Dr. Wargon, emergency physician and an outspoken media personality in France, takes to the Twitter arena several times a day. The threats he receives there exceed 280 characters. Ever since he received a bullet cartridge case, his secretary has been reluctant to open his mail.
Article translated from the original French version
The esanum Global Series is a collection of articles that brings together esanum's German, Italian, English and French-language editorial teams to provide a global perspective on the contemporary issues and stories impacting physicians' lives. In our first series, "Physicians in Social Media, the digital frontline", we interview physicians whose daily work, activism, or social media presence, have sparked a full array of responses from within their own professional communities, media platforms, and beyond. Solidarity, harassment, fame and threats, and the human stories behind the controversies, are the focus of this interview series.
Mathias Wargon is the perfect target. His antipathies are wide-ranging. Because his wife (Emmanuelle Wargon) is a minister in the current French government, the extreme left sees him as a supporter of Macronism. The same goes for the "fachosphere" (coined from "fascism" + "sphere", it is a neologism increasingly used in France to describe the ecosystem of political parties, internet influencers and media personalities from the extreme-right). They can find their own reasons for abhorring this medical head of department: although he is Jewish, he does not criticise Muslims and works on a daily basis with people of immigrant origin in his hospital in the "93", that is, the Seine-Saint-Denis department, north-east of Paris, which is the poorest in France. As for the conspiracists, they hate his discourse as a physician and as a scientist. And let's not forget the apostles of alternative medicine who have not digested his campaign against homeopathy.
I'm mostly on Twitter, and I'm on it a lot. In the morning, in the evening, while reading the newspaper...I tweet. I like it, reacting on the spot, whether it's to news or comments. I have a meeting after this interview, and it's quite possible that I will tweet. Actually, I only stop tweeting when I'm with patients.
I think I express myself in much the same way as in real life. "A bit aggressive", says my son when we play Assassin's Creed [a videogame franchise]. Let's just say that I'm usually very outspoken, not one to turn the cheek, and I hate being victimised. If someone messes with me, I don't hesitate to say "Fuck off, you idiot!" I'm spontaneous, sometimes rude, but that doesn't prevent me from having nuanced ideas...
To spread the word about Saturg, my blog about the organisation and management of emergency rooms. This field of study is my specialty. At the beginning I joined Twitter only for that. I was chatting with a small group of physicians then. We had a lot of fun - for example, we made fake posters for the elections to the Order of Physicians - and sometimes we argued, but it always remained very professional.
My Twitter account grew a lot, in three stages. Firstly, when I signed the FakeMed collective's petition in 20181. As head of department, I was more flexible than some colleagues in responding to media invitations. I found myself at the forefront. Journalists liked my style, because I don't make any more effort with my language on a TV studio than on Twitter or in real life. I speak like someone from a working class background. Anyway, I started to be known within this forum, and attacked a lot on Twitter. It was violent.
Then, in 2019, the Inter Urgences Collective was formed. This movement, originally launched by emergency nurses, demanded more resources for hospitals. I was opposed to this approach because I am convinced that giving more means to a poorly thought-out organisation serves no purpose. I explained this in an article in the Huffington Post, which gave me a bit of visibility and drew some criticism. My wife had recently become Secretary of State, and she was later appointed minister in 2020. Some people tried to justify my position by labelling me as a 'Macronist'. But on the whole, my colleagues recognised my legitimacy on the specific subject of healthcare management, and it was too technical a subject for the general public. On Twitter, it didn't even make too many waves.
The third phase was the pandemic. Once again, the media called me extensively, this time as head of the emergency services. Naturally, my comments on the conspiracy theorists did not please them. The violence on Twitter doubled.
Insults, threats, it's all over the place. It's quite funny because for the same comments I can be attacked at the same time by the extreme right and the extreme left. The basic insult is "macronist". With the conspiracy theorists, I am called, like all physicians, a "collaborator", a "murderer", or both when they are all in synch.
I'm used to attacks from the "fachosphere", the extreme left, or part-time conspiracy theorists. But what irritates me more and more are the comments coming from self-proclaimed defenders of some sort of pseudo-benevolence. They track down anything that might look like sexism, psychophobia2, etc. They are often young physicians. Underneath this constant denunciation of what they see as patriarchal paternalism, I think it's a good old intergenerational conflict. I find it distasteful that people who have never been in charge come and talk about my interpersonal skills with patients or interns, just because they don't like my tone on Twitter. I'm clear-headed, I know my weaknesses, I don't need their lectures.
For example, I was coming back from holiday, on the train, and I see a tweet about interns who are in trouble during their training. I tweeted something like "Don't worry, in most departments it's going well." A very media-friendly colleague, a champion of benevolence, ended up commenting: "You shouldn't talk to Wargon, he's cis-het" [cisgender-heterosexual]. These people systematically place themselves in a victim position and make us into oppressors. They don't realise the violence of their accusations.
On Twitter, my colleague and friend Damien Barraud is more targeted than me because he is even more outspoken. We have two things in common. The first is that we don't fit into boxes. We have both been in the front line against the conspiracy theorists, the Raoultians3, etc. On the other hand, we refuse to be part of a clan, in this case that of the good physicians who weigh their words. What also brings us together, Damien and I, is that we worked a lot during the pandemic. In our departments, with our teams. And on social networks we had our share of violence. We are not paragons of virtue, of course. That's fine, we're not interested. But the neo-guardians of morality, what are they doing? What have they done?
