Criticized for a round table of his summer university in Blois entitled “Is peri-urban France the France of rednecks? “, the PS defends” a deliberately provocative title “. According to the party, the formula was intended on the contrary to highlight the “dynamism” and “the genius” of peri-urban France.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was particularly indignant Thursday on X (ex-Twitter) of this “new example of the social contempt experienced by the working classes”. “It’s a provocation”, which “is an allusion to what the government was able to say through its spokesperson at the time, Benjamin Griveaux, who spoke, speaking of peripheral France, of these guys who smoke cigarettes and who run on diesel, ”replied the First Secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, Friday morning on RMC.
The “genius” of the rural and peri-urban world
“The objective is to obviously be able to answer in the negative. You still do not imagine that we want to address people by telling them “you are rednecks”, it is quite the opposite”, he insisted.
“There is genius, there is creativity, there is innovation in the rural world, in the peri-urban world”, he continued, calling on the contrary to “stop thinking that everything is plays between the 6th and 7th arrondissements of Paris”. And Pierre Jouvet, the secretary general of the PS, at the initiative of this round table, invited Gérald Darmanin to come and discuss it on Saturday in Blois.
“Those who have despised this France for years”
“Gérald Darmanin, I’m waiting for him. He who was the minister who cut the taps and the public services”, and “who just comes to talk to them about immigration”, “letting them think that it would just be fachos”, he said in Blois in front of journalists.
“We would like to accuse a guy like me, mayor of a town of 4,000 inhabitants, who was born and grew up in this city, of being contemptuous of suburban France? “, mocked Pierre Jouvet. “It’s the opposite, it’s the answer to all those who have despised this France for years”, he added, denouncing “this political-elitist intelligentsia” and his comments “during the crisis of ” vests yellow”.