Alexandre Devecchio: “The defeat of Donald Trump, or the victory of ordinary people”

According to a certain media left, populism is a digital virus. Trump, Meloni and Le Pen owe their success to fake news, social networks, a few “far-right” news channels and editorialists, even foreign interference. A soft conspiracy: failing to understand the popular vote, we are looking for puppet masters. In Fake (Le Cerf), Vincent Roux, editor-in-chief of FigaroLive, nevertheless demonstrates that their influence on the vote is minimal. The midterms confirm it: Elon Musk, owner of X and the richest man in the world, swallowed up hundreds of millions of dollars to support his champion. In vain.

If populists have made a breakthrough in many Western democracies, it is because they were the first to talk about the reality of the middle and working classes: their economic downgrading, their cultural and democratic dispossession. If they fall, it is because the gap between their speeches and their results in…