Do you know the “Desproges point”? It was reached shortly after the controversial “joke” by France Inter columnist Guillaume Meurice, who on the air on October 29 compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a “kind of Nazi, but without a foreskin.” Comments for which Arcom was seized.
His detractors, outraged by such a comparison just a few weeks after the bloody attack by Hamas against Israel and while anti-Semitic acts are exploding in France, immediately opposed him on social networks with the famous “I am told that Jews have slipped in the room? You can stay” ; this sentence by Pierre Desproges aims to reveal the gulf separating black humor from petty mush (or even, for some, from anti-Semitism). On CNews, former minister Philippe de Villiers even went so far as to say that “Guillaume Meurice is to Desproges what Mathilde Panot is to Marguerite Yourcenar”.
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Yes, Desproges is everywhere, even in the tweets in support of Guillaume Meurice, who since October 29 have not stopped quoting the master of scathing humor to imply that in 2023, speech would no longer be as free as it was not a few decades earlier.
As for the Godwin point, which designates this moment in the discussion where one of the interlocutors refers to Nazism, Hitler or the Shoah to disqualify the opposing argument (this is basically what Guillaume Meurice did in his sketch ), when the Desproges point is reached, it is a sign that the debate has become sterile and, very often, that it is deviating from its subject…
On the difference between speech and humor
In reality, the Meurice case is neither symptomatic of a decline in the level of humor in the 21st century (some continue to practice this art brilliantly) or even of the omnipresence of comedians in the media (trying to make people laugh despite the news, isn’t that what the Charlie spirit is?). There is even less of a debate on the principle of freedom of expression, contrary to what was implied by the producer and host of the show Great Sunday evening Charline Vanhoenacker in a note published on
To stick to either of these readings by attaching them to the name of Desproges is to see in the chronicler’s output at worst only a lack of talent (and courage), and at better, an unfortunate “slip”.
Skidding involves leaving the road. However, Guillaume Meurice’s words are perfectly consistent with the ideological line that he has displayed for years. As early as 2014, under a photo posted on In 2022, he still wrote on X “Did you know? In Israel, rape is prohibited. Unless it concerns UN resolutions. #Gaza”. More broadly, Guillaume Meurice has never hidden his left-wing convictions and even more so, his detestation of the extreme right – towards which Benyamin Netanyahu’s government leans.
No coincidence, therefore, if instead of apologizing, the columnist preferred to take the word of the RN deputy Thomas Ménage who, at the microphone of France Inter, described his remarks as “anti-Semitic”. “Always interesting to have the opinion on anti-Semitism of a representative of a party created by the SS,” he commented on Inter Adèle Van Reeth, who declared that “this sentence is in no way representative of the daily work of the France Inter editorial staff”.
This is undoubtedly the biggest difference with Desproges: one used humor, the other made a speech.