Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and ...

Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III
redactors within the press crews, and finally a spiders’ web of direct state subventions into
both already and soon-to-become allegiant publications. Accordingly, and on the first measure,
the way the press was organized for the regional elections of April 1859 by the Press Division of
the ministry of the Interior is revealing of the imperial dynamism in that domain. Brézol and
Crozière came across this document and ended up with two plans of action. First, “the
introduction of a comparative system of newspapers reading, in order to follow more subtly the
political disputes department by department, via a daily reporting of electoral events” and
second, “the insertion in the press of a political advertizing section, in which various journalists
will prepare the opinion via correspondences, informational articles…etc” (1912). The ministerial
report even self-congratulates the efforts deployed in applying this strategy which ended up in
the squaring of 80 newspapers in less than three days; a situation that “allows the minister to
prompt any polemic of his taste, and this wherever he wishes (at least in 150 newspapers) and
in a very short delay” (Brézol & Crozière, 1912). Three additional dispositions are detailed by
this report, and mostly: the grants-in-aid aimed at assuring either the existence or the
dedication of the newspapers, the grants-in-aid aimed at publishing free extra-copies during
electoral periods to sustain the imperial propaganda, and finally the grants-in-aid aimed at
reinforcing the imperial editorial line through the integration of loyal redactors within the
newspapers. In addition, different sets of measures were applied for the provincial and the
Paris-based press. For this latter, Brézol and Crozière revealed that a formal contract was signed
between the ministry and the publications (for instance: Le Figaro, La France, Le Peuple, La
Prairie, Le Messager de Paris, Le Public, and Le Dix-Decembre) assuring the weekly diffusion of
(at least) 100 000 copies of issues filled exclusively by the lithographies of imperial candidates
A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/
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