Jean-Michel Aphatie dissects the five-year term in "Les amateurs": "Politics is history being written"

Every day, a personality comes into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the political journalist Jean-Michel Aphatie.

Jean-Michel Aphatie is a political journalist, interviewer, columnist, radio and TV man, notably in Le Grand Journal on Canal + between 2006 and 2015. Since 2019, he has been a columnist on LCI in the morning. He publishes Amateurs. Behind the scenes of a five-year term at Flammarion editions.

Amateurs. Behind the scenes of a five-year term begins with a phrase from François Mitterrand finally quoted by Robert Badinter: " In politics, a good amateur will never be worth the worst of professionals ". What does that mean ?

Jean-Michel Aphatie: It means that France is tired of being governed by professionals. If we take stock of the Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies, everything has deteriorated. It is a country that has withered away. So, we tempted the amateur, the one who had never directed anything, who had not been a candidate for anything, Emmanuel Macron. Do people feel that their situation has improved? We will see that in 2022.

Finally, this sentence is a real open question. Have you always worked like this?

Yes. I have always tried to find a distance from politics. I think the gaze must be quite hard. It is very hard to govern, but the one who observes should not find excuses for the one who governs. You need distance, never be associated with an individual journey, be passive. Politicians write history.

"I have been voting blank since 1988. Since I got a press card, I have never been confronted with a politician for whom I had voted or against whom I had voted. It frees the neurons a bit. "

This book is above all a real assessment of what you are. Politics have been part of you from an early age and at times you feel a nostalgia, but this is linked to values ​​that are also being lost.

It's true. I don't know if I'm nostalgic, but on the scale of degradation, we went down a few steps. In fact, I like the idea of ​​tomorrow. I like the idea of ​​what's going to happen or what's going on. When something happens on the political scene, it turns me on, too much for that matter, because sometimes I do too much, I know. Rather, it is today that interests me. The campaign that opens, the new characters that emerge ... And it's not because it's new that it smells good! All this amuses me, actually.

One of the personalities that you cite a lot because you are worried is Eric Zemmour. You do not understand that he is allowed to continue to have a word when it is refused to Dieudonné and the condemnations are identical.

French society was able to say no to anti-Semitism when Dieudonné was condemned. And France does not know how to say no to Eric Zemmour when he criticizes Muslims and Arabs. He has racist remarks that have earned him convictions and he still does today. And the more he holds, the more space the media offer him. So that means that speaking badly of Arabs and Muslims in France is well done.

"Eric Zemmour, I have known him for a long time. I have always read and listened to him. He tells nonsense. His historical culture is in pasteboard and we are fascinated by this man who allows us to express racist thoughts that many French people have in their heads. "

Even so, we should become aware of the values ​​that are ours, of what we tolerate and therefore of what we are.

I would like us to come back to your journey. You left school at 14 and started working in your parents' grocery store very soon after. Subsequently, you were a car salesman, waiter in Lourdes and then you resumed your studies. Did your parents ultimately pass on this respect for work to you?

For me, the real university or the real high school is the world of work. You get up early. You work a lot. It was manly, warm too. This is where I learned to live, to understand politics. At my parents' bistro when everyone was drunk, there was a part that was on the right, a part that was on the left. I listened a lot, I immersed myself in it a lot. I was young, I put up with it and found pleasure in it, but with hindsight, obviously, parents want children to go to school. I know why we want this.

You get the baccalaureate at 24 years old. It means that things can change, that we can get started.

Exact. At one point I made the effort to tell myself that the life I had was not the one I wanted to have. I made an effort to change my life and at that time I met people. And when they offer to help, you don't wonder what religion they are, who they vote for. No, they show you a part of humanity and you try to go a little way with them. Me, what I have retained in my life is that.

Why political journalism? Because you will, very early on, develop a passion for it.

"Politics have always interested me because the history of my country has interested me."

I've always wanted to do political journalism. When I was in elementary school and in college, there was a digest of emotions in the transmission of the history of France, which spoke to my character, to my psychology. There was something resonating and therefore politics is history being written.

Is the little boy that you were proud of the man he has become?

I am not proud of what I do. I am happy to do what I do!