The greatest risque

Our job is to try to be a point of orientation. It is not to try to have a balanced position, because there are issues where we clearly put words to what happens. Now, clearly, we needed to be able to say, and we have maintained, and we have been right to do so, that the National Rally was an extreme right-wing party. Many researchers, journalists, intellectuals, said: “Oh, no, it is something else”. The reality is that no, in this campaign it was seen to be that. So we have to be firm with words and concepts, and not let ourselves be locked into a false balance that would say: “Ah, we have to be equidistant with respect to what is called the extreme left – and on this, on the other hand, there would be a lot to say – and what we call the extreme right”. This sort of equivalence between the extremes…. The job is not to be in balance, but to describe things precisely. And in France and in most European countries today, there is only one major political risk, which is the extreme right. And we must not make believe that there are equivalent political risks on the other side. It is not accurate.

(Jérôme Fenoglio, editor of “Le Monde”, in an interview by Marc Bassets for “El Pais”, July 21, 2024)