiny minority. And the communist candidate is not content to affirm it, he also intends to prove it to us.
What we have just heard has a name: they are ethopeia. Ethopeia is a complicated rhetorical term for a simple figure: it is the art of moral description. Throughout his speeches, Fabien Roussel never ceases to outline in a few strokes the portrait of the men and women of the people, whom he meets while campaigning. On the contrary, “the rich” always remain, with Fabien Roussel, an abstract concept. He evokes them without ever embodying them, which makes him, in his argument, an all the more worrying figure.
He thus intends to give proof that he knows this people well, of which he aspires to speak out and defend the interests. And besides, beyond knowing him: he also seems to have at heart to show that he is part of it.
He willingly uses prosaic metaphors and digs heavily into a familiar lexicon: all elements that are characteristic of a popular expression. So, is it in Fabien Roussel a conscious and strategic trait or an unconscious and authentic one? Maybe a bit of both. But in either case, the consequence is the same: Fabien Roussel does not only speak on behalf of the people: he also intends to convince us that he is part of it.
And that is the whole point. Because, despite these rhetorical efforts, it is clear that the results of the Communist Party at the ballot box, as well as the voting intentions in the polls, still remain modest, and this is an understatement. Even though Fabien Roussel intends to carry the voice of the people, how does he explain that the people seem, for him, to refuse him their voices?
Fabien Roussel’s answer and his entire rhetorical portrait by Clément Viktorovitch: