The images quickly went around the world. During his closing speech on Sunday, the president of the Munich conference on security was overwhelmed by emotion, shortening his speaking. In a small minute video that has become viral, we see the German diplomat Christoph Heusgen evoke the speech of the American vice-president JD Vance and deduce: “We must fear that our basis of common values are no longer so common as that. “As the sequences presented in the video let him understand, he interrupts his speech a few seconds later:” Let me conclude, and it becomes difficult … “, before leaving his desk.
For the past two days, these extracts have been widely interpreted as proof that the speech of the American vice-president would have profoundly upset the diplomat. JD Vance had aroused numerous reactions, considering in particular that freedom of expression is down in Europe.
Many Internet users supported by Donald Trump or Eurosceptics’ policy see in these images the proof that “Europe is currently governed by extremely unstable and not very serious people”, as stated in English on X viewed more than five million times. The video, initially broadcast by the Irish public service media Rté, has also circulated a lot among French -speaking Internet users, shared by personalities like Florian Philippot.
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The extracts from the speech of the president of the Munich conference, Christoph Heusgen, are presented in a deceptive way. The viral video has two sequences in reality far away from several minutes, but whose juxtaposition ready to be confused.
We can find the entire speech on the conference site, or in the captures made by various media, such as that of German public service Deutsche Welle. Christoph Heusgen evokes the speech of JD Vance, but that intervenes at the beginning of his speaking (here on Youtube), while his tears only go up five minutes later (here). A viewing of the complete sequence makes it possible to realize that he leaves his desk under the applause, before taking in his arms a woman in the front row of the assembly, all the members end up getting up.
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And this is the second element to take into account to understand the emotion of Christoph Heusgen: this discourse actually marks the end of his mandate as president of the Munich conference. A version confirmed by the organizers, forced to try to calm the rumor on social networks (in English): “Our former president, Christoph Heusgen, did not shed a few tears by” frustration “. It was his farewell speech, when he left the CSM after this year’s conference. He said goodbye to the team right now, “wrote the conference account (in English) on X. Previously representative of Germany with the UN, he had been elected at the head of the conference of Munich in 2022.
The main interested party himself returned to the sequence on X (in English): “I was really touched by the warm farewells that the CSM team and my many friends made me after my last CSM in As long as president. It was a very moving moment on stage at the end of my mandate. ».
He also denies the truncated interpretation of these images: “A video circulates on the internet that comes out of his context this scene from my departure. Unfortunately, this shows once again how the mechanisms of disinformation work. ”
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