Some names in a WhatsApp loop. An acquaintance, whispered in your ear, in a corridor between two television sets. Who to take? Who to refuse? Who is too “limited”? Between casting errors, real compromises or ideological proximity, the choices for the investitures of the different political groups have, once again this year, revealed conspiratorial or anti-science candidacies, whose theses go against established and consensual facts.
These candidates are propagating all kinds of theories, from the “pedophile executive club” to the possibility of curing cancer with thought. In total, and without claiming to be exhaustive, more than thirty profiles angry with rationality were able to be identified by L’Express, after an analysis carried out jointly with Conspiracy Watch, the Study Group of the Sectarian Phenomenon (GéPS ) and The fire extinguisher. If they mainly swell the ranks of the National Rally, almost no party escapes it.
Some names were able to benefit from the urgency of the dissolution to pass the filtering of political groups. But others, long-time members, are knowingly supported by their party which therefore condones these discrepancies with the facts. “Even if these ideas are not always found in the measures put forward, the conspiratorial imprint therefore risks progressing in the National Assembly,” underlines Tristan Mendès-France, associate lecturer at Paris Diderot University, and member of Conspiracy Watch.
A worrying signal for French political life, even if other countries are more to be pitied: “The proper functioning of democracy requires not being in post-truth, but on the contrary agreeing on the state of world, to then be able to debate the reforms to be carried out, benefiting from the platform of the National Assembly gives weight and gives credibility to these alternative discourses”, regrets sociologist Laurent Cordonier, scientific director of the Descartes Foundation. Analysis.
On the left, in the center, on the right, candidates full of conspiratorial references
They question everything, or almost everything. Among the openly conspiratorial profiles, we find for example that of Jonathan Riviere, invested by the National Rally (RN) in Reunion. “We never walked on the moon,” he said on February 10 in a post on his Facebook account. This is accompanied by a third-party video, in which it is explained: “The CIA was behind 9/11”. Other content of this type, relayed by him in 2023, claims that “vaccines will completely kill you” after injection. Or that they make it “magnetized”, a thesis that he takes up again, always on his social networks.
A profile far from isolated. Other RN candidates support similar theses. Like Stéphanie Alarcon, in the running in Haute-Garonne: “The health system is made to create sick people”, we can read in a message that she broadcasts on Twitter. She promotes Louis Fouche, figure of covid-sceptics, or Silvano Trotta, main conspiracy theorist in France. Also invested: Monique Griseti, in Bouches-du-Rhône. She endorses the messages to “raise awareness” around Sound of Freedom. The film is a rallying cry for the QAnon conspiracy movement, convinced that “the elites drink the blood of children”.
Also spotted: Patrick Le Fur (RN). For him, Macron’s ministers form “an ultra-secret club” linked to cases of “pedophilia” (sic). Or even Aly Diouara (LFI) for whom the vaccine is a “tool” that is anything but medical. What can we say about the duo Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala and Francis Lalanne? The two friends consider themselves in a “dictatorship”, without this stopping them from being candidates, in Guadeloupe, for a movement that they created, called Free France. The first, a comedian banned from performing, has long defended that “AIDS was invented”. The second denounces the hegemony of the “globalist pedophile Nazis” in power.
The center is not spared. Eric Verhaeghe of the centrist Alliance supported the rumors about Brigitte Macron’s sex change. “Stunning investigation”, he said, in 2022 in a blog note about these theories, relayed by the site Facts & Documents. On the phone, the person assures us that there is nothing conspiratorial about it. He says he thinks, deep down, that Emmanuel Macron’s wife is indeed a woman. But he still wonders: “To say that Social Security is used to weaken people and keep them in a bath of domination to prevent them from revolting, is that conspiratorial?”
Climate skepticism and the RN, a love story far from over
In public, the National Rally no longer questions the scientific reality of global warming. But in private, some of his foes continue to convey these erroneous ideas. Their most illustrious representative? Hervé de Lépinau, candidate in Vaucluse. He considers the members of the IPCC to be “propagandists”. What does it matter if these researchers are mandated to establish a consensus, and this consensus is signed by most governments. Same story for Guillaume Bigot, editorialist at CNews parachuted by the RN-Ciotti alliance into the Territoire de Belfort. Yes, the Earth is warming, but it is not due to man, he has long asserted, against the evidence.
Anti-vaxxers especially on the far right
An obsession: vaccines. Many candidates are fighting these injections, particularly those against covid, although they have been proven. To start with Emmanuelle Darles, invested by the RN in the first constituency of Vienne. “Lecturer in computer science and digital simulation”, she became especially known during the health crisis for her covid-sceptical positions. In May 2022, for example, she did not hesitate to compare the vaccination of children with “rape”. This researcher is also a member of the “independent scientific council”, an association created during the health crisis by Xavier Azalbert, the director of the conspiracy site France-Soir, and by Réinfo-covid, by the conspiracy anesthesiologist Louis Fouché.
