One click away from launch. The Republicans put the finishing touches to their new 100% digital media on Tuesday morning, a few hours before its official start at the movement’s headquarters, rue de Vaugirard. Several elected officials and parliamentarians were expected at the cocktail party scheduled for 7 p.m. Entitled “A certain idea”, the title – which recalls an old review of the right launched by Philippe Séguin and animated by Jean de Boishue – is presented as a space for reflection open to all ideas.
“We have drawn from our history the means to do something new by extending the same quality requirement. The support is digital and if we do not forbid ourselves anything for the future, we have designed this site to highlight three formats: video, podcast and interviews to read. We want to give voice to ideas, ”explains Bartolomé Lenoir, head of digital support, supported by a small team, and installed on the 4th floor of the LR headquarters. To design the tool, the craftsmen claim to have been inspired by “best practices” currently at work in the world of business and political movements.
The new media is not reserved only for LR members. It intends to be accessible to all with the aim of bringing to life reflection on all subjects “without taboos”, also relying on external contributions from various origins, whether political or from civil society. Three to four new interviews each week; sometimes “unexpected” interventions; round tables led by a group of ambassadors from “Young LR”; a weekly newsletter… The media is not ruling out also launching its own talk show.
In addition to the first personalities visible from Tuesday on the site, such as Agnès Verdier-Molinié of Ifrap, the farmer Céline Imart, Arnaud Teyssier of the scientific council of the Charles de Gaulle foundation or the historian Thierry Lentz, it is expected that Jean Leonetti, mayor of Antibes, will intervene very soon in a video dedicated to the end of life.
For the boss of LR Éric Ciotti, who had promised the creation of this new support during his internal campaign, it is also a question of accompanying the reconstruction of the party. The President of the Republicans has been involved throughout the development of the website and wants the LRs to stand out as a benchmark for the debate of ideas. “Make this debate a strength for LR and the reflection of a” certain idea of France “”, he launched to his troops, referring to a famous formula of Charles de Gaulle, heard in particular in 1965, between the two presidential rounds. Éric Ciotti had registered the project in the same dynamic as that of the “States General of the Right”, announced for the month of June.
By regularly giving the floor to experts and intellectuals, the right-wing movement wants to offer the French people elements to consolidate their own convictions. Some 9,000 activists have already said yes by supporting the form and content announced. At the moment of putting the project into orbit, the young Bartolomé Lenoir praised its singularity with enthusiasm: “‘A certain idea’ assumes its right-wing political identity and promises to respect all sensitivities: this is where the great originality of our new medium.
