France insoumise: a hatred of journalists with variable geometry

Bruno Donnet 09:46, March 21, 2023

Every day, Bruno Donnet observes the media mechanics. This morning, he chose to dwell on the way the leaders of La France Insoumise treat journalists because he came across a contrast that amused him a lot.

Telescoping between the well-honed issue of Jean-Luc Mélenchon with the press and a statement, rather unexpected, signed by Mathilde Panot.

Everyone knows Jean-Luc Mélenchon's act. It consists of mistaking journalists for pears, humiliating them and belittling them whenever an opportunity has been offered to him.

The day before yesterday, for example, the tenor of La France Insoumise was the guest of the "Grand Jury", on LCI, and he did not fail to say again to the journalists who had the heavy burden of questioning him all the good he thinks of them: "You prevent democratic expression!"

He called them enemies of democracy, henchmen of power: "You are all servants of big capital, uh your companies belong to billionaires and you are parrots."

Rare birds and even congenital ignoramuses who have no idea of what violence and danger look like: "You make fun of people when you don't know what a violent movement is, you've never seen one."

Dare to swing this, at the very moment when our colleague Olivier Dubois has just been released, after spending two years, held hostage, precisely for having braved the danger and wanted to denounce the violence of a terrorist group, in Mali... You had to dare! Because, yes, we may be used to it, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's permanent slippages towards journalists, after a while, it hits you on the system: "Calm down a little!"

To hear him speak like Gérald Darmanin and make misogynistic remarks, Bruno Donnet does not resolve: "Here I hear 3 parakeets, on Canal + and their metronome who attack me. "

We may know that it is a ruse, a small maneuvering strategy that aims to stir populism in the great pot of "all rotten", Bruno Donnet is fed up with the press card to hear Mélenchon take journalists for doormats and address them as less than nothing.

It's been going on for ages, you probably all remember here how, 12 years ago, he addressed an unfortunate journalism student who tried to question him: "No, no, no, it's over. Finished. You close your little mouth, you talk to me about politics. I'm talking about the media and your rotten job. »

In short, it is unbearable, but the light is, perhaps, at the end of the tunnel.

Because can you imagine that yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the National Assembly, and at the time of defending the motion of censure against the government, Bruno Donnet heard another Insoumise, Mathilde Panot, the president of the parliamentary group, go up to the rostrum and quote what? You're not going to believe it.

Newspapers! "The conservative newspaper Der Spiegel headlines: Macron is not a reformer but a demolition worker."

Yes yes, the protégé of Jean-Luc Mélenchon evoked the work of journalists, to condemn the policy of Emmanuel Macron: "The Italian newspaper La Stampa evokes a too thoughtless gesture that can go beyond the Elysee. "

And she didn't quote just one or two, no, she didn't even just refer to left-wing newspapers: "The liberal newspaper The Econmist: it's hard to see the positive emerging from this mess."

She cited no less than six headlines, to the point that Bruno Donnet had the impression of no longer hearing a political speech, but an international press review: "For El Païs, this 49.3 will poison political life + The New York Times evokes a method that translates a form of contempt + A Danish newspaper, evokes a nuclear bomb, triggered in total chaos. »

And yes, at La France Insoumise, the hatred of journalists is therefore variable. While Jean-Luc Mélenchon rebuffs them on TV, Mathilde Panot uses their work in the Assembly.

We live in consistent times.