Who is Thomas Guénolé, the very latest TPMP columnist? A “political scientist” whose sulphurous past has something to please Cyril Hanouna…
He has appeared regularly on the TPMP set since mid-September and has already managed to provoke several controversies by proposing, randomly and with a slight smirk, to create a tax credit for dog or cat owners, to ban the National Gathering, or to raze the Sacré-Coeur. Thomas Guénolé, the new columnist of Cyril Hanouna since the start of the school year, has blended perfectly into the mold of the show, which claims to talk about television and social debates to better link up the clashes and buzz.
With his column “Thomas’ favorite”, the new kid, “political scientist and professor of geopolitics”, is starting to make a place for himself in the gang in Hanouna. His business? Playing the man on the left, “alone against everyone” in a show that clearly leans to the right. Unknown to the general public like many TPMP columnists in their early days, he nevertheless has a political background which makes him much more compatible than it seems with “Baba”.
A graduate and then teacher at SciencesPo Paris, Thomas Guénolé is the author of several works on globalization, the suburbs, Islamophobia, and the far right. He has also been a consultant for several politicians and has already acted as an editorial writer in the media in the past. He stood out in particular for having been the godfather of the French branch of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, rewarded in 2017 with a Nobel Peace Prize.
From being an “anti-FN” activist in 2015, Thomas Guénolé gradually moved closer to the left until joining La France insoumise in the summer of 2017. Even being presented by Jean-Luc Mélenchon as a “rebellious political scientist”, he would be a sharp slayer of the media and will co-found, in 2018, the training school for party activists.
But in April 2019, it was already a break. In a press release, Thomas Guénolé breaks with LFI, pointing out the autocratic governance of Mélenchon and his advisor Sophia Chikirou. Shortly later, an internal party procedure will be opened against him, after the report of a young woman “denouncing facts that could amount to sexual harassment”. Managed by a monitoring committee against sexist and sexual violence (CVSS), outside of any legal framework, this report will be the subject of a defamation complaint from the person concerned.
Proven harassment or “Stalinist trial” of a traitor who committed a crime of lèse-Mélenchon? Justice will put the two parties back to back. But a book by Thomas Guénolé, “La Chute de la maison Mélenchon” (Albin Michel, 2019) will establish, with resentment, an edifying critique of LFI that Cyril Hanouna would not deny today. He who never misses an opportunity to castigate the left party and its allies. Thomas Guénolé also ardently supported the Yellow Vests in their time. Which obviously doesn’t spoil anything in TPMP.