Could Nicolas Sarkozy have imagined that one day his speech in Grenoble, delivered exactly 13 years ago, would be considered a little “below reality”? Could the former president have thought that this appreciation would come from someone very close to Emmanuel Macron? Let’s bet rather than not, confer the cries uttered at the time by the political and media class, flabbergasted by this so right-wing speech. “Below reality”, these are however the words slipped to L’Express, and repeated, by this former Elysian adviser, laughing frankly when remembering that Jean-Pierre Chevènement was pilloried for having called “savages” repeat juvenile offenders. From now on, the current Head of State is firmly convinced of this: we must use words that strike the spirits, which even shock, the only way to prove that the eyes of the progressive camp are finally open.
Emmanuel Macron, who reads everything, has paid particular attention to opinion polls published since the riots that followed Nahel’s death. It has not escaped him that the demand for authority is growing as fast as the concern of the French on matters of security and immigration, as revealed by an OpinionWay poll published in The Parisian. He heard some of his strategists alert him to the risk that yet another speech on “the fight against inequalities of destiny” would appear today as out of step. Even, inaudible. Attempts to understand, or simply to explain sociologically, the scenes of fires and looting witnessed by dumbfounded France now pass for signs of weakness imprinted with naivety. Thus, the announcement of a new “Suburban Plan” was quickly dismissed, no doubt considered a staggering response by a large part of the French convinced that the urgency is to restore order in the neighborhoods rather than build MJCs. .
The emergency for the head of state? “Qualify the sequence”, answers a member of his close guard who pleaded in the first moments which followed the death of Nahel for the president “to express empathy” but who recognizes without detour “a shift” since the riots and a strong expectation in the Macronist electorate of a demonstration of authority.
Because to say nothing or to say lukewarmly is also to offer Marine Le Pen the possibility of accusing the president of denial of reality. But “little by little the mental barriers are falling, continues our interlocutor. And as long as we have not regulated it, the media system is made up of radicalities, as we are the only ones not to be – radical -, the others are taking market share”. Except that taking action has a cost. A month and a half after the controversy over the use of the term “decivilization”, is Emmanuel Macron ready to restart the machine?