Perhaps you missed Guillaume Peltier’s sermon on Europe 1 and CNews this Monday? No. 2 on the Reconquête list (Eric Zemmour’s party) for the European elections has a message for political leaders: get involved! By proposed laws? Publications of works? A candidacy for a national election? You are not there. By having children, of course. At the end of January, Emmanuel Macron called for “demographic rearmament”, at the beginning of February, Guillaume Peltier would like to apply it to political leaders.
“I am quite embarrassed to see this new fashion, this new trend among our politicians not having children. Emmanuel Macron has no children, Gabriel Attal has no children, our top candidates for the European elections , Messrs. Bellamy and Bardella do not have children, asserted the former LR deputy. I say this with great sensitivity and without any judgment, I simply say that at a time when the birth rate is declining, where family policy is under attack, where so many young people are asking questions about the future and even having children, given the pressure and influence of bohemian ecologists, having children is a political message. “
Marion Maréchal and Marine Le Pen, mothers
Parenthood as a militant act, the idea is not new. Even less on the far right, even less for Reconquest, which has made the defense of the traditional family model and the education of children one of its main struggles. Marion Maréchal, head of the list for the upcoming European elections, regularly reminds us: she is the mother of two little girls, makes her motherhood the driving force behind her political commitment and her fight a matter of transmission. For Reconquest, the desire to encourage birth rates takes on a civilizational dimension. Create French children to fight against the threat, constantly brandished by the Zemmourie, of the “great replacement” (named after the conspiracy and racist theory popularized by Renaud Camus). During the campaign, dreaming of repopulating the countryside, Eric Zemmour had even promised a bonus of 10,000 euros at the birth of each child whose family had been domiciled for two years in a rural area.
Marine Le Pen, too, regularly politicizes her status as a mother. “The mother of the French”, as frontist activists and party executives now call her, plays the family card in her communication. Until his Twitter cover photo, captured on the spot kissing a little girl. Directly or through those around him. “Marine is very happy at the moment, she is going to be a grandmother, which fills her with joy,” one of her relatives regularly repeats. Less rigid on societal issues than her fellow Zemmourists, she nonetheless defends a pronatalist policy. Among its proposals for 2022: the institution of a full tax share from the second child, the creation of a 0% loan for young French families transformed into a subsidy for couples who will have a third child.
Demagoguery or clientelist declaration
Notable difference: in their communication, the Le Pens, aunt and niece, confine themselves to their personal case. Guillaume Peltier extracts a personal situation from the private field and goes into moral policing by establishing a direct link between the professional qualities of a political leader and his family situation. And makes a private decision a moral totem supposed to guide political action. Demagoguery or niche clientelist statement? This is not the first time that the departmental councilor of Chambord has put on his big clogs. Anyone who claims to be “white, Christian, heterosexual, who runs on diesel and heats himself with fuel” and has “no intention of asking for forgiveness” for that is accustomed to somewhat caricatured statements.
Even at Reconquête, where societal issues are more or less a consensus, the declaration arouses some mockery. Basically on the form. “What a lack of finesse,” laments an executive. “Reducing our discourse to child policing is really not up to par…” The European campaign is likely to be long.
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