Yes, twice. One of them for "apology of Nazism". Even though I am Ashkenazi and my grandfather died in deportation. I had spotted a photo on Twitter of a dentist who had "Zyklon B" tattoos. Some people were bragging about giving out her personal address. I reacted to it with an ironic tweet like "Bravo, and don't be surprised if tomorrow we denounce gays or Jews." Obviously this was taken up en masse by my detractors, in an organised manner. A classic "raid". I was suspended for twelve hours. The story was so preposterous, and my friends made such a mockery of me on Twitter, that in the end I attracted a lot of sympathy... and new followers. I joke about it, but at the time it pissed me off.
The other suspension was because of a banal tweet against antivaxxers. I never understood what happened at the time. Another raid, this time from the far left, could have gotten me banned. They missed. They had botched my tweet about police violence, taking my comments on a video out of context. In that context, it was clearly "the minister's husband" who was being attacked.
Recently, I caused a storm with an ironic comment on a tweet in support of Jean Messiha4. I referred to the Inconnus [French comedians] sketch in which they distinguished between "good and bad hunters." It was supposed to make me look racist, which was a recipe for the fachosphere's rags. I thought I was going to be suspended, but no. My colleagues at the hospital had a good laugh when they read my exchanges with Messiha in Valeurs Actuelles [a weekly magazine close to the radical, even extreme right].
«Avant on les entendait au bistro, y avait que leurs voisins qui les entendaient, ils étaient un peu bourrés, un peu cons et on leur disait de rentrer à la maison quand ils étaient trop bourrés. Maintenant ils sont à la maison, ils sont toujours aussi cons et ils sont sur les réseaux sociaux.»
"Before, you could hear them in the bistro, only their neighbours could hear them, they were a bit drunk, a bit stupid and we told them to go home when they were too drunk. Now they are at home, they are still as stupid as ever and they are on social networks."
- Mathias Wargon on the 24-hour news channel LCI (22 October 2020) -
I don't care about insults. Except those against my wife. That gets on my nerves a bit. Attacks on my professional qualities don't get to me. On the other hand, I don't like it when people attack my team. During the first COVID wave I was posting pictures of my colleagues on Twitter to thank them. I stopped because there were racist comments, I realised it was going to get out of hand.
What annoys me the most on Twitter is the contempt for the people. It's not a posture, it's linked to my history. I grew up in the suburbs, my father got up at 5am to sell newspapers. I kept my childhood habits, and I chose to come and work in this French department [93]. Take the "bistro" story, for example, [see the quote above] which happened at a time when I was talking about the antivaxxers and the conspiracy theorists. I go to the bistro, and this interview could have been done on a table corner, in front of a beer. I didn't wait for the pandemic to make this parallel: in 2017 I was already saying that Twitter is a bistro. After this statement, I was accused of despising the masses. Frankly, when armchair intellectuals come to piss me off with their idealised vision of the people, I find it pathetic.
My colleagues at the hospital in Saint-Denis - stretcher-bearers, nurses, secretaries, etc. - are the people. I used to be one of them, but today I have a bourgeois life that I fully accept. But I will never be a bourgeois. I don't have the codes. I'm not very good at fitting into a network. If I don't like someone, I tell them. I explain to interns who want to make a career that the obstacle is not social origin or religion, but the ability to find the right network.
Not really. When I got a bullet in an envelope at the hospital, I felt strange. Since then my secretary has been instructed not to open my mail. That same day, the same person sent me gunpowder at home. It was getting a bit ridiculous.
Recently, my address was revealed on social networks, following comments made by my wife on social diversity. I felt that my wife's security services were getting a bit tense, so I took it easy on Twitter. But personally I'm much more scared of a big, drunk patient than I am of anonymous people. In hospital I've never been threatened for what I've said on Twitter. Maybe because the far right avoids Seine-Saint-Denis?
I still like controversy, but on Twitter I block aggressive accounts much more easily than before. I'm up to 2,000 [blocked accounts] now. I don't hesitate to complain either. I did it after that bullet thing, and another time when far-right blogs threatened me and my wife. Concerning Twitter, I filed a complaint against Éric Chabrière5. He has blocked me on Twitter so I can't see what he posts about me, but some of his friends are following me. Insults to my wife and I, pictures of weapons, etc. It was starting to look like calls for murder. Other accounts also sent me pictures of firing squads. Twitter didn't react, I did.
As it happens, I showed my buttocks in that photo. You can hardly see them!6 Frankly, I wanted to make my colleagues laugh. And then I was a bit fed up with all those vaccination photos with hyper-serious people trying in vain to promote vaccination. It was in February, at the very beginning, the vaccine was only for carers and not many people wanted it. My picture was shown on TV, at a prime time. It lightened the mood.
We hope to inform, inspire, and encourage our readers with these interviews, and we look forward to sharing more fascinating stories from physicians around the world in the next instalments of our esanum Global Series, a joint editorial effort by the teams from esanum.de, esanum.fr, esanum.it and esanum.com.