The philosopher Raphaël Enthoven returned, Wednesday on Europe 1, on the controversy born of his remarks concerning his choice of Marine Le Pen rather than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, made on Twitter.

At the microphone of Julian Bugier, he expresses a nuanced mea culpa, believing to have made a mistake by sharing his thoughts on the networks.

But he maintains his analysis.

INTERVIEW

Rather Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the event of a second round in the presidential election between the two opponents?

"I can still change my mind, but I believe that, if we had to choose between the two, and if the blank vote was not an option, I would go at 7:59 p.m. to vote for Marine Le Pen, telling myself, without believe it, 'Rather Trump than Chavez.' "It was with these words that the philosopher Raphael Enthoven ignited the social network Twitter and sparked a major outcry.

Invited on Europe 1 Wednesday, the former columnist expresses his regret for having publicly shared his opinion and his reflection, but maintains his analysis.

"The mea culpa is about having shared what should not be"

"I regret having said them, not having meant them," he says. Raphaël Enthoven believes that everyone has the right to "weigh the pros and cons between two hypotheses", which he did, but considers that his mistake was to "inform people" about what he could do himself. even. He recognizes his tweet as "recklessness" and judges his sharing "silly" because it slashes "anything you've tried to introduce before possibly nuancing".

However, recalls Raphaël Enthoven, his words were not supportive of the RN candidate.

He tried to explain that, in the case mentioned, a second Le Pen-Mélenchon round without the possibility of voting white, "the two represented equivalent dangers".

In his opinion, "between the plague and the plague, it was necessary to aim for the calculation of interest", and therefore to vote Marine Le Pen.

“Imagine, in the 2nd round, # Mélenchon finds himself facing #LePen, who do you vote for?

»Attempt to answer the countless people who have asked me this question over the weekend.

- Raphaël Enthoven (@Enthoven_R) June 7, 2021

"This is what I was wrong", supports the philosopher, because the conclusion of his remarks "erased the content, while the stake was to say that the RN and LFI obey similar logics" .

Also, "the mea culpa is about having shared what shouldn't be", and not about the analysis he maintains but should have kept out of Twitter.

"Twitter has the IQ of a hen but the memory of an elephant"

Very fond of this social network where he usually posts a lot, Raphaël Enthoven thinks that "there are things that cannot be put on this network, which do not find their place there".

This is explained in particular, according to him, by the fact that "Twitter has the IQ of a hen but the memory of an elephant", which means that we can find ourselves "locked forever" in words spoken. with "the lightness of a hen".

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The philosopher does not intend to close his account, simply temporarily take a distance because of the controversy, but he "does not give up at all to deal with this network, to work on it, to introduce criticism as much as possible. ", he warns. 

"The RN does not need to be demonized"

However, he refutes the accusations that, with his position, he could blow up a new dike against the RN and help demonize him.

"The RN does not need to be demonized, there are 30% of French people able to vote for the RN in the first round. To speak of the devil is to give him the conditions for success," according to Raphaël Enthoven.

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Likewise, he rejects the "abject" and "absurd" comparison with the words of certain "bourgeois who said: rather Hitler than Blum", during the interwar period. He believes that Blum was a bulwark there, or conversely, "people who compare themselves to Leon Blum today lie down before the objective danger of Islamism and are the heirs of a tradition which is the opposite. of his ". Moreover, he affirms, "to compare Marine Le Pen with Hitler is to definitively deprive oneself of addressing the people" who vote for her.