The act of contrition is unexpected. “I agree with you, that is an excess”, recognizes André Bercoff. By “that”, he means a tweet dated December 30, 2021, in which he accused “some” of “putting in place a final solution to the problem of the unvaccinated”. “It was awkward, or in any case excessive. I will gladly grant it to you!”, He continues. The 82-year-old journalist talks about his “sometimes bad mood as a counselor”. Occasionally ? If only on January 8, the agitator illustrated himself in a tweet sent to his 213,000 subscribers. The Sud Radio host welcomed the sacking of the institutions of the Brazilian Republic by pro-Bolsonaro far-right activists. “Viva Brazil! Over there, there is still a people! Who bossa and who nova! And who revolt when the bladders #Lula try to pass themselves off as lanterns! Saudade! Saravah”, he wrote, in reference to the recent election of Lula as head of the country.
He is not, however, a Bolsonarist, he swears. Any more than he would be anti-vaccine. The proof, according to Bercoff: he was vaccinated against Covid. But its relationship with science is hazardous. He thus declared on the set of LCI, in November 2020, that there was “no proof” of the effectiveness of containment, and that “we have been manipulated by an extraordinary fantasy of a pandemic”. On his show, he then received the pundits of the anti-vaccine movement. Like the geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude, ridiculed within her scientific community. Or Vincent Pavan, president of the conspiratorial site “Reinfo Liberté” and member of the anti-vaccine network Verity France. “It’s not because I receive someone that I necessarily agree with him, assures André Bercoff. I want people to be able to listen to what they have to say. Then they do what they want. they want…” The remarks made by his guests still announce the color.
“There was massive fraud”
In Bercoff in all its statesthe daily program he hosts at midday on Sud Radio, the host sometimes receives more consensual personalities, such as the journalist from World Fabrice Lhomme or the far-right specialist Jean-Yves Camus. These are not the ones that have the most audience on YouTube, where his conversations with Philippe de Villiers, Charles Gave, Didier Raoult, Idriss Aberkane, Francis Lalanne or Juan Branco delight conspirators and other anti-systems. These appointments record up to 2 million views.
When he discusses the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the polemicist willingly hands his microphone to pro-Putin experts: Olivier Piacentini, political scientist frequenting the sets of Radio Courtoisie, the former regular at RT France René Chiche, or the journalist Anne-Laure Bonnel, known for her pro-Russian reporting in the Donbass. As soon as he can, Bercoff does not hesitate to denigrate himself, in his big voice, what he considers to be the “majority doxa”. This notably involves calling into question democratic elections. For him, the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by pro-Trump activists marks a “beginning of American spring”. “There has been massive fraud,” he wrote to his Twitter followers. Even today, there is no need to question André Bercoff for him to bounce back on the subject. It is enough to mention the name of Joe Biden for the host to draw, saying to himself “violently against electronic voting and postal voting”.
In the United States as in Brazil, the use of these two systems is at the heart of conspiracy theories, which accuse them of having allowed massive fraud… to the detriment of the two far-right presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. A point of view shared by the journalist. “Having spoken to technicians, I know that it is extremely easy to fake, and that even people who are awake will not see anything,” he says. From there to affirm that the American and Brazilian elections are illegitimate? Bercoff avoids answering and prefers to drape himself in his posture as a mediator. It is only there to “question” because the “other media” – understand: those of the “doxa” – do not do their job properly.
Old conspiratorial tunes
Asked about his values - does he really put Trump and Biden, Bolsonaro and Lula, Zelensky and Putin on the same level? -, the man dodges. It is only to then take up with relish each of the themes appreciated by the conspiracy, as when he evokes, at the turn of the conversation, “Hunter Biden’s computer”, in reference to the son of the American president. “Why isn’t the media talking about it? He pretends to wonder. I’ll tell you: because Biden belongs to the supposed ‘good side’. For the same reason they don’t criticize Lula, when he was convicted of corruption and served time in prison!”. It does not matter that the conviction of the Brazilian president was canceled by the Supreme Court for a formality.
In André Bercoff’s mind, anything that bears the seal of mainstream is suspect, hence a fascination for the wildest theories. This passion for conspiracy theories and outrageous remarks does not date from the election of Bolsonaro, nor from the Covid. As early as 2010, for example, he was already using the expression “final solution” on Twitter to evoke the fate of Eastern Christians. Today, verbally, he targets Emmanuel Macron the “trainee”, shouts against Daniel Cohn-Bendit the “cretin” to whom he intimates to “shut up” and attacks “Notre-Drame de Paris “, Anne Hidalgo.
Friend of Mitterrandie
The completion, to the right of the right, of an unusual course. Who could have imagined, twenty years ago, André Bercoff, editorialist running TV shows, friend of Mitterrandie, having his napkin ring on the far-right YouTube channel TV Libertés? “I have never been a Trotskyist, Maoist, Lambertist. I have never belonged to a party”, he sweeps away, before adding: “And I have never been a mitterrandolatre!”. There was a time, however, when André Bercoff assiduously frequented the backyards of socialist power.
Four years before the election of the left, he imagines Jack Lang Minister of Culture in The 180 days of Mitterrand, published in 1977 under the pseudonym of Philippe de Commines. “Without telling me, he stuck this ministry on me, when no one was talking about it at the time. He was the first to have imagined me publicly in this position”, recalls Jack Lang, interviewed by L ‘Express. The former minister has fun with his flair, getting a little confused when talking about the projections of his “friend André”. “I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t watch TV, so I don’t know what you’re talking to me about”, he assures, preferring to praise the “bon vivant”, the man of “funnyness incredible”, and “the brilliant imitator”.
Bercoff is Cato
Jack Lang is not the only one to spare André Bercoff. “We do not fall out with a forty-year-old friend”, abounds Jacques Attali, who however ensures “to fight his ideas vigorously”. The former special adviser to François Mitterrand prefers to sing the praises of “a very good writer”. He appreciates his pen all the more because Bercoff put it at his service for a time – or rather that of the former president.
A year after the arrival of the left in power, the journalist slips into the skin of a “Giscardian hierarch” and writes under the pseudonym of Cato, Roman tribune, two volumes entitled Of the reconquest. The pamphlet, very critical of the right, caused a stir. To preserve the mystification, Attali and Bercoff even asked François Hollande, then a young, unknown adviser to Mitterrand, to take on the role of Cato in the media. The joke lasts, until, in the show Apostrophes, the author of the smoking blow is finally revealed. “André has always been a little jealous of his own doubles”, philosopher Jacques Attali. Subsequently, suffused with the success of the Caton deception, Bercoff was appointed for a few months as program adviser on TF1, which was still a public channel.
The man is a follower of twisted blows of all kinds. Even today, rare are the friends to whom he does not tell the time when he played the role of a bank employee for ten days, or the one when, for the magazine Current, he turned into Mohamed Zahker, a wealthy representative of the Gulf who came to buy Bordeaux châteaux. At the time, Bercoff was amused by the bows suddenly made to him by the local bourgeoisie. “It’s exciting to see the behavior of people when they think you’re a billionaire,” he laughs. He even espoused again the point of view of a billionaire – authentic this time – by becoming in 1986 the pen of Bernard Tapie for his work Earn. They will remain linked, to the point that Bercoff will sign a book defending him twelve years later, How they killed Tapie. “It must be recognized that André Bercoff has always loved the scoundrel, the provocateurs. That’s why he was close to Mitterrand and Tapie, believes Olivier Barrot, writer and journalist met at the time TF1. He always appreciated a form of success, however questionable”.
Bernard Tapie and Donald Trump
In the mid-1980s, Bercoff was literary director at Robert Laffont. He later became a producer of several television programs, hosting a few, too, such as It is in your intereston the Five, or even French, if you spoke… on France 3. He also continues to write. In the newspapers, first, by directing the editorial staff of France Evening. Books, then, in abundance. Novels that he happens – again and again – to sign under a pseudonym. Political-humorous books, too, like Refreshments, co-signed with the future author of thrillers Eric Giacometti, who remembers a man “passionate about the international”. Travel stories, indeed, which are an opportunity to go on a spree in the best hotels in the world. He will also say to himself that it is the writing of his book The memory of palaces which allowed him to establish a first contact with Donald Trump, in the 1990s, before seeing him again twenty years later. At the time, the billionaire had just won the American presidential election and remained inaccessible to the media and to French politicians. However, the polemicist manages to slip on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower, and to draw twenty minutes of video interview from him.
As often, the reality is less romantic than the literary anecdote. “I met one of his friends at a dinner in Paris, and she offered to meet him. I didn’t know if it would work, but I went anyway!”, says- he. After that, Bercoff spent some time with the Sarkozy campaign, from 2007, but it was in the early 2010s that he revealed his new political affinities. He co-wrote an exchange with activists from Riposte laïque and the Bloc identitaire in Sausage and pinard aperitif (Xenia, 2012), participated at the same time in Boulevard Voltaire, the site of Robert Ménard and his wife. He then wrote several articles in the far-right weekly Current values. Then, in 2018, the shipwreck: after the rescue of a child saved from falling from the sixth floor by Mamoudou Gassama, a young Malian without papers, he brought scientists and lawyers on his show to question “the hypothesis of the fall” . “I continue to say that it is unthinkable that this child fell like this, he assures us today. I investigated.”
Some of his old friends are loyal to him. Others preferred to distance themselves. “We are not at odds. But the comments he makes make him infrequent, even if I am deeply saddened”, sighs Olivier Barrot. For him, the “whimsical character” that is “André” will not have resisted the skids eyeing the far right of “Bercoff”. According to the person concerned, he has not changed one iota. “Which left are we talking about? The socialist who, coming to power, embraced capitalism with undisguised fervor? Where has the left gone that cared for the people, the famous working class, rather than the societal minorities?”, he wonders, before continuing on a formula: “They say that I left the left, but it is rather the left that left us.” A last pirouette… to avoid falling off the masks?