these four times when Emmanuel Macron took up the speech of the far right

“Civil war”, “immigrationist”, “decivilization” or “human-rights”… All these terms have one thing in common: Emmanuel Macron used them even though they are more commonly (or even exclusively) used by various far-right political movements. In the aftermath of the second round of the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, the President of the Republic promised to stand as a bulwark against the rise of the far right in the country. However, he found himself repeating its words, and even its ways of thinking about the world. For the researchers interviewed, this strategy “accustomed to thinking” like the far right.

“Civil War” (June 2024)

Éric Zemmour says he listened to Emmanuel Macron with “an ironic smile”when the President of the Republic spoke of “civil war” during a podcast, Monday June 24. “I have been using this word for a very long time”boasted the president of Reconquest on the franceinfo set, then unfolding his theory about two peoples, “the French and the Islamo-leftist people led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon”which are opposed in France.

The President of the Republic does not develop the same theory at all, but he uses the same term: the extreme right “refers people to a religion or an origin”, “split” And “pushes for civil war”said Emmanuel Macron in the podcast for “Do It Yourself Generation”. He then criticized France Insoumise (LFI) which proposes “a form of communitarianism”, “it’s also the civil war behind it.”

Using the same words is of course “done on purpose and it’s meant to scare”underlines Cécile Alduy, professor at Stanford University and associate researcher at Cevipof at Sciences-Po in Paris. “To scare, in fact, is the fundamental strategy of far-right discourse. When you read Éric Zemmour, when you read Jean-Marie Le Pen, they present an apocalyptic picture of France today and of tomorrow, if we do not agree with their vision of the world”, recalls this specialist of the extreme right. So even if Emmanuel Macron does not mention the same civil war as that of the president of Reconquest, “The strategy of fear is already a characteristic of far-right rhetoric.“.

Another image provoked by these terms, suggesting that France “is divided and we cannot live together”. Rhetoric is dangerous, according to Cécile Alduy, since it accustoms the French to “having enemies rather than having a discourse not only of union, but also of democracy where we have the right to disagree without it leading to civil war.”

“Immigrationist” (June 2024)

Six days before talking about “civil war”the President of the Republic had already attacked the political program of the New Popular Front of which LFI is a part, during of a trip to the island of Sein (Finistère), Tuesday June 18.

“It is not a social-democratic program (…), it is a totally immigrationist program”

“At the moment, it’s a term that is only used by the nationalist movement”notes Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “It’s a neologism created by the extreme right or the radical right, and which the president is taking up”is surprised by this specialist on the extreme right who admits that his arms fell when he heard this word come out of the mouth of the President of the Republic.

Our colleagues at Libération recall that this word was born in the 2000s, in far-right circles, before slowly infusing itself within the French political class. To finally be used by the President of the Republic, campaigning for his party during the legislative elections.

Decivilization (May 2023)

A year earlier, another term used by Emmanuel Macron aroused numerous reactions and caused a lot of ink to flow: in the Council of Ministers, Wednesday May 24, 2023, the Head of State called on the government to “work in depth to counter this process of decivilization”. Contacted, the Élysée quickly denies any borrowing from the writer, far-right activist and theorist of “big replacement” Renaud Camus, author of the book Decivilization published in 2011.

“Decivilization, It’s really a way of thinking about the world.”, analyzes Cécile Alduy. The explanations from the Élysée, contacted that day by franceinfo, confirm this analysis: “The president is not taking up a concept. It is a reality.“. It is therefore impossible to imagine any clumsiness on the part of the head of state or a poorly chosen synonym. “It’s not not ‘shoe’ rather than ‘shoe'”compares the specialist in political discourse and the far right. “It’s really a vision of the world, of civilizations. It means that there is a Western civilization which is assailed by another civilization, implied to be Muslim or Eastern. It’s the clash of civilizations behind it. is extremely ideologically oriented.”

“Human Rights” (October 2019)

In October 2019, to everyone’s surprise, the weekly far-right Current values publishes a long interview with Emmanuel Macron. Regarding immigration, the Head of State criticizes the associations which support refugees and migrants:

“During the campaign, I had them in front of me, these human rights activists with their hands on their hearts, who told me that it was not normal for applicants to queue at 4 a.m. in front of the prefecture… “

Emmanuel Macron

at Current Values

“That’s really the vocabulary of the extreme right of the 90s,” notes Cécile Alduy. The one who dedicated since 2011 to the analysis of political discourse specifies that it is “Bruno Mégret, who had made fact sheets for National Front activists, to change the vocabulary used.” In 1990, one of the National Front’s leaders asked the members of the far-right party to stop saying “human rights”but “human-rights”, “to be able to denigrate human rights and present it (this term) as one ideology among others rather than the defense of universal rights.”

The notion of human rights, the basis of the French Constitution, thus becomes a political theory like any other. This change in language was also noticed at the time by political journalists, as illustrated by this article published in May 1990 in The world.

Not at all, according to far-right specialists. “You really believe that an RN voter (National gathering) will change his vote for Renaissance because the President of the Republic once used the term ‘immigrationist’? It’s a joke”, launches Jean-Yves Camus, codirector of the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. Especially when we know that the RN is one of those political parties with a very solid electoral base. “It is those who crystallize their vote the earliest, who are certain of their choice the earliest, who have the highest rate of support for the main items of the program… It is illusory to think that you are going to win. , only by sending them like that, a kind of very weak signal.”

“If you say ‘immigrationist’, your program must follow, that is to say, you must take Jordan Bardella’s program.”

Jean-Yves Camus

at franceinfo

In fact, Cécile Alduy and Jean-Yves Camus do not really understand why Emmanuel Macron pokes at the far right for terms or the beginnings of theories. Especially as President of the Republic, whose function is often presented as being above political disagreements between parties. “We could place it in the continuity of its commercial attitude towards the political field where it is a question of gaining market shares and therefore of going, with a somewhat advertising discourse, to speak the language of opponents, borrow things from them”says Cécile Alduy.

Jean-Yves Camus agrees: “These are the disastrous effects of the so-called elements of language, which he uses and fall flat.”

“Nicolas Sarkozy had borrowed items from the extreme right in his 2007 campaign”recalls Cécile Alduy, who had studied the speeches of the leader of the UMP when she was a student. “Certain fragments were copy/pastes of speeches by Jean-Marie Le Pen, particularly on immigration and national identity.”

Except that in 2007, “These are not connoted words that Nicolas Sarkozy used. He never said ‘immigrationist’, underlines the professor at Stanford University. He used far-right themes. At the limit their argument, at the limit the stigmatization. It’s really different from adopting the language of the extreme, because this language, in fact, frames the thinking and frames the representations.”

Reusing the terms of the extreme right is therefore an unprecedented political action in the history of the V presidency.^e Republic. And this rhetoric can have serious consequences. Use terms like “human-rightsism” or the neologism “immigrationist”It is “a filter, a way of seeing things”, “it gets you used to thinking” like the extreme right and therefore that “validates the fact of voting for the extreme right”says Cécile Alduy. It is worse than trivializing the remarks of the extreme right, according to the researcher associated with Cevipof, it amounts to “remove the opprobrium on this vocabulary. It becomes common words.”