Also a candidate for the RN (in the second constituency of Bas-Rhin), Virginie Joron, just re-elected MEP, stood out for her positions hostile to anti-covid vaccination. If she refutes the qualification of anti-vaxshe signed the foreword to a book written by conspiracy statistician Christine Cotton (All vaccinated, all protected?), alongside former MP Martine Wonner, muse of opponents of vaccination against covid. She also invited to the European Parliament numerous personalities from the covid-skeptical and anti-vax sphere, such as the former geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude or the infectious disease specialist Christian Perronne, both of whom are today banned from the scientific community. A very strange way to keep up to date with science.
The National Rally is not the only one to endorse anti-vax candidates. Standing up, France is not left out, with for example Eric Mercier, in the 6th constituency of Maine-et-Loire. This nurse was suspended during the health crisis for refusing to be vaccinated. He is a member of the Freedom Health Union, created to support suspended caregivers – an organization that has fueled disinformation about the texts under discussion within the World Health Organization to improve the international response to health threats (Treaty on Health pandemics and revision of international health regulations). Nicolas Dupont-Aignant’s party also supports the candidacy of Véronique Roger, former member of the UMP (the former name of the Republicans) in the fifth constituency of Oise. Logic: this general practitioner, who closed her practice because she refused the anti-Covid vaccine, is also… the national health delegate of Stand up France.
Candidates fed with alternative therapies and esoteric beliefs
A certain number of candidates stand out for their interest, more or less assumed, in alternative medicine and esoteric practices. Anecdotal? Far from it: “Everyone is of course free in their beliefs, but these therapies are not based on science and rationality. However, this positioning, of which voters are perhaps not aware when voting, can then influence public policies”, underlines Laurent Cordonier, concerned in particular about the measures intended to strengthen the fight against sectarian abuses. Among these candidates following irrational practices, we note for example for the National Rally Aurélie Quinquisnaturopath and reflexologist in Marseille or Cyline Humblot-Cornilleenergy healing practitioner near Dijon.
More surprisingly, in the fifth constituency of Loire-Atlantique, Eric Ciotti, the LR president in trouble with his party since he allied himself with the RN, dubbed a certain Bruno Comby. This polytechnic engineer, president of the Association of Nuclear Environmentalists, stood out for his dubious theories on HIV. In his book Nature against AIDS, he claims that eating raw foods helps defeat the virus. The work certainly dates from 1989, but the character also displays links with Professor Joyeux, removed from the medical profession for his anti-vax positions, who prefaced several of his books. Charlie Hebdo had also revealed his proximity to the guru Guy-Claude Burger, promoter of instinctotherapy, an alternative therapeutic practice based on raw eating.
Occult of all kinds on the “Ecology at the center” list
One listing in particular also caught our attention. That of Ecology at the center, led by Jean-Marc Governatori, municipal councilor in Nice. It is stated, in his program, that a “lack of harmony” causes illness. “Jealousy, despair, slander” and “disorder” would thus cause pathologies. “False concepts, and which can induce a form of patient guilt,” protests Hugues Gascan, president of GéPS and former director of immunology research at CNRS and Inserm. These precepts are regularly denounced by the interministerial mission to combat sectarian abuses (Miviludes). Contacted by telephone, Jean-Marc Governatori states: “What we wanted to say is simply that depression is harmful to health.” But he admits: “It’s poorly worded.”
More seriously, this party calls for “examining” the work of Dr. Hamer. According to the person concerned, who died in 2017, cancer is a “special program of nature”. A message, sent to alert the patient’s internal conflicts. We should listen to it, and not operate or treat, so as not to disturb anything. In September 1997, Ryke Geerd Hamer was sentenced to nineteen months in prison by the court in Cologne, Germany, following the deaths of three patients. Its recommendations are banned in France, but continue to appeal. In total, he is suspected of having caused the premature deaths of around a hundred people. “I don’t know that we were talking about this individual, whom I don’t know,” Jean-Marc Governatori retorts.
Ecology at the center also wants to “formalize a committee of independent experts on suspicious traces in the sky”. If obviously, there already exist bodies in France responsible for monitoring what is happening in the airspace, the measure aims, in subtext, to elucidate the pseudo-mystery of “chemtrail”, the white smoke which planes escape. In conspiracy circles, they are regularly accused of spreading poisons or substances intended to modify the behavior of the “masses”. It is in reality “only” a mixture of CO2, fine particles, and water. These rejections are not without consequences, but are not “suspicious”. “It’s nonsense,” says Jean-Marc Governatori. A “anything” yet written in full in its program.